Friends with Benefits (and Sometimes Costs)

Abstract

In peace and justice movements (and I include all environmental campaigns and movements under the rubric environmental justice) the ideas of friendship are never far from the surface. And just as Dr. King wrote about the various forms of love, we can consider multiple types of friendship as it relates to activism for peace, social change, and a broad array of justice issues. I will suggest that this is not a mere side characteristic, but can often be central to questions of effectiveness. Overcoming paralyzing polarizing divisions, conflicting worldviews, radically different values and norms in order to achieve a particular, carefully outlined and bounded goal is, in our age of greatly divided segments of the polity, perhaps a way forward worth exploring in some situations.