Red Emma’s

Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions.

Part memoir, part manifesto, _Viral Justice _is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father's premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother's experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well.

Born of a stubborn hopefulness, _Viral Justice _offers a passionate, inspiring, and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.

“As Ruha Benjamin narrates her life story, we come to see in detail both how structures—carceral, racial, gender—affect individuals and communities and how, through small acts of justice, we can navigate these structures, prefiguring the world that we want and need.” —Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz

Ruha Benjamin is an internationally recognized writer, speaker, and professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. She is the award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code _and editor of _Captivating Technology, among many other publications. Her work has been featured widely in the media, including the New York Times, _the Washington Post, CNN, _The Root, and The Guardian.

Alanah Nichole Davis is a Bronx-born, Baltimore-raised, and based award-winning writer, cultural worker, and human-centered designer. She’s full of experiences and candor to go along with them. Her written witticisms surrounding love, race, womanhood, and being a human have gone viral online in perfect millennial fashion and are also in print to match her old soul. Alanah pursued her Master’s degree in Social Design at Maryland Institute College of Art where she deepened her practice in social literacy and community engagement. Alanah is affectionately referred to as Baltimore's Godmother for her ability to foster, support, love, and build every project she leads or supports. She was the recipient of the Fred Lazarus Leadership for Social Change award in 2021; a Leslie King Hammond Graduate fellow and has been a Maryland Delaware and DC Press Association awardee since 2020. She is currently a journalist and serves as the Lead Reporter for Technical.ly (pronounced Technically) where she covers stories about the intersections of technology, art, culture the environment, AI, humans, and community.