FIND THE LOVE 
RELATED INGREDIENTS
INTENTIONS
Pop the bubble
Cross cultures
Show what’s possible
TACTICS
Include emotion
Humanise workers
Humanise things
Make it familiar
Encourage empathy
Encourage thankfulness
Follow the people
Find a character
Be the character
Involve a celebrity
Find lost relations
Bring people together
Spend some time
Cultivate relationships
Encourage feminist solidarities
Make it together
Walk the walk!
Have a theory of change
RESPONSES
I know how they feel
I just cried
That’s my story
This gives me hope
These people are inspiring
Thank you
We We We
It’s so lightweight
Call youselves feminists?
What’s the point?
Charity begins at home
IMPACTS
I get what it’s like
Now we’re talking
Activism is inspired
Can’t tell
EXAMPLES
HANDBOOK PAGES
Jamelia: whose hair is it anyway?
‘I found this in a box of Halloween decorations’
Letter from Masanjia
Made in Dagenham
FOLLOWTHETHINGS.COM PAGES
Find the love
IN BRIEF
Cut though the greed, selfishness, competition, inequalities & exploitations of global capitalism, by finding people who care deeply & unreservedly for each other, expecting nothing in return. Don’t look back in anger, look forward with love. Of all the emotions captured and generated by trade justice activism, this is the most positive for effective change.
What’s this page?
This is a tactic page that tries to explain this tactic, illustrate it with reference to comments taken from relevant followthethings.com example pages, and gives a sense of the intentions, responses and impacts that go with it. Only a few of the handbook links work at the moment. The headings are included to give a sense of what’s to come.
… anger … should not be the emotion that motivates activism. … a more just society is developed through the emotion of love.
Hazel Biana (2021, p.132).
… love is an antidote to oppressive human-made systems of colonialism, neoliberal capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy.
Naomi Joy Godden & Shajimon Peter (2023 p.2).
Today we live in a money economy, where we don’t really depend on the gifts of anybody but we buy everything. Therefore we don’t need anybody. Because whoever grew my food or made my clothes or built my house, well, if they died or if I alienated them, if they don’t like me, that’s OK. I can just pay somebody else to do it. It’s really hard to create community if the underlying knowledge is ‘we don’t need each other’. So people kind of get together and act nice, or maybe they consume together. But joint consumption doesn’t create intimacy. Only joint creativity and gifts create intimacy and connection. … I think love is the felt experience of connection to another being. An economist says ‘more for you is less for me.’ But the lover knows that more for you is more for me too. If you love somebody then their happiness is your happiness. Their pain is your pain. Your sense of self expands to include other beings. That’s love. The expansion of the self to include the other. And that’s a different kind of revolution.
Charles Eisenstein (2011, np).
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Love goes beyond self-love and love of others. It is ‘an ethos of connectedness, both with the spirit within ourselves and with others. Feeling connected very much contributes to the finding of wholeness and definitely to love’ … Love should lead to the eventual ‘healing’ of the world. A healed world is a world wherein oppression has been eradicated.
Hazel Biana (2021, p.134).
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If people are reminded that love exists, will it make the right kind of love the norm? … There must be an eagerness for dialogue between the one who gives and receives love.
Hazel Biana (2021, p.135).
RECOMMENDED READINGS
Hazel Biana (2021) Love as an act of resistance: bell hooks on love. in Soraj Hongladarom & Jeremiah Joven Joaquin (eds) Love & friendship across cultures. Singapore: Springer Nature, p.127-137
Naomi Joy Godden & Shajimon Peter (2023) The love ethic: love and activism for ecosocial justice. in Magdalena Grobbelaar, Elizabeth Reid Boyd & Debra Dudek (eds) Contemporary love studies in the arts & humanities: what’s love got to do with it? London: Palgrave Macmillan, p.1-14
Martin Luther King Jr. (2016)The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life – April 4, 1967. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU3AnO_PJGU [last accessed 2 May 2024]
Ana María Munar (2018) Dancing between anger and love: reflections on
feminist activism. Ephemera: theory & politics in organisation 18(4), p.955-970
Transparent Film (2011) Occupy Wall St – The Revolution Is Love with Charles Eisenstein. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRtc-k6dhgs [last accessed 2 May 2024]
Image credit
Icon: Love (https://thenounproject.com/icon/love-8251980/) by Kevin Diks from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)
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SECTION: Tactics
by Ian Cook (February 2026)
