I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Rodney King (May 1, 1992)

The fires that time. On April 29, 1992, following a verdict that failed to convict four police officers of brutality against an unarmed black American man, the Los Angeles County in California erupted with a feverish series of angry riots, unrest, widespread lootings, and incidents of arson. Rodney King, shackled, tazed, and beaten by the four officers, appealed to the rioters on television, caressing into words the existential scream of an age increasingly defined by unflinching divisions – a landscape of perpetually indigestible others: can we all just get along?

This question is the cry at the heart of contemporary social justice movements and many celebrated political imaginaries; this is Mandela offering a conciliatory cup of tea to South African general Constand Viljoen, who at one time plotted an Afrikaner insurrection against minority/multi-racial rule; this is Gandhi during the Salt March of the 1930s. And yet as well-traveled as this soul-stirring query is, we have not found a lasting response: our exhausted, jaded bodies retired from veteran visions of ‘a world that works for everyone’ might suggest that the only answer is no. The flourishing of proto-fascist aspirations and rise of strongmen politicians who insist on purity and separation-based peace projects may also indicate getting along would be impossible.

Taking the promise of getting along as an entry point into an exploration of authoritarian populism, racism, activist burnout, hope, and the hidden costs of victory, Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé and OBI Director john a. powell examine mainstream assumptions that reduce belonging to a “we-all-get-along” inclusivity: What if the very indigestibility of the other calls for new ways of framing identity and the promise of politics? Where are the thirst-quenching waters in a time of fire and fury?