Love & Revolution: New habits for a new day

“Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause—the cause of liberation.”
― Paulo Freire

Never has a winter seemed so long and so dark.

And, while the recent arctic temperatures in my neck of the woods have certainly contributed to my dismal feelings about this particular winter, the dangerous moral climate of our times is really what I’m talking about here. Never have I felt so heartbroken and so disgusted and yes, so terrified, as I have in these past few weeks. Even if I could look past the steady erosion of our country’s highest ideals, the death of civil discourse and the normalizing of dehumanizing racist tropes, it is impossible for me to ignore the violent and lawless kidnapping of my neighbors and the public executions of innocent citizens in the street. And, I don’t know a single thoughtful adult who is not thoroughly sickened by the images we are now seeing of giant, unregulated ICE detention centers (run by private companies, receiving billions of our tax dollars) which look an awful lot like concentration camps.

For most people I know, the moment has gone far beyond politics and is now a matter of personal and collective morality. The question of what an individual would or should do during the worst moments in our country’s history are no longer rhetorical. What we would have done during (fill in the blank) is exactly what we’re doing now.

I’m not going to lie, this moment has truly gutted me, and it has also forced me to consider my own actions—or, maybe, my lack there of. Am I saying enough? Am I doing enough? What can I do to be more useful? Of course, I think, first, of my work as a teacher. I’ve always tried to use the small space of my classroom to foster a loving and supportive environment, where students with every identity, from every walk of life, feel seen and heard and valued. I’ve also tried to use my agency as a veteran English teacher to advocate for—and often, defend—the reading of texts that represent the diversity of my students and their families. This advocacy for my students—and the strong relationships I try to build with them—is foundational in my overarching goal of helping them to become more effective readers, writers and critical thinkers. Since encountering the work of Paulo Freire almost two decades ago, I have often thought of my work in terms of his revolutionary ideas about love and education.

In case you’re not familiar with Freire, he was a renowned Brazilian educator, philosopher and leading 19th century theorist of critical pedagogy. His seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), revolutionized education by interrogating traditional models, which he said were based on what he termed the "banking concept," where teachers merely ‘deposited’ information into the passive and unquestioning minds of cooperative students. Instead, he advocated for a reciprocal—and dialogic—student-teacher relationship, which is rooted in deep understanding, respect—and, yes, love—and in which students and teachers learn and work together to ask the kinds of questions that result in a better understanding of the world and in our place in it. He believed that literacy is the most important condition for this enterprise to be successful.

Revisiting Freire’s work at this moment in time helps to reaffirm my belief in the critical work of both advocating for my students and in helping them to become more effective readers, writers and thinkers. At the same time, it has underscored my conviction that I could and should be doing more in my personal life. To that end, I’ve been thinking about a few small things I might do to honor my commitment to my values and to what I consider to be the highest ideals of this country.

For me, every good thing begins with attention. Since making a commitment to be more active in this fight, I have been much more intentional about the daily work of paying attention. With so many devastating things happening on so many fronts, it can seem impossible to know where to look. I’ve made it my daily habit to look anyway. Every single day, I have tried to engage deeply with credible information that goes beyond partisan social media posts and provocative headlines. For me, this intentional reading has brought nuance and increased understanding to some of the most complex issues and events of our times. It has also revealed new avenues for me to be helpful.

And this is where my new weekly habits come in. Every Sunday morning for the past six weeks or so, I have devoted one hour of my own small life to specific actions that I hope will contribute to bettering the world in some small incremental way. During this time, I have written numerous emails to my senators and representatives; I have left phone messages about specific issues or impending bills; and I have sent dozens of postcards. Every single week, I also make at least one modest financial donation to a non-profit group or organization that I believe is doing the specific work of easing suffering in the world.

Aligned with this desire to be more helpful and active in this moment, I have also made a monthly commitment to going outside and standing with my community. When this terrible moment in history is long gone, I am clear that I want to know that I stood up publicly for what is right. While I have participated in many of the largest marches in my city over the past ten years or so, I want to be more committed to hitting the streets more regularly, even if it’s for something as simple as marching with striking nurses at the hospital down the street or attending a silent vigil to protest ICE. Not only does this feel personally empowering and often inspirational, it also reminds the people I love—and in particular, my former students who have been specifically marginalized and harmed by recent events—that I stand with and for them.

Finally, I want to use my social media to share credible and actionable information, to amplify positive messaging, and to share beautiful images and words. For the past 10 years, I have vowed not to share a single negative word about any person, party or politician with whom I disagree and I intend to keep that vow. I have also opted not to share any social media posts that might have been construed as even being slightly political. During the past few months, though, that line between what is political and what is moral has been irrevocably crossed. As a result, it is no longer tenable for me to stand silently as my transgender students are being harmed by policies that deny their very existence or executive actions that aim to erase my husband’s cultural history or laws that threaten our vast and beautiful public lands. No, I’m going to use my social media presence to advocate for history and science, equity and the environment, but most of all, for the people in my community for whom this moment is not only heartbreaking, but also dangerous.

So I’ll end with this thought: We all have our ways of being in the world and of honoring our deepest moral values and I’m not really trying to preach a perfect way to be in this moment. I will say this, though, that I feel a lot better since committing to these new habits and while I realize they might not exactly change the world, they have certainly helped me to feel like I’m doing a little bit more to love it.