Choice Blog Week 4On the radio this morning, I heard that activist Grace Lee Boggs died yesterday. Boggs was an advocate for social justice and a prominat activist in Detroit. I met her when I was in grad school when I did work with the organization that she started, Detroit Summer.
As I was listening to the article about her life, the first thing the reporter said about her was how, over the years, her ideas and ideals changed. She even said, "...changing was more honorable than not changing." The report goes on to say that a critic of hers said that, "we cannot change ourselves to change the world; rather, we must change the world to change ourselves.” That line has been bouncing around in my head all morning. How do we change the world if we can't change ourselves? This idea--that we have to wait for the whole world to change before we can change, is just silly. But, more importantly, how do we change ourselves? Ghandi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." but how do we do that in a world that seems so messed up? How can we be peaceful when the world is violent? How can we be caring when the world is unkind and may try to take advange of us? How do we impact problems that seem so big and impossible like global warming or institutalized racism or the increase of mass murders? One way I think we start is with ourselves. Hailey, one of my students, wrote about a project she and her mom are in charge of called "Tide Me Over," which works to provide lunches for children to take home over the weekend for familes that have food insecurity. To me, this is a good example of how individual changes change the world. By providing food for people in this community, they make the world a more caring, and maybe even safer place. It seems to me that a lot of the violence in our society happens because people don't feel cared for or connected to their communities.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2018
Categories |