Originally published in Loaves & Fishes, Clairvaux Farm, Elkton, MD.
I.
Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human… This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.
– Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Our friend, Roy Bourgeois, along with a group of others, is now in the midst of a 40-day “Fast for Life” on the steps of the Capitol to help persuade the lawmakers of this country to close down the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. He has been working patiently for years to bring to the light of general public consciousness the understanding that the military of Latin America does not need to be brought to this country, subsidized by public money, to be taught to torture, subdue, and exterminate their own citizenry.
I remember him speaking to a group when he was in this area last year, telling of his long, personal campaign to foster this understanding. During his talk, he used the sentence, “It was a teachable moment.” Although I had never heard it before, I knew exactly what he meant.
There are turning points in our collective life when a new path forward is open to us, if only we are able to become conscious of the significance of the occasion. This is a teachable moment. Something new can be disclosed. Or a new understanding of something old can be conveyed. And, on the basis of this understanding, we go down the new path.
Few of us have been trained to be aware of our own “educability” or that of others. Few of us have been encouraged to seize the “teachable moment.” I can think of times when I have let the occasion pass or times when, the moment already passed, I realized what an opportunity I had had before me.
It is my personal struggle to be open to the possibilities of each new moment, both for myself and for others. But the struggle is not just a personal one; it is not just mine. And, precisely because it is a struggle which we all share, we are called upon to foster one another’s ability to be open to the moment, to understand its significance, to act decisively on that understanding, and to be the person who leads the rest of us to act.
Peter Park, who is involved in the partnership to develop a social justice center in Wilmington, has written in one of his articles: “Society evolves as a continual process of transformation in which people collectively inquire, evaluate, and take action to change their life circumstances.” He goes on to point out that institutions exclude significant, and probably growing, numbers of human beings from participating in this process. 1Peter Park, et. al. Voices of Change: Participatory Research in the United States and Canada (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1993).
II.
The only possible alternative to being either the oppressed or the oppressor is voluntary cooperation for the greatest good.
– Errico Malatesta, Volunta
It is remarkable that, in the little more than a year since its inception, Meeting Ground School has tapped a longing for community –shared by homeless people and others– that equals the desire for a simple home place.
The vision of “Little Portion,” which inspired our effort, foresaw the establishment of a new form of training for leadership, the building of an order to support those who were drawn to a vocation with and among the excluded and overlooked, and the eventual creation of seed communities of hope, resistance, and great mutuality.
At first, we saw our task roughly as one that would occur in that kind of chronological order: leadership development, order, and community-building. But this scenario changed rapidly, with our most eager “students” coming from among the homeless and marginal groups that our leadership was to “serve.” Furthermore, it has been from among these same excluded and overlooked groups that have come those most avid for leadership and most conscious of the need to develop new communities.
Meeting Ground School has been a process, in its initial stages, of allowing our assumptions to be challenged, having our nicely planned edifice stood on its head, and learning to welcome creative upheaval permanently into our lives. It has not been an easy process and leaves us without as clear a scenario for the unfolding of the three main elements of the Little Portion vision. But it seems that we are committed to a long-term effort of education and organizing, aimed at providing people –homeless or not– with an environment conducive to their reclaiming their native capacity, in Peter Park’s words, of “participating in the creation of their own world as thinking, feeling, and acting subjects.”
One thing that we have learned as we have groped forward is that what we propose is fervently wanted and that we are part of a groundswell of a number of such efforts, from which we can learn, with which we can share, together with which we can build.
III.
The great are great only because we are on our knees. Let us rise!
– Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own
In an oppressive society, it is difficult to realize and to act out of a true sense of personhood. It may seem paradoxical, or even perverse, that Freire points to the oppressed as the authors of liberation.
Yet he does so not out of romanticism but realism. In our present, sexist and homophobic ways of living and thinking, for example, “straight” men must, as a rule, think themselves to be better and to be better off. In general, they do not see the ways that they as persons are separated from women and from other men –in short, from every other person, from all of humankind– by these oppressions.
Only the person who feels damaged by an oppression is in a position to begin to overcome and oppose it. An injury to one is, truly, an injury to all. But, until it is felt as an injury, it will not inspire liberating thought and action in a particular person. Until I see how it deprives me of my personhood, how it stands between me and the realization of my vocation of becoming fully human, I may carry my injury as a distinction, as the “straight” man carries sexism and homophobia within him.
Lasting change grows from a sense of our interconnectedness but depends equally upon our sense of power and autonomy. We cannot endure what we believe that we can change.
Just as we will free ourselves by discovering our injuries; so, by holding onto each other, will we discover our power.
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Footnotes
- 1Peter Park, et. al. Voices of Change: Participatory Research in the United States and Canada (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1993).