consider the almost hallucinatory fantasies of wealthy members of Congress that teenage African-American welfare mothers, a small minority of the wel… - Aurora Levins Morales

We who believe in freedom, whose daily lives are made up of the clash between what we want for this world and the violent greed that surrounds us, need a culture rich in our people's dreams to keep us sane.

If trauma damages our resilience...what does the cultivation of solidarity between us create? Can we create an inheritable resilience? Can we harness the resilience in our bodies and leave it to be passed along?... I mean, we need everything! My brother talks about climate change, and is it the end of the world?...Are we past the point of no return? We don't know. There are a lot of different versions of that answer. But it seems likely that a lot of people are going to die. It seems likely that the next stage of our presence on the planet is going to involve really huge changes,... so I feel like our job is to put together the absolute best tool kit for our descendants that we can, to create the most resilient culture, the most resilient ways of thinking about things, the best tools... to give them the best shot. And dismantling as much as we can about the oppressive structures that have created the problems.

the arguments against the enfranchisement of children are identical to those used to oppose suffrage for women, immigrants, former slaves, the illiterate, and the poor in general. "They are innocent and cannot understand politics. They will be taken advantage of and manipulated by the political interests of those more sophisticated than they. They aren't ready for the responsibility." But what readies people for responsibility is being allowed to take some. People become informed and savvy about those areas of life where they can exercise some power. It is powerlessness that creates passivity. When children are treated with respect, given choices, and expected to have opinions that matter, they develop opinions and make choices. I wonder what it must have been like, what dignity it must have conferred on children of the Iroquois Confederacy that any child over three was welcome to speak about matters of group importance in the tribal council. One of the most politicizing experiences of my life was the summer I spent in Cuba when I was fourteen. Overnight I found myself in a country in which fourteen-year-olds could make major life decisions-for instance, to join the merchant marine, drill with the militia, or choose special vocational training without parental permission.