If there was widespread recognition that many people are depressed because oppression makes us miserable, and that large numbers of people are gettin… - Aurora Levins Morales

There's the nitty gritty of surviving the now, but the difference between a Band-Aid and a step is "does it open up more possibility?"...The small actions that we take-their importance is how they change us, how they change how we think. And so for any individual or small-scale action, my questions are, "Does it increase empowerment? Does it increase solidarity? Does it increase connection? Does it increase clarity about the nature of reality? Does it pull away the masking? Or does it let people feel like they've done their part and can relax and reinforce passivity?"

in spite of all the things that make my heart sing, in spite of so many shifts of culture and consciousness, so many structural changes, so much intelligence and passion, sexism and racism both saturate daily life, as of course, they do in most places. Which brings me back to the image of a bridge, and makes me question it. Because what I have wanted, in every case, in every situation in which I straddled some gap of understanding, was to bring my whole self to the table, to have every aspect of my being respected, to have every aspect of my liberation embraced by those whose experience did and didn't overlap with mine. The bridge I keep building is meant to link two shores, but it's not who I am, it's what I do. What I am is the many-rippled, living river below. (in Bridges, Spring 2011)

If we can teach the history of racism in the United States as a history of the shifting needs of empire and class, as a history of both impositions and choices, alliances and betrayals, a history with roots far outside and long before the first colonial encounters, if we can hold the tension between disbelief in race and belief in what racism does to us, we will enable more and more young people to remake old and seemingly immutable decisions about where their interests lie and with whom. ("What Race Isn't: Teaching about Racism")