we could be allies, the Arabs and we, two persecuted peoples rooted in the same land, the same customs, food, language. The task is the most difficul… - Aurora Levins Morales

Full inclusion requires us to root out all the ways in which we have been tricked into collusion with the oppression of others, and all of us have. It requires us to move beyond our comfort zones. I once heard Bernice Reagon say that being in coalition meant working with people we didn't much like, and we might need to vomit over it for a while, but we had to do it anyway.

Listening to, analyzing, creating, and disseminating stories, and doing so with courage, keenness, skill, and cunning, with the clear purpose of changing human consciousness in the direction of choosing justice-this is what organizing is all about. ("The Power of Story")

Last word: Nowadays there is a lot of talk of the patria grande, the greater American homeland, and the unifying dreams of Bolívar, but I have never trusted that word patria. Nations emerged when the obedience and loyalty once sworn to individual aristocrats had to be transferred to an entire class, and it's not a coincidence that patria comes from the same root as "patriarch," "patrimony," "patriarchy." The loyalty I swear is not to nations or governments. My loyalty is to a far broader and deeper integration. I am faithful to the web of vital connections between all that lives, and being faithful to that web requires practicing ecological ethics, requires defending whoever needs it, requires interweaving intimate and communal sovereignties in what could perhaps be called the matria, from the same root as matriz, "womb," the reestablishment of kinship. Only so, spinning and weaving that fine, strong, relational gauze, will we be able to bind our wounds, mine, those of my people, and those of my planet. ("Histerimonia" p203)