It was hopeful to have a socialist with really good policies go as far as he did in this rigged process. The ideas his campaign put forth helped us i… - Aurora Levins Morales

we write from necessity, that our writing is a form of cultural and spiritual self-defense. To live surrounded by a popular culture in which we do not appear is a form of spiritual erasure that leaves us vulnerable to all the assaults a society can commit against those it does not recognize. Not to be recognized, not to find oneself in history or in film or on television or in books or in popular songs or in what is studied at school leads to the psychic disaster of ceasing to recognize oneself. Our literature is documentation of an existence that doesn't matter a damn to those in charge. And like the forged passports of my paternal Jewish relatives, from time to time it saves our lives.

All solidarity movements must work hard to counteract the pull to think for the constituencies they ally themselves with. Those with privilege often have a hard time abandoning the conviction that they are more competent than those they want to support. As adults, we need to listen to children more than we talk to them. We must back the initiative of children themselves, secure resources and share skills, respect their right and ability to lead themselves, and learn to let them lead us. This process, more than anything, will bring into our awareness and let us begin to repair the disempowerments of our own childhoods. As we do so, we will begin dismantling one of the most powerful ways that oppression reproduces itself.

abuse is the local eruption of systemic oppression, and oppression the accumulation of millions of small systematic abuses.