I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish. I was born at the crossroads and I am whole. - Aurora Levins Morales

All organisms are inherently sovereign. All organisms resist harm and repair damage. This is our nature. And our nature is to tell stories about it. Because the story of what is broken becomes something whole. The story of what was forgotten becomes memory. The story of how we survived becomes communal medicine. The story of what we lost becomes new soil. The story of how we are the same as everyone and the story of how we are unique are a braided lifeline. ("The Truths Our Bodies Tell")

We tolerate and accept for children a level of disenfranchisement that we would protest for any other constituency. Childhood is the standard for acceptable powerlessness. "They're just like children" is the classic statement of paternalistic racism and patriarchy. "Don't treat me like a child" is the outraged cry of the disrespected. We talk about the ways in which various groups are not admitted to full adulthood, how women were, and in many places still are, permanent legal minors, how the colonized are considered naïve, not ready for self-governance, deprived of sovereignty with the same air of protectiveness we extend to children.

To me the choice seems difficult and clear: either we are committed to making a world in which all people are of value, everyone redeemable, or we surrender to the idea that some of us are truly better and more deserving of life than others, and once we open the door to that possibility, we cannot control it. If we are willing to say that some people don't matter, that some people are unaffordable for the planet, that some people's actions have placed them beyond the pale, then what forgiveness is there for any of us if we commit errors, even crimes? If we agree to accept limits on who is included in humanity, then we will become more and more like those we oppose.