Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies … - bell hooks

Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture.

We cannot fully create effective movements for social change if individuals struggling for that change are not also self-actualized or working towards that end. When wounded individuals come together in groups to make change our collective struggle it is often undermined by all that has not been dealt with emotionally.

All too often we think of community in terms of being with folks like ourselves: the same class, same race, same ethnicity, same social standing and the like..I think we need to be wary: we need to work against the danger of evoking something that we don’t challenge ourselves to actually practice.