All this is said to encourage your efforts to reflect for others their individual alien dignity. Those who saw me as more than my situations were the people who helped me the most because they challenged me to be more me.

I’m not expressing this very well. Just by basing your actions on the belief that a person can have sovereignty over him or her self you give that person the idea that it’s possible. The message can be received even by the drones in the mechanism who sing the company song the loudest (I’m raising my hand).

One more thing: it’s my belief that although the oppressors love their power, there is a deeper part in them that wishes for the revolution, to be freed from their own darkness. I haven’t seen that, I just choose to believe it.

You just took me back 17 years, to my own grad school experience. It’s good to reconnect with that, as theory seemingly has little place in our daily work. But under closer scrutiny, I guess it does.

I would like to publish this for you. But first, let me start up an academic journal. I’ll get back to you on that.

Fun to revisit Freire’s work, eh? I agree that we need affect revolution at the grassroots level in a non-violent manner. But there is much that has to change (mass media, government, economy, etc.). And I’m not sure it will without some mighty strong incentives, like more violence, or an apocalypse of some kind.

The sociologist Anthony Campolo says to get a good understanding of the word “revolution,” substitute it with the phrase “F*** up.” So, “We need to f*** up our class system, or …whatever.” I like that because it gets the word out of the advertising realm (revolutionary new dish soap) and forces us to take it more seriously.