This World Should Break Your Heart

Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.

-James Baldwin

I don’t know how you make someone care about other people. I can't imagine how you experience life without a place inside of you that aches for the pain of others. How you have a brain that experiences cognition and a heart, not the symbolic or metaphorical representation, but the anatomical organ whose existence within you gives you life, without the combination of the two driving you to care how others exist in your world. 

I can't imagine how you don't feel a profound sadness—an exhaustion of your emotions for the suffering of those who inhabit this earth with you, for the outcome of our shared existence. I’m not sure you’re alive if you don’t feel this. You might be going through the motions of existence. But, it seems to me that to be human is to feel a part of humankind. To care beyond your own consciousness. To realize that your circumstances are not purely of your own doing but, rather, the culmination of everything before you, the decisions of those around you, both individual and collective, and pure “luck.” 

All of us should be able to understand that we exist on a spectrum of privilege. Being born outside of the abject poverty that hundreds of millions on our shared planet experience is luck. So is the incredible luxury of not even considering it a luxury to have access to shelter, safe running water, electricity, and a life built around comfort, even when things feel tough.

We’re greedy for that comfort. For convenience. For downtime. For not having to think or feel too hard. In some ways, the ultimate convenience within capitalism is the amount of time you can spend ignoring the exploitation needed to enjoy your life, while others can’t do the same. 

While we continue to look away, spending our days scrolling echo-chamber-based algorithms meant to pacify us, push us deeper into consumerism and acceptance of the status quo, we also harden our hearts. We passively accept that not only are we suffering, but many among us find joy in it. We are all sides of this equation: those struggling, those inflicting the cruelty, and the bystanders. 

A Community Under Attack

Last week ICE was in my city raiding a local taqueria in South Minneapolis. While the feds, our local law enforcement, and the mayor claim that it “had nothing to do with immigration enforcement,” the optics of sending militarized vehicles and dozens of heavily armed law enforcement officers through a majority immigrant area of Minneapolis were clearly to intimidate. I realized later that part of what sent a rage through my body and triggered an emotional response I’ve had since is that I visited a school just blocks away, not too long ago. 

At Lirio Montessori, we met some of the cutest preschoolers imaginable. A diverse group of bilingual little people hugged me and showed me how they made snacks, cleaned up, solved puzzles, and sped through the playground. The school focuses on both allowing young kids to take their learning into their own hands, following the Montessori model, but is also founded on the concept of existing within the community it serves and creating future "change agents" for society. 

But what happens when that community is under attack? If you feel no human connection to others because they don’t share your identity, or believe that someone’s random life circumstances dictate what level of cruelty may be inflicted upon them, you look away. Or worse, you regurgitate the language of the oppressor and recite how laws that have never been equally applied, in a country that was founded on injustice, justify the subhuman treatment... as long as it’s not to you. 

A couple of weeks earlier, I was at George Floyd Square, where the community gathered to commemorate five years since agents of the state murdered him. From the lynching of Black folks at the hands of our own government, to the tearing apart of immigrant families across the country: this is America. But, it is also the millions who took to the streets in Minneapolis and around the country to protest police violence and the disregard for Black lives, and those going toe to toe with ICE in Los Angeles to protect our immigrant family. 

I acknowledge my own hypocrisy in the equation. The cognitive dissonance it takes to go day-to-day is mostly concerned with personal comfort. Mindlessly being, but also exploring the other things that make us human: creating, documenting, learning, and just living. In some ways, the inability of others to experience these same things is the most cruel aspect of systemic oppression.

While I may face racism as a multi-racial Black man, I also realize that many of the small luxuries and conveniences I don’t think twice about play a role in the continued exploitation of others. In this same existence I find myself, others will never be allowed the “peace” of comfort or the ability to look away. 

Our Humanity Is Intertwined

The messaging of white supremacy has taken a toll on so many, including non-white people, to the point where they don't see that our humanity is intertwined. I can't make you feel any actual remorse for the fact that American bombs and hundreds of billions of our tax dollars have led to the death or injury of 50,000 Palestinian children. I can't make it upset you that the American Gestapo is targeting school graduations and immigration hearings, tearing immigrant families apart. I can't make you be sad that Black history is being scrubbed from this country's schools, libraries, and museums, vastly expanding on the American tradition of lying on its people. 

But, I can wonder how it's possible for you not to care. I can point out that all of these things are intertwined. In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, "nobody's free until we're all free."

Many people who work in the education space do so because they see it as a lever for marginalized people to achieve “better lives.” To get degrees and higher-paying jobs, and live more “productive” lives in turn. That’s a fair enough goal. If we are placed within this system destined to produce, consume, and die, we should at least fight for those who were purposefully and violently set behind the rest. 

Others dedicate their work to examining and addressing the lives of young people because of the truth that they are the only pure ones among us. They haven’t yet had to make moral concessions to find how they will exist in the world. They haven’t yet been pushed to hate those around them who were born under a different set of random circumstances. They haven’t had time enough on this Earth to be corrupted by the social constructs used to exploit some and enrich others.

In their smiles, there exists the true joy of living—of feeling and learning to be for the first time. They are curiously examining the world around them, something we are told to stop doing at some point. I will always fight for them and their right to be, especially those who have been historically oppressed. 

Looking into the eyes of babies, I see what it means to live. To be. They are us, and we are them.