walk our talk (be the change)
I've seen all sorts of strange literal versions of this - most recently 'may words walk'! very poetic, but just not how we're used to saying or hearing it in English. When someone's words and actions are congruent we say they walk their talk. They practice what they preach.
For more on whether or not Gandhi actually said 'be the change you want to see in the world' see this good bit on it from the metta center.
I came back to academia in part because of my frustration that solidarity organizing often did not ‘walk the talk’, and had trouble ‘being the change’ we wanted to see in the world. It is hard to work together across gulfs of distance and difference without falling into old colonial patterns. My other blog, decolonizing solidarity, talks about these issues. Much, but not all, of it focuses on the tactic of solidarity. I turned to accompaniment for my research because it is the solidarity tactic that most explicitly uses inequalities based on colonial histories. Can even accompaniment be decolonized? Can geopolitical/racial privilege actually be used against empire and for justice and peace? Dissertation deadline? early May.
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