Bring on the revolution ...

... it's all about the love.

"Paulo Freire says, 'I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love'. He goes onto quote the enigmatic Che Guevara, who wrote in Venceremos: 'Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality'. Freire then states a truth that is the utmost importance and, for the campaigning activist, the greatest challenge. He says:

This then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.

'All life entails violence', says Gandhi. We cannot walk across a field of grass without causing hurt to the creatures that live there. However, he concludes, our duty is to minimise the violence we personally exert. And to forgive and ask forgiveness: for as William Blake says, 'The cut worm forgives the plough.' Mutual continual forgiveness liberates the ongoing expression of life.

Hearing truth spoken inevitably troubles the chrome-plated peace of the oppressor. Stirring things up like this, however, is a duty, even an act of love. If done right, which is so hard to acheive as to be rare, it will speak to the oppressor's own deep self as well as on behalf of those who they oppress. A social activist cannot expect to be loved by the ego of the oppressor. But if they fail to speak to and remember the soul, then that activist will fail in the greater work that liberation is about."

Alistair McIntosh, Soil and Soul, Autum Press, 2002, p.277