Reading this article, “Where is the Love?  The Hope for American’s Redemption,” by Christopher Lebron, couldn’t have come at a worse time.  Or maybe I should say it couldn’t have come at a better time?  The political climate right now, less than one week before the midterm elections, is beyond toxic – it’s radioactive.  And terrifying, to be honest.  The idea that so many people support a man who blatantly lies about EVERYTHING, and acts with such cruelty toward so many innocent people, including children, is almost too much to bear.  But you have to keep some hope or what’s left?

When I was first reading the article, it occurred to me that at the time that Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin were active, there was a different temperament to this country.  The battles were being fought – over the Viet Nam war and civil rights – but there was the Summer of Love and Woodstock, a counter-narrative of love.  It occurred to me that this article depicted a time when talking about love actually had some traction.

And that was a shocking thought – the idea that love was somehow radical, and a product of time and place, but not of this time and place.  I mean, really, where IS the love?

Many readings later and after much sorting through the material, the philosophies and lives of these two great men, MLK and James Baldwin, began to make sense to me.   I think I kind of understand the basic notion of what each meant when they talked about love.  They had different philosophies – one of a collective redemption, one of personal redemption.  But both felt love was necessary to achieve racial justice, civil rights for Blacks in this country.  No small feat.

Lebron presents MLK’s brand of love as “agape” love, another completely confusing concept when I first encountered the ideas of Paulo Freire.  Now I’ve come to understand it as love for someone just because they are human.  Not personalized – collective.  “We are all human beings” kind of love.  Freire felt that when freeing oneself from oppression it also frees the oppressor.  MLK saw the racist act as evil, but not the person who committed it as evil.  Therein lies the MLK notion collective redemption – recognize the humanity of others, and as you stand up against racism in a nonviolent way, your own humanity becomes apparent.  Reason takes hold – moral reasoning, really.

The image of the students at the lunch counter sit-ins comes to mind – the dignity of those people who sat there and endured the abuses showered on them without responding in kind – how could their humanity be denied?  MLK’s philosophy of love was one that he emphasized had to be lived: it is not a tactic or a strategy.  It is a way of life, an internal strategic vision consecrated in action.

The day of the presentation of this article on love and activism/organizing, there was a discussion afterward about a very provocative (as in provoking, not salacious) action that one of the students in our graduate program is engaging in.  Obviously a provocateur, this person is looking for a reaction in this bastion of liberal thinking.  The act is kind of brilliant in its simplicity to evoke outrage and a sense of moral injustice – he is wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

I, too, hate everything it stands for, but it is a reminder that there are people on the other side who feel the injustices are committed against them.  I think this is ridiculous, ABSURD, and the facts don’t support it, but just to realize that that is how they feel might give a little room to talk to those people.

This is where James Baldwin now comes to mind.  The self-redeeming kind of love that he believed in was one that saved one’s self.  He felt that keeping hate inside eventually eats you up, the way his father was destroyed by his hate for whites.  At this point in this country, the kind of contempt people have for one another is eating us up.  I not only see Baldwin’s point, I feel his point.

And that’s what’s important to remember as an organizer right now.  Agape love feels pretty hard to muster, so maybe it’s lighter version – agape lite.   Bottom line is, we have to be able to talk to each other, even those on the other side.