3/22/2023 0 Comments Valerie kuarYou have an essential role to play because if you’re not talking to them, who is? And the only way we’ll transition the nation as a whole is if we move all of us across the threshold. No, my love: your role is to stay alive, take the next breath, let other people love on you and stand by your side, and help you get to your feet.īut if you are someone who, by virtue of your privilege, your skin color, your resources, is safe enough and brave enough to talk to those kinds of opponents, then we need you now. If you are someone who has a knee on your neck, it is not your role to look up at your opponent and try to wonder about them or love them. to know that you have one role that is part of the whole-but that you don’t need to carry it all. My dream for college students is for you to be ignited by your particular role in this season of your life. On the role of college students in anti-racist work: Ask yourself: Who’s going to have your back? Who’s going to be by your side? Who’s going to hold your mic as your voice trembles? Who’s going to catch you after you put this book into the world?” It’s those moments of realizing the importance of community in sustaining courage and safety that allow me to live the life I live now. You are brave enough to do this thing or say this thing. So, the wise woman in me will say, “Okay, my love, you are enough. “The world will eat you alive” is what the little critic keeps saying-and they’re right.īut the solution is not silence. The little critic doesn’t want me to break my silence or tell my story because it’s not safe for young brown women to tell their truths in this world. My whole life had been the power struggle between the little critic and the wise woman-until I finally understood that the little critic was just scared. It’s the voice that says, “Oh, my love, you are enough.” It’s the wise woman in me. There’s a different voice in my mind, too. Since I was a little girl, I’ve heard this voice in my head: “You’re not good enough, you’re not strong enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not enough.” That voice-the little critic, I call it-gets loud, especially anytime I’m about to put my art into the world or tell a story that I’ve never told before. Kaur on knowing when to share your story with the world: “And when she is at Tufts next month, she will invite our community to bring those stories and practices to the civic work of revolutionary love in our relationships, across institutions, and amidst deep difference.” “Valarie deeply reveres the stories that have shaped communities of people across traditions and time for liberation and justice,” said Nelson Winger. as we continue to discern where we fit in the fight for justice.” For her part, Ratnapuri said that she is excited for the lecture as an occasion for Kaur to show students “ways to grow as friends, family members, community members, and activists that is true to themselves.” “As a lawyer, filmmaker, and a member of the Sikh community, Valarie shows us how each of us can weave together our own expertise, experiences, and stories for the common good.”īrinson said speaking with Kaur offered a chance to explore the “remedies Valarie can offer to us as students, through self-love and divine rage. “Valarie embodies the creative and courageous spirit of an interfaith leader,” said University Chaplain Rev. Kaur describes revolutionary love as “the call of our time, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves.” Kaur’s lecture will draw from her 2020 book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. This year, the Russell Lecture is offered jointly as part of the Solomont Speaker Series from the Tisch College of Civic Life. Ratnapuri and Brinson spoke with Kaur in anticipation of her return to Tufts on March 28, when she will deliver the Russell Lecture on Spiritual Life. Kaur shared this origin story during a February 9 interview with Neha Ratnapuri, A23, and Curry Brinson, A22, two members of the University Chaplaincy’s Interfaith Ambassador team. Kaur cites that fateful visit to the Hill as the “beginning of her public voice.” Seeing all the students lined up after the film to speak with her made her realize that she had a message that resonated with young people. But during the screening at Tufts, she had an epiphany. While producing the film, Kaur expected the documentary would be a resource to share on college campuses. Tufts was the first university in the nation to host the film. In September 2006, Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath, Kaur’s documentary with Sharat Raju on racism in America after September 11, 2001, made its Boston premiere in Barnum Hall, in a screening hosted by the Asian American Center. Little-known fact: civil rights leader Valarie Kaur discovered her public voice on the Tufts Medford/Somerville campus.
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