Confused, mad, and ready to do something about it!

As I have chatted with my classmates before and after class and around the School of Social Work, I feel like many of us feel the same way; somewhere along the lines of confused, mad and ready to do something about it. Well at least that is how I feel more and more. Just to give a preface, this post will be more on the emotional side, because at the moment my mind and my emotions are struggling with the stuff I have been learning, reading, and discussing and that is all I feel like I can do adequately now.

This week while sitting in a coffee shop I was brought to a point of such deep frustration that tears began to fill my eyes, I had to put down Zinn's book, take some deep breathes and go for a walk to process. On one occasion my roommate could tell I was so frustrated she asked me if my book was still as good as I had told her it was several times previously. I told her it was and that is was so difficult to read because I felt like I had been lied to for so long. Realizing the truth isn't always easy. The same situation happened one evening when my Mom called me. She immediately knew that I was upset about something and I was able to share with her some of the things that I had been reading. After I was done sharing she told me about her frustration and difficulty with the care of the Native Americans and the oppression they have experienced for years. She has worked on an Indian reservation before and understands their struggles more than most. I was able to express my sadness with the treatment of the Iroquois Indians and the genocide that Christopher Columbus lead, yet how we "celebrate and honor" him with his special little holiday with many states declaring it a state holiday including school closures and the closure of other state services. I just want to say that is nauseating. Why in the world would we celebrate such a wicked man? And why were we lied to in grade school and throughout history books saying he "discovered America"? No, he first discovered Hispaniola. He's not as glorious as he's made out to be, so why do we teach this to our children in schools? And that is by far not the only lie or inaccurate historical portrayal being made. Lies, lies, lies.

When our guest lecturer came and we did the exercise moving on the spectrum of strongly agree or strongly disagree about if we personally thought if "x" is a social problem or not, it resulted with me having even more questions. If I strongly belief that poverty and wealth are both social problems and others don't, how can change occur? While I understand that because of our own opinions people will never agree on such things, I keep wrestling with a series of questions. How will any change occur if we all just sit around talking about change, learning about change, figuring out what change would look like, but not actually actively doing anything to CHANGE? How silly it sounds, but unfortunately that is exactly what I feel like we do. We think and talk a good talk, but where is the implementation? Go, start, do something! Stop sitting, talking, planning, discussing. Even if we act and fail, I believe it's better than not acting at all and being complacent. I'm struggling with how do we get past differences and unite to fight against all these injustices?  People and society get so bogged down with partisanship, personal morals, and frivolous things instead of identifying needs and focusing on change. How can we support one another? How can we positively shed light on these important things and not shoot ourselves in the foot with all our foolish arguing?

Yes, I have my own beliefs and my own opinions, but I believe that I am called to love and respect others and despite differences help, love and encourage others. With all of these thoughts swarming around in my head, I always been ending up in the same spot. Action. I feel compelled and called to action more now than I have ever before. I can no longer sit by and passively accept things that are thrown around in all areas of life. And I hope that others do to! I am thankful for these discussions, no matter how difficult they may be. They are needed, they are needed.