We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

by Bettina L. Love

How do you matter to a country that is at once obsessed with and dismissive about how it kills you? How do you matter to a country that would rather incarcerate you than educate you? How do you matter to a country that poisoned your child’s drinking water? How do you matter to a country that sees your skin as a weapon? How do you matter to a country that steals your land, breaks treaty after treaty, and then calls you a savage? How do you matter to a country that tears families apart because of arbitrary lines that instill terror, violence, and geographical separation rather than a compassion for humanity? How do you matter to a country that will ban you because of how you pray and who you pray to? How do you matter to a country that ultimately only sees you as property or a commodity? How do you matter to a country that rips children out of the hands of their parents and locks them in dog cages for seeking a better life? How do you matter to a country that measures your knowledge against a “gap” it created? How do you matter to a country that labels you a “model minority” in order to fuel anti-Blackness? How do you matter to a country that would rather arm teachers with rocks than have courageous conversations with itself about gun control, eliminating guns, and White male rage? How do you matter to a country where the idea of “consent” seems alien to its conquering culture? How do you matter to a country where the president calls immigrants animals, particularly those fr...