I've been eagerly waiting for 2042—have you? That's the year we were told, back in 2008, that the U.S. would become a "majority minority" country—meaning people racialized as white would be less than 50% of the American population for the first time since the country's founding. Which means more democrats, right? It’s called democratic destiny and I totally bought into it.

What happened to my environmental commitment? Do I really actually have one? It feels...lost. Insubstantial. Fraudulent. Not really a commitment. A promise I didn't keep. Do you see what's happening here? I'm beginning to feel bad about myself. I believe I know why; it's something I learned from my anti-racism work—it's easier to feel bad about myself, to infuse my nervous system with the familiarity of guilt, fear, shame, and doubt, than it is to feel grief.

My interest is the mattering of all people. This is tender terrain; everyone hurts in a society where some people matter more and some matter less. We know that the pain of that hurt lands differently on different bodies. There is the pain of not being seen, or acknowledged, or regarded as a human being, tender under the skin as we all are.

In the context of my anti-oppression work—or more positively, my work toward liberation and human rights—I've been thinking about what I do. Although I don't tend to walk in the door announcing that I'm an educator and a writer, that's actually how I think of myself and what I do. What's interesting is how long it took for either of these deeply held impulses—intertwined loves, I would even say—to come to mind as something I could offer in my commitment to everyone mattering.