Why This Matters

Why This Matters:

Our goal by the end of the year is for you to develop and strengthen the skills necessary to affect change in your community and the world at large. To meet this end, we are practicing critical listening, thinking, and writing skills. We are reading difficult texts and watching provocative works.

But, we also need to think about how you can affect change on a larger scale. We want to practice different ways of being active citizens.

As James Baldwin reminds us, “we are most free when we are at battle for our freedom.” With that idea in mind, we will spend second semester researching our neighborhood, identifying an issue we’d like to address, and creating and presenting a proposal to our elected officials. We will become active participants and agents of change in our neighborhoods. And in doing so, we will become more capable academics and scholars.