Familiar Strangers

     Through the research done to compose the four blogs I have written, I learned a great deal about poverty; how it affects students, creates homelessness and how the Pre-Contact Era Anishinaabek people lived without it. Through my research, as well as through my readings of other blogs, I learned about the political ideologies. From the aforementioned blog posts, I learned about Older Adults and the injustices they live with, the LGBTTQ community and the stigma they face, people living with mental illness/physical disabilities and how our world has not yet accommodated them, and so much more.

      But most important of all, I have learned about the intersectionality of people. I have been reminded about how we all have so many roles to fulfill, as students, as parents, as workers, as members of our culture etc... I have been reminded about how we are all so different, through things like race, gender, writing style, but that we have the same basic needs, we want the same things and we are in many ways, much a like. Yet all this oppression and classism still occurs. My eyes have been opened to what must be done. "Just as oppression contains psychological and political dimensions, so do liberation and well-being." (Prilleltensky, 2003).

     I have learned a great deal about the social issues that are interwoven and hidden in our world. But on a more micro level, I think about the all the faces that had become familiar to me in our classroom; the seventy or so people that have all come from different places, families and backgrounds to lug themselves out of bed to unite at 10:00 AM every Friday. We are each of us gifted. We are all of us survivors of our own trials. We know so little about each other; we probably know nothing about what the people sitting around us have been through or what they fight for. All we do know is that every Friday morning, we have an Introduction to Social Welfare class together. We become familiar strangers in a world overcast with injustice, yet filled with such promise and opportunity. Together, as strangers that cross paths, we can achieve change however, we need each other, and that is vital. As the famous saying goes, "United we stand, divided we fall."

Prilleltensky, I. (March 2003). Understanding, Resisting, and Overcoming Oppression: Toward Psychopolitical Validity. American Journal of Community Psychology, Volume 31. Retrieved December 14, 2012 from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1023043108210?LI=true

~ Valerie