Please, let’s think on how we would like to have this page designed ( the content and the design you are seeing is the one potential members see when arrive at the website.
We welcome you to join our community by taking four simple steps and creating an account:
01
Read our current thinking
Read our current thinking in response to the freedom of speech discussions
03
Log in so that you can join the dialogue!
You will need to introduce yourself to the community to do so. Please try to introduce yourself as a whole person so that we are all encouraged to treat each other as whole people: Pretend you are introducing yourself to new colleagues over a relaxed lunch, experiment with medium, etc
02
Use Both Your First And Last Name.
When developing your profile, please select "Display name publicly as" and use both your first and last name.
04
Help us.
Help us to continue to think about ways to design and moderate this space such that all of us are welcomed, protected and supported.
Freedom of Speech & Cultural Praxis
Freedom of speech as an abstract ideal does not exist. Freedom of speech can only occur within concrete power systems and social relations. The question is, “Whose freedom, and freedom for what?” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: “I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” Today, freedom of speech, formulated in the abstract, is precisely such a “dangerously structured dam that blocks the flow of social progress.” Instead of following an empty mantra, we must interrogate and radicalize this principle by situating it within the concreteness of sociopolitical realities and the struggle for establishing justice. The pretext of unrestricted freedom of speech is, de facto, a call to continue practices of unrestricted freedom for elites to espouse positions free from consequence or criticism in a program of preserving elites’ privilege and power.
Read moreDetails