Revolutionary Love and Healing Resistance: From the Cycle of Socialization to Liberation and Justice

Overview: This workshop will introduce notions of Revolutionary Love and Healing Resistance, Cycles of Socialization and Liberation, and the Circle of Insight process as tools for helping social workers consider and actualize our commitment to advance human rights and social justice, awaken from our illusion of separateness, and build beloved community.Proposal text: This workshop will introduce notions of revolutionary love (Kaur, 2020) and mindful, healing resistance (Haga, 2020; Magee, 2019) as methodologies for confronting fear, hate, and social injustice, and for awakening from what social worker and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh calls “our illusion of separateness” (Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation, 2020). We will utilize sociological theory, namely the Cycle of Socialization and Cycle of Liberation (Harro, 2018), to examine and better understand our deeply divided concomitantly interconnected society. Applying the See, Reflect, Act Circle of Insight process (Nicotera, 2018, 2019) to Harro’s Cycles of Socialization and Liberation, we will examine and discuss how we are socialized to fear and hate the other, thus perpetuating structural, systemic, institutional, oppression and injustice.

We will consider the supposition that revolutionary love and healing resistance can serve as antidotes to oppression, injustice, and polarization. We will listen to and reflect on stories from social and political scientists about why we are polarized (Adams, et al., 2018; Coleman, 2021; Finn, 2020; Haidt, 2012; McGhee, 2021; Pyles, 2018; Saslow, 2019). We will listen to and reflect on stories of hate from self-professed white supremacists and racists (Michaelis, Kaleka, & Fisher, 2018; Saslow, 2018). We will consider the individual and collective suffering wrought by fear, hate, and injustice. We will then consider what the work of revolutionary love, Dr. King’s call for a radical revolution in values (King, 1968, 2000), and the invitation to healing resistance means and requires of us practically in this moment, as counselors, healthcare professionals, educators, and advocates. We will consider personal, professional, and collective action, consistent with our commitment to advance human rights, economic, and social justice (CSWE, 2015), and to build what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the beloved community (King, 1968, 2000).

We will consider how Harro’s Cycles, consistent with the Circle of Insight process, invite creative action to transform hearts and minds, and confront and liberate oppressive, unjust structures, systems, and institutions. For, “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring” (King, 1968, p. 198). We will ask, What do the Cycle of Socialization and Liberation, and Circle of Insight framework require of us as individuals, as society, as healthcare providers, as educators, as citizens, as human beings? How can we use these tools to create a more just, humanizing response to societal disconnection, oppression, and injustice?

In the fierce urgency of now, our world desperately needs social workers and healthcare providers, indeed all of us, to renew our commitment to social justice and human dignity, to embrace Valerie Kaur’s revolutionary love, Kazu Haga’s healing resistance, Rhonda Magee’s inner work of racial justice, to engage the Circle of Insight process, to confront and break out of the Cycle of Socialization and move into the Cycle of Liberation, to commit to actualizing and building anew Dr. King’s beloved community. This workshop will share practical strategies and resources for doing so.