As a middle-class girl growing up in an environment where "if you can't say something Nice, you shouldn't say anything at all", anger was something that I didn't really understand or know how to employ. And the people I saw actually acting out of anger didn't seem like the kind of people I could emulate. Fact is, I wasn't going to march in the streets, or climb a tree so it wouldn't be cut down. I wanted to change the world, but I didn't see those kinds of tactics as useful in my own experience.
Our trainer today talked about a different kind of anger. She described it as what happened when she, an educated, professional, white, religious sister, accompanied people to welfare meetings or to visit their family members in jail. Suddenly, where an entire room of people waited without assistance, she showed up and was immediately attended to.
I hear that kind of anger as a voice that goes off in my head, saying, "Oh, Lord...this is not how things are supposed to be".
The especially helpful thing that our trainer suggested today came from a theologian named John Casey. Casey, she said, thinks it's only worthwhile to get angry about something you can actually hope to change. So, getting angry about George Bush? Not likely to produce change. But working in Lake County, Illinois, to improve education for the 4,100 high school students (in one school) with one part-time counselor who does college counseling one hour a day? Now that's worthy of the kind of anger that gets something done.
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