Time for Revolutionary Love

The Leo T. McCarthy Center is co-sponsoring this year’s Critical Diversity Studies Forum. In this week’s blog, we introduce the keynote speaker Valarie Kaur, creator of the Revolutionary Love Project, a national initiative devoted to creating media that inspires others to practice the ethic of love. Its current project target racism and hate toward minority communities by promoting the benefits of rooting movements in love for others and love for one’s self.  

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Critical Diversity Studies (CDS) Forum and we are emboldened to revisit what has guided our dialogues this past decade–the creation of new possibilities, systems, and ways of being that are grounded in wonder, collective wisdom, and love for justice and equity. We are thrilled to announce our keynote speaker for this year’s forum: Valarie Kaur, is a Sikh racial justice activist, civil rights lawyer, award-winning filmmaker, educator, founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, and author of the new book See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love.

Our 10th anniversary CDS Forum will engage participants in dialogue to address the question:

“How do we labor for the world we want when the labor feels endless? How can the practices of Revolutionary Love guide us in transforming ourselves, our communities, and our nations?”

In See No Stranger, Kaur writes that love is more than a feeling. Rather, “love is a form of sweet labor: fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life giving – a choice we make over and over again. Revolutionary love is the “choice to enter into labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves in order to transform the world around us. It is not a formal code or prescription but an orientation to life that is personal and political.” In this time of pandemic, uprisings, rising nationalism and polarization, we believe that now more than ever, it is time for revolutionary love.

This year’s Critical Diversity Studies Forum is happening Friday, September 25th. You can register for this extraordinary, FREE event here.