Armed Love and Freedom Schools

• In Event: Freedom Schools as Pedagogy: Toward an Education for Liberation

Abstract

We theorize relationships among armed love and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) —based on our long-term case study of a Freedom School in Rochester, NY. Armed love is not benign, soft, lacking in power, or romantic. Instead, it is a “political and radicalized form of love that is never about consensus or unconditional acceptance or unceasing words of sweetness… it is … rooted in a committed willingness to struggle persistently with purpose in our life and to intimately connect that purpose with what [Freire] called our true vocation - to be human” (Darder, 2002, p. 34). Our conceptual model connects armed love and three forms of community cultural wealth. Together, these forms of capital both fed and were fed by armed love as 1) a context designed to prepare scholars for life in a racist society, 2) the embrace of a collective, supportive community, and 3) embodied in action-oriented relationships.

Author

• Nancy Ares, University of Rochester