with hope and love

In the current issue of the magazine The Humanist, a former Peace Corps volunteer shares the challenges he faced during his service. What stood out most is a quote included in the article by Paulo Freire,
"Another issue of indubitable importance arises: the fact that certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation, thus moving from one pole of the contradiction to the other. It happens, however, that as they cease to be exploiters or indifferent spectators or simply the heirs of exploitation and move to the side of the exploited, they almost always bring with them the marks of their origin: their prejudices and their deformations, which include a lack of confidence in the people's ability to think, to want, to know…They talk about the people, but they don't trust them: and trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change. A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, then by a thousand actions in their favor without that trust".
-Paulo Freire: The Pedagogy of the Oppressed


here is a link to the full article http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/NathanielBrodie.html