Nine months ago I talked with the wonderful faculty of my PhD Committee for my PhD Fields Exam. We talked about lots of things, including some of the community organizing work I facilitate. And I said something like, “It’s hard for me to say ‘I do this’ and ‘I do that’ to organize things, because everything I do is woven through with what so many other powerful people are doing. And there’s a long history of people (especially white men) saying I did this as a way to take credit for or hide all the other work that other wonderful people are doing. The work they themselves are relying on.”
                Jenny Davis, a Chickasaw scholar, poet, and educator, told me that was one way people use “I.” Another way is to say Here I am. Here is my place in my communities. Here I recognize and choose to live up to the responsibilities and duties of our interwoven lives. I’ve been thinking about that ever since. What I’m sitting with today, what I’m wondering about and mourning and, yes, celebrating, goes all the way down to what I mean by “I.” What we might mean by “we.” Because here I am, and I choose to work to recognize and live up to the responsibilities and duties that flow through this wonderful web of living things of which I’m a part. That can feel heavy. That can feel joyous. That’s the “I” I practice.