Paulo Freire on Cultivating Political Hope

This weekend, I had the privilege of presenting a paper on the work of Paulo Freire, and I realized today that Freire helped me understand how to have political hope.

Even when everything feels hopeless.

I want to tell you about that, but first let me give you important background context from Freire’s life.

Freire was born in Recife, Brazil in the early 1920s to a comfortable, middle class Brazilian family.

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

But after the Great Depression struck, his parents (through no fault of their own) lost their jobs, and Freire’s family became impoverished.

His family often did not have food to eat, despite his parents’ unceasing efforts to find work.

As a result, Freire often could not concentrate at school because he was dizzy from hunger. The problem grew so bad, he fell far behind in his studies at one point.

Eventually, Freire’s family was able to escape their poverty.

But the experience was so significant and painful for Freire that at age eleven, he vowed to do all he could to make sure no child ever had to endure what he had suffered.

Now, imagine what it was like, then, when Freire grew older and began observing the impoverished Brazilian farmers in and near his hometown.

A favela (neighborhood) in Recife, Brazil. Picture (2019) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Freire worked in favelas like this to develop his literacy method.

The farmers were indigenous Brazilians who labored on farms owned by Portuguese colonialists who worked the Brazilian farmers long hours for starvation wages.

The farmers were so exhausted from such work that they couldn’t attend school. Or if they could, they couldn’t concentrate (much like Freire when was younger).

And they didn’t have any real job choice. They had to work the farms.

To make matters worse, there were voting literacy laws in Brazil that mandated that people couldn’t vote unless they could read.

So, the Brazilian farmers couldn’t vote to change their life and working conditions.

As a result, the Brazilian government and Portuguese colonialist landowners conspired together, both directly and indirectly, to keep the farmers in a condition of near starvation, poverty, and illiteracy.

There was so much power invested in keeping the Brazilian farmers in their place—suffering and miserable.

I can only imagine how hopeless this situation must have seemed to Freire initially.

But the amazing thing is that he didn’t give up hope.

He refused to be fatalistic about the plight of the Brazilian farmers.

Instead, he developed a literacy method grounded in the Brazilian farmer’s lived experience, and he taught 300 Brazilian farmers to read in 45 days.[1]

His literacy method spread across Brazil and eventually inspired liberation movements around the world.

(You can read about a man named Myles Horton doing similar work with Appalachian workers at the Highlander Folk School here and here. Horton and Freire were friends.)

Myles Horton, picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Here’s my point.

If you are anything like me, you get really depressed about politics sometimes. It’s because you care about the world, and you want it to be a good place.

And sometimes it feels like the only way we can make the world a better place is to win at politics.

By winning, of course, I mean convincing people to vote like we do and conduct politics the way we think they should.

Then you see people doing horrible thing in the name of politics. And it feels like they have so much power and momentum behind them.

And you feel like it’s impossible to change things.

Sometimes you feel hopeless.

I think if Freire was here, he would say, no matter how bad things feel sometimes, we never have to give up hope.

Here is why.

Freire, along with his friend and colleague Eric Fromm, would ask us to remember that we often confuse power over with power to.[2]

That is, we think real power comes from forcing people to do want we want. Or we believe that real power comes from winning at politics.

But true power comes from exercising our human powers to love, to reason, and to use our imagination together. [3]

Freire says that we are all meant to be “dreamers and makers”[4]  of history together because the world is always in the process of creation and recreation.

The world is never set in stone, and our purpose as humans is to make it more humane place for everyone. The way we do this is through loving dialogue with other people.

After all, just as we are to be makers and dreamers of history, so are other people. So the only way we become fully human is through loving dialogue.

So, authentic power is the power of becoming fully human. And we become fully human through the power to love, reason, and imagine.

Now, it is true that various powerful people make our human condition really difficult sometimes.

They can oppress or dehumanize people, or they can support those who do.

But that is never the end of the story.

Politicians who act this way have a certain kind of power. But love is more powerful.

No matter what powerful people do, we can always become more human together and develop authentic power.

We do this by starting where we are with the problem we see and care the most about.

And then we can take the next loving step.

When we love like this, we reveal the false power of force, and we illuminate the real power of love.

I used to worry such sentiments were naive. But the life of folks like Freire (and Eric Fromm and Myles Horton) show otherwise.

Freire vowed as an eleven-year-old boy that he would make sure no students would ever struggle to learn because they were hungry.

This was the problem he cared the most about.

So, he developed a literacy method and worked with the farmers to change their own lives.

And he taught them not to repeat the patterns of their oppressors but to work for their liberation.

In doing so, he revealed false political power of Brazilian landowners and illuminated the real power of love.

And his loving actions echoed around the world.

Freire’s work teaches us an important lesson.

We can’t solve every problem, but we can work to solve some problems, and that is enough.

All of us can identify problems in our corner of the world that we care deeply about.

And all of us, like Freire, have special gifts we can use to work with the people suffering these problems.

In doing so, we empower them authentically through love.

Politicians sometimes (or regularly) do evil things in the name of power.

But love is more powerful. And we can always find a way to love in our corner of the world.

 I want to end with a contemporary example of this.

As you probably have heard recently in the news, some political leaders have been spreading rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio (legal Haitian immigrants that had come there to work) were eating people’s pets.

They spread these rumors despite law enforcement officials reporting that these rumors are untrue.

These rumors led to recent bomb threats aimed at Haitian immigrants.

I read these news reports the other day and felt overwhelmed that people would say and do such things.

What a terrible display of false power.

But this morning I read that many residents in Springfield, OH were pouring into Haitian-owned restaurants as a show of love and support.

And dozens of people spoke to news reporters, discussing the positive influence of the Haitian immigrants on  the community.

What a beautiful display of authentic power.

Now, the words of politicians matter. And we must do our best to hold folks who say such things accountable.

However, their words and actions are not the end of the story.

There is always the ability to work for humanization with folks suffering mistreatment.

There is always imagination and reason.

There is always love.

And love is stronger.

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You might also like this post: Political Affirmations for When You Feel Politically Overwhelmed

Or you might like this post: Irish Immigrants, Weird Rumors, and the Elections

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[1] Once again, you can all about the Freire’s background, childhood, and work with Brazilian farmers in the foreword to Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition.

[2] Fromm, Eric. Man for Himself, pg. 88.

[3] Ibid

[4] Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, pg. 41