Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I’ll never reach it. So what’s the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking –Eduardo Galeano
We are a social change, national organization with local and community roots in Atlanta, Georgia whose goal is to walk with families in their journey towards non-violence and to elevate our communities’ stories nationally in our efforts to eradicate the structural and social conditions that create barriers to change.
A core aspect of our mission is realized with the incorporation of third world feminism and the teachings of Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire who pioneered the Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Just as Freire saw the student-teacher relationship as equals, so do we see the individual-community-organizational relationship as equal co-creators of learning, knowledge, and change. We might not reach utopia in our lifetimes, but we are committed to the journey that might get us there.
Caminar Latino commits to Freire’s believe in creating ‘concientización’—critical consciousness—about the political, social, and economic contexts that shape our lives as well as an awareness of our collective capacity to transform these realities.
CAMINANTE, NO HAY CAMINO / TRAVELER, THERE IS NO ROAD
“Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.”
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship’s wake on the sea.
— Antonio Machado