Sandy Chi Kim

“Love” is more than a feeling. Love is a form of sweet labor: fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life-giving—a choice we make over and over again. If love is sweet labor, love can be taught, modeled, and practiced. This labor engages all our emotions. Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger protects that which is loved. And when we think we have reached our limit, wonder is the act that returns us to love.”
― Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

“My friend Professor Melissa Harris-Perry once told me that after Obama’s election, she held up a picture of President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to her class. “Which one is Obama?” she asked her students. The students shouted, “King! King!” “No,” she said. “Obama is President Johnson. Obama is constrained by the office of the presidency. President Johnson could not deliver civil rights victories without Dr. King. The president needs a King. The president needs Kings, plural. We must be his Kings.”
― Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

“Revolutionary love” is the choice to enter into wonder and labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves in order to transform the world around us. It is not a formal code or prescription but an orientation to life that is personal and political and rooted in joy. Loving only ourselves is escapism; loving only our opponents is self-loathing; loving only others is ineffective. All three practices together make love revolutionary, and revolutionary love can only be practiced in community.”
― Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

“The opposite of love is not rage. The opposite of love is indifference. Love engages all our emotions: Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger is the force that protects that which is loved. We cannot access the depth of loving ourselves or others without our rage.”
― Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love