Came across this James Baldwin  clip on my Facebook feed. He said: “Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.”  

I know I'm not the only person who struggles with this basic truth. I'm not above projecting my own worst impulses on my enemies, or those I perceive as having character antithetical to my own. Compassion for the victims of oppression come easy, but compassion for the oppressors requires us to recognize our own capacity to exploit weakness.