We talked about how we have been socialized throughout all stages of life to accept violence as a feature of daily life, how people who grow up in violent environments have undiagnosed PTSD that may in some cases contribute to the perpetuation violence, how our gender affects the way we are socialized into violence, examples of violence inflicted by institutions (in the legal system and the workplace), and what kind of resources are necessary to break the cycles of violence.

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We talked about why people feel entitled to take or access aspects of other cultures without learning about or asking for consent from and crediting the communities where that culture originates. We also discussed examples of cultural appropriation in (1) business, (2) government, and (3) education; how responsible culture sharing is necessary to expose people to diverse ways of living and to promote cultural humility and accountability; and the importance of learning to take “no” for an answer when it is not appropriate for you to access and/or use culture from communities you are not a member of.

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We talked about how citizenship goes beyond having “paperwork” to prove one’s status, how language barriers can prevent people from feeling like citizens regardless of status, how being able to exercise  the full scope of citizenship requires a person to first have their basic needs met and to be aware of their rights, how citizenship does not always guarantee that you will have access to all your rights (e.g. the homeless), and how we have been conditioned to believe that U.S. citizens are supposed to look a certain way.

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We talked about how we’ve been taught to tie our worth as human beings to our wages, to believe having certain “good jobs” makes a person better than those with “bad jobs” (often in the service industry), and that there have to be people earning not enough in order for some others to earn a lot, how the American Dream has become unattainable for many because the cost of living outpaces wages, and how we’ve normalized the extreme struggle to meet our basic needs.

Check out the notes HERE.

We talked about how the “right to land” through ownership is not meaningful for most people in practice without inherited wealth, how the right to land is equivalent to the right to shelter for some, how land is oftentimes privatized in ways that prevent it from being used in an efficient, healthy, or sustainable way for communities, how property rights to land may not actually guarantee housing for the next generation, and how zoning practices may impair social mobility.

Check out the notes HERE.

To view notes from older dialogues, check out the Dialogue Notes Archive.