During a call with a brilliant public official in the Twin Cities of western Michigan, one of our pilots sites, we discussed the importance of allowing each participant in our work to have his or her voice, to allow each to make his or her own meaning. Sounds sensible and compassionate on the face.

Then the danger in such a view begins to take shape. To wit: ”allowing” the other to make his own meaning establishes a power structure. Oppressor and oppressed. How do we enter the other’s world without the subtle kinds of violence that overwhelm voice so thoroughly we are compelled to “allow” (as in grant permission) them to exercise that voice? And what am I to do when the other tells me with his “authentic” voice that he opposes me? 

Then there’s the function of history. While the oppressor is unlikely to cede all power — in fact, in many cases the full reach of this power is unknown if not unwanted – it’s also likely the oppressed serves a historically critical role as he attempts through the frame of granted permission to make his own meaning and speak with his own voice. Eventually these voices, allowed their dissent, undermine the authority of the oppressor.

It’s as if each individual has an agenda and directs all his efforts to realizing that agenda. It’s all we can see, and we defend all our actions as necessary for the mission. Meanwhile history operates on a different plane. If this were not the case, Martin Luther King, Jr, would have realized his agenda in his too-short lifetime. The changes he dreamed are coming; his was but one voice in the long march of history.