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Lorena, Horton and Calderon all discussed how their jobs as human beings are to help others make decisions and discuss things that are happening in the now and how change can be made. Their jobs are to make people aware of social issues and open people’s minds as educators and provide opportunities for each person to learn to grow and make important decisions that will impact the community, even just beginning with knowing how to make small decisions for yourself before you make them for others. Lorena discusses her experiences of coming to this country and having the opportunity to go to school which not many people have, and what it was like to be different. Horton says “What people need are experiences in democracy, in making decisions that affect their lives and communities” (133). Calderon believed that if people take time to understand and empathize with someone else’s perspectives, views, and culture, it could liberate them and power can be passed on to others to make change.

The social issues Lorena, Horton, and Calderon engaged in were programs to educate people who were undeserved or not treated fairly, and helped others to be more involved in making their own decisions and engaging with other people to get other perspectives and everyone being able to have a voice to state their views on issues that were important to them. Horton created this program, a community called Highlander, where people would practice social equality and learn to make moral, responsible, socially useful decisions and give opportunities to people who have been “ignored or excluded in the past, that their involvement will have meaning and that their ideas will be respected” (134). He didn’t want people to just listen to lectures but to act on what they learned. With Calderon, not feeling like he fit in and his teacher taking the time to get to know his world instead of just judging him and labeling him, he became a professor at Pitzer College, and taught students to connect assigned readings directly to challenges facing our local and global economies, which affect both students’ lives and the community. He said “As my experience shows, the ability to communicate one’s perspective affects one’s ability to participate in society, and with it, one’s access to power… Power exists in language, too, where words create a foundation for understanding” (1).

It interested me that Horton created this small, unique program called Highlander where people had the ability to speak what they want to and discuss social equality, focusing on understanding and protecting minority rights. He didn’t want people to just listen to lectures but to listen in hopes that it will prepare them to act on what they believe and freely make choices that will positively impact the community, but specifically “to help people see that they can make any decision they want to, so long as it applies to everybody” (137). When he does educational work with people, he tries to see with one eye where those people are as they perceive themselves to be, by learning about their likes and their troubles. He says, “You have to start where people are, because their growth is going to be from there, not from some abstraction or where you are or someone else is” (131), because you can’t expect someone to understand you or grow from where you are at, the learning process must be organic and meaningful. I liked how people were able to tell their stories about their struggles in other forms like music because it isn’t easy for everyone to speak up in the same way. I also really liked what he said in the end that, they were not a therapy organization, nor a vocational training place, but a group of educators helping people learn how to be social activists.