It felt like a typical night for a Black student activist at Syracuse University back in 2002. In addition to the keynote speaker that the university hosts at the Carrier Dome, the African American Studies department would host their own event to deepen the conversations in community. On this brisk night, students of similar mindset would gather in a medium-sized room to listen to a panel of Black scholars discussing the legacy of Dr. King. Due to the “in-community” aspect of this dialogue, I won’t reveal much about the energy in the room. Suffice it to say that people challenged each other passionately on potent ideas for how to move forward [said with a laugh].

In the latter part of the panel discussion, one of the participants took umbrage with someone’s characterizations of King’s flaws, including accusations of plagiarism (here we go again!), philandering, and centering himself in the Civil Rights Movement. Just then, another panelist replied, “But, see, I like that we see these flaws. In so many instances, we see him deified when he was a regular human being doing extraordinary things. That makes his work attainable for people like me.”

Back then, I had to sit with that quote for a few weeks. I spent my college years forming words for all the experiences I had collected prior to my arrival at Syracuse University. While getting my credentials in computer science, I was getting an education on myself and people who were in the same racial caste as me.

Simultaneously, I found myself molding my identity for how I wanted to lead life after I left campus, too. I not only had a chance to meet living and embodied histories (Angela Davis, Amiri Baraka, Elaine Brown, so many others), I took part in actions across the campus to protest racist acts on and off-campus. While meeting our heroes, my friends and I never considered ourselves capable of filling those shoes, much less continuing their legacies.

Coincidentally, this panel discussion took me back to one of King Jr.’s famous quotes: “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

What does it mean to love in this way? Without context, these are words worth grappling with alone or in community. In the context of his 1967 speech “Where Do We Go From Here?” it sends a powerful message of what love actually means despite and because of what’s happening in the world. A litany of dilemmas plagued the country and landed primarily on the backs of Black people. He clearly saw the interconnectedness of war, capital, and racism and sought to name and define peace and love as the ultimate goal of the work.

King witnessed firsthand white sympathy for Black people as ephemeral at best, nonexistent at worst. He noted that the government would use its tapestries to suppress uprisings from wherever they should come. He and his co-workers for justice moved in the spirit of love and justice because he refused to give into a mindset that wouldn’t help him eradicate the pernicious evils he sought to destroy from the hearts of people, whether they looked like him or not.

Whether they expressed it in the same way or not, love motivated so many of our beacons. We should take heart from that alone.

Fast-forward to 2024, and sticking with love in this moment feels harder when we get so many signals showing us either hate or indifference. In this country, our best efforts to push back against the rising tide of fascism has been met with brute force, diluted renditions of anti-racism, and regressive laws targeting Black and LGBTQ+ people.

We see instances of peace being confused with quiet, and the elevation of a few people of color with authentic justice and equity. We see the same politicians celebrating the Civil Rights Movement today who keep their jurisdictions’ children hungry and adults poor for their political preferences.

While King’s time had important differences from ours, the throughlines feel analogous, to put it mildly.

To move about the world as if love will win, we have to start by loving ourselves. In my education work, I’ve spent hours and days with colleagues of many racial and cultural backgrounds. The people who were most fearful or hateful of the children they served were those who, at some point, had to give up an integral part of their most loving selves to advance socially. They lost their dignity, their communities, their family, their orientation, and/or their courage after a cataclysmic event in their upbringing. In not dealing with that, they pushed that hurt onto the people they sought to serve.

That’s a human story, but that’s also not a story we can tell without attending to identities, structures, and our notions of a shared humanity.

Imagining loving ourselves so deeply that we have enough love to fill other people’s cup with it, even those who seek our people’s demise. Love as the spirit undergirding the work speaks volumes about their humanity. In the moment, people demand – either of themselves or others – that they be perfect in doing their work or else they’re not the second coming.

What our predecessors have shown us is that anyone can answer the call to serve. In fact, imperfection is critical to serving. If people can see how much love you have for yourself and your people in spite of your flaws, they can also pitch in with whatever love they can muster.

Love in this way is a holistic love, embracing of the whole person as we try to figure ourselves and each other out. We allow ourselves the opportunity to feel all the feels as needed. Rage. Depression. Fear. But to disrupt a system like this, love has answers. Surely.

Jose, who only uses the word “love” when he means it.