Progressive Values Stories: Brianna Leavitt on Taking Back Family Values - Justice & Responsibility

Written by: Edwin Rutsch on Apr 26, 2008 6:39 PM EDT

Frankly, I'm fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us about family values. Our families have values. But our government doesn’t. Bill Clinton
 

I interviewed Brianna Leavitt at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley.  She feels conservatives have taken over the term Values and Family Values, but she doesn't want to just give up the words to them. She goes on to talk about the Progressive Values she learned in her family. Her mother always reached out to the poor and homeless.  Brianna  was taught empathy, justice and responsibility by her parents and grandmother. These are in opposition to the Failed Conservative Family Values that exclude people.

  Brianna Leavitt-Alcantara Taking Back Family Values

Edwin:  How would you define the word Values?

Brianna: I guess I would say what you hold to be important in terms of how you live your life, how you see your place in the world, how you relate to other people.  Those qualities that you consider to be most important as to how you live your life or face the world.

Edwin:  Is that something you’ve thought about before, values?

Answer:  I think so.  Growing up in my family, there’s always been a lot of emphasis on that, on thinking about what kind of person you want to be in the world, and how you want to impact the people around you, or what kind of effects you want to have.  So I think in my family there’s always been a lot of emphasis on that.

Edwin:  Is there any kind of negative type feelings you have about values.  For example, values on the progressive side, they feel a negativity of values, because it’s been taken over by conservatives. 

Answer: Yeah, I guess obviously we hear family values a lot, and it’s a lot of times defined in this very narrow way.  I guess my response to that is that I don’t like to just give them that word.  When I hear people talk about it in a very narrow way, it really bothers me that they sort of get to define values, sometimes in ways that are very hostile and exclusionary.

So I guess my response to that, though, is to not just give up the word. 

Edwin:  Take it back.

Answer:  Yeah, cause one of the things that makes me angry about that, is that a lot of people assume that if you support gay marriage, you don’t support family values.  And I feel that I support gay marriage because I support family values.  So I feel like for me it’s part of my values.

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.
  Charles Swindoll

 Progressive Values: Brianna Leavitt-Alcantara on Justice & Responsibility

Edwin: What are Progressive Values?

Brianna: I think obviously social justice is a pursuit of a just society, the idea that people can do something with their life, even though it doesn’t matter where you start from, that you have a chance.  That you are given the opportunity to offer what you have to society as well.  The idea that you leave someplace better than how you found it.

Edwin:  What is that value, leaving it better?

Answer:  I guess maybe commitment.  For me, a sense of – you know, I’ve been so lucky; I’ve had the opportunity and responsibility to give back, to leave a place better than I found it. 

I think that comes a lot from my family.  I think a lot of people in my family are very oriented toward working in society, or teaching – things where you feel like you can make a difference.

For example, in my family, my dad grew up pretty poor.   He was on welfare.  His mom only spoke Spanish.  And the idea that he had a chance to go to college, to become a professor, to get a Ph.D.  Such a notion that there was a society that offered that chance to somebody who maybe in another place never would have never had that chance.  Maybe as a child I grew up with that story, thinking about that’s the kind of society that allows people to make something.

I think a lot of people I talk to can be very judgmental about a homeless person on the street or people who can’t seem to get work.  And I think in my family there was always the same of “you don’t know what their story is.  You don’t know what has happened to them to bring them to this place.  And it’s more of your job to be compassionate and to try to make a society in which they are not stuck there, just ignored or left.”

So I think that has sort of guided me, and given me a chance to have experiences, to be able to go travel and see other places where it’s very difficult for people to find some kind of opportunity.  I think it was something that was just constantly repeated. 

For example, my mom always had this notion that everybody starts good, but everybody kind of is a child of God.  That everybody has a light within.  She would constantly talk about that.  And so there was always this assumption that it’s our job as a society to let everybody show that, to shine in that way.

When I was growing up, we used to go to church in downtown Sacramento.  There would be homeless people there.  I think that would be an opportunity for my mom – you know, she was always very open in talking with them, would give change or money.  I think it was just a whole attitude that she showed to me about treating everybody like human beings and not ignoring them.

I feel I see a lot of people with that, for example, with homeless people.  Like just ignore them, just treat them like they’re not people.  I feel like a lot of the values that my mom taught me were like that.  Like it’s just every little way that you are in the world that matters.  It’s that you return the shopping cart, or that you would never lie or take something – just in every little way that it has to infuse your whole life.  I have always tried to follow that.  It’s not just a political stand.  It’s every minute. 

A lot of things that come to mind too, for me, are my grandparents, for example.  My grandma always had this value about leaving a place better than you found it.  I know it comes from my grandma, because we would go on road trips, and she would bring cleaning supplies.  And if we went and stopped at a bathroom, she would clean the bathroom before we left that place. 

I feel like with them there were a lot of those kinds of values.  Little things that they taught us – like you have a responsibility to make these better.  I think my grandmother did that in little ways, and I have tried to pick a profession like teaching where I feel like I can do that every day.

Family Values at Wikipedia
Family values is a political and social concept used in various cultures to describe values that are believed to be traditional in that culture and in support of the idea that families are the basic units of culture. The phrase has different meanings in different cultures. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the term has been frequently used in political debate, especially by social and religious conservatives, who believe that the world has seen a decline in family values since the end of the Second World War. Because the term is vague, and means different things to different people, "family values" has been described as a political buzzword, power word, or code word predominantly used by right-wing or conservative political parties and media providers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_values

More Progressive Values Stories:

Edwin Rutsch
What Are Progressive Values? Documentary Project
http://ProgressiveSpirit.com 
and Study Group

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