Who are the Oppressed?

RAD Book Club is reading Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed this month, so of course, I see links to what I'm reading everywhere!

I was speaking to my wonderful friend Carlos Osaillantes about reading Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Carlos sprang a question on me: "Who are the Oppressed?". Honestly, I only had a vague idea - people who were disadvantaged, abstract people far away... I had heard of the work Paulo Freire did in Brazil with the campesinos and I assumed this is who Carlos meant. But of course, there was so much more. Carlos pulled out a beautiful book of black and white photos taken by the photographer Sebastiao Salgado.

You may have heard of him - a documentary about his work called The Salts of the Earth came out in 2014. My friend asked me to go see this movie recently, and I passed it up, now it comes back to me full circle with very real ties to the readings I've been doing in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

After seeing the photographs in the book, I could finally put a face to the Oppressed that Paulo Freire writes about so passionately. Thank you Carlos, for adding that layer of emotion to such a passionate piece!

TED Talk by Sebastio Salgado: The Silent Drama of Photography.