During grad school at NYU I had the great opportunity to attend a course taught by Irshad Manji: Public Leadership and Moral Courage. It was a stimulating class that even led some students to complain that their head hurt after each session!

For our midterm we were asked to write a “manifesto” to describe how we will apply the concept of moral courage in our lives.Here is a small excerpt from my manifesto:

• I vow to continually bear witness, “like a woman bears a child, with all her might, born out of the greatest pain, into a Grand Canyon of light” (Ani DiFranco).  I will protect my ability to bear witness by refusing to accept moderation when it comes to my core beliefs and morals.

• I vow to give emotional shelter to others who display moral courage and have faced backlash for doing so. When given the opportunity, I will mother, support, and comfort those who have been rejected by their own.

How can I learn to be morally courageous?

I sensed a lot of ambivalence from my classmates about completing the assignment. I think this exercise taught many of us that we need to better understand how we individually exhibit moral courage in our lives, if at all.

Through my experience with the class, and my later experience as Campaign Manager for the Moral Courage Project (MCP), I have become interested in how to help people “learn” to be morally courageous.

I believe that one of the best ways to encourage people to be bold and speak truth to power is to expose real stories about how every day people all over the world are doing it. If the MCP can show through these stories how empowering if can be to speak truth to power I am sure a chain reaction will start with people applying these concepts in their lives.

Why is it so hard to pin-point moral courage? Perhaps it is because moral courage is more than mere bravery. It is more than joining a movement or marching in a demonstration. Those with moral courage bring the movement to their own communities and explore how we are perpetuating injustice locally. Moral courage requires one to act even in the absence of a movement.

The notion of “grassroots organizing” has become very popular in the U.S. in recent years. I often wonder, though, if those who use the term really know what is meant by it.  By definition, grassroots activism is undertaken to effect change by those who stand to be most impacted by the change. It cannot be effectively demonstrated without the presence of moral courage, without the willingness to confront your community, and yourself, for that is where the prospect for the most change lies.

I look forward to using this blog to explore the variety of ways that people exhibit moral courage in their lives. And I welcome you to share your thoughts with me about who should be featured on this blog.