Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Citizenship Journal
Citizenship is connectivity. To learn about citizenship we must learn about others because
its through others that we learn about ourselves. Who is Moises David Castano as a citizen?
Great question, but before I can answer it, I need to ask myself why citizenship is important?
Well, citizenship is important because people matter and even though we all might have our own
definition and interpretation of what it means to be a citizen the only commonality is that we are
all citizens, unless its taken from us. Even then we still can learn about citizenship, perhaps to a
further degree when we look at people who are noncitizens because they have the power to teach
us the notion of citizenship. In the last class we had an awesome class discussion about
citizenship and were left with some insightful and interesting questions to think about. One in
particular was how do you kill citizenship? and its an important question to think about
For starters, I am a citizen of all the places I have resided in because I believe that were
who we have come to know, therefore citizenship is connectivity - its communication between
people who inhabit the same places- that results in action - then change - which then results in a
positive outcome for all rather than a few. For example Gandhi is an excellent representation of
citizenship because he interacted, connected, and acted. This lead to Indian independence from
British rule. If we look at an example close to home, I would say the staff within Author in
Action is an example of citizenship because they connect with Winston Salem students to
educate and mentor them in hope they would one-day be role models in their community and
perhaps take action on an issue the can cause a positive change. I believe those who are more
privileged than others have a bigger responsibility as citizens because they have the capacity to
be influencers and should act upon it, rather than ignore it. Citizenship is responsibility,
responsibility to serve, not oneself, but something greater than oneself. To be a good citizen a
person has to contribute of himself/herself in whatever form necessary to benefit the greater
good. To be a citizen one needs to be open minded because we are only as strong as our
readiness to surrender. Since its through our surrenderness that we allow ourselves to become
Another powerful and eye opening example of citizenship is those who were stripped of
their citizenship during the Holocaust, the Jewish community because it shows a deeper aspect
of citizenship not really mentioned - what does it mean to be a noncitizen? - The Holocaust is
one of the most devastating periods in history and a lesson humanity learned to ensure it never
repeats itself. Citizenship is part of our deepest self like our identity and for these holocaust
survivors for that part to be taken from them demonstrates another form of citizenship and
connectivity that can be somewhat learned about through Viktor Frankls novel Man Search for
Meaning.
Overall, I am a citizen because I am a person who cares - I care about people - therefore
my citizenship is based on positive action that can have a positive impact on the lives of others.