AbstractThis article argues that the oral performance of personal monologues in first-year composition courses allows students to identify meaningfully with one another across difference at a time when the American political climate too often forecloses such opportunities. The author considers the opportunity personal monologue provides for parrhesia that recontextualizes the space in which deliberative discourse occurs. Drawing on a case study of the author's food-based composition course, this article provides supporting evidence for the power of performed personal monologue to encourage mutual identification among students that creates a new foundation for subsequent discourse.

This article presents a profile of the community writing and performance project Write Your Roots, organized by the author, which was disrupted by the impact of COVID-19 in early 2020. The project narrative is framed by the theoretical basis for the project, rooted in the concept of "making space," which borrows from Michel de Certeau's concepts of space and Sidney Dobrin's definition of "occupation." The article then offers a narrative of the Write Your Roots project in Providence, RI in 2020 leading up to and beyond the effects of COVID-19. Following the narrative, the author reflects on the project, reading its disruption through its theoretical framework to draw conclusions about the importance of liveness and publicness toward the project goals of "making space."

When Occupy Wall Street began on September 19, 2011, I was thrilled. Just out college, September 11th had been a wake-up call for me. I began reading too much on the internet and devoured Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, my first exposure to capitalist critique, in a couple nights. In 2007, I became involved in environmental organizing around mountaintop removal. I was drawn to the movement out of a deep-felt compassion for the people and land affected and I stayed involved for several years because of the sense of belonging the movement offered. It was the first time I had found a group of people that seemed to share the disenchantment I had experienced but who were also taking action against hegemonic powers: raising awareness, promoting legislation to end mountaintop removal, carrying out direct actions, and raising funds to bring clean drinking water to affected communities. Understanding the human cost and environmental impact of the legal crime of mountaintop removal forced me to acknowledge the extent to which our current system is not aimed at universal empowerment, health, well-being, and freedom. Out of the Ruins is based on the premise that many educators recognize the degree of harm perpetrated by the global capitalist system and believe that traditional education serves that system.