Written by: Luis Hernandez

A few months ago, in 12th grade, I was senior class president of my school. I was the first ever of my school, what this meant was that I had to set the foundation for future generations. This kept me extremely busy, but I still managed to find time to listen to what my seniors wanted.

One of my teachers, my advisory teacher, took a lot of interest in me, he thought that I had the potential to become a great leader. He would listen to what I had to say about my culture, community, family, social justice issues, and few teenage problems. One day I decided to ask for his opinion on one of the things that I thought about. It was a bad habitual habit that I had, that once in a while hurt people but unintentionally. The problem wasn't that I had hurt anyone, the problem was that it didn't bother me if I did it or not. This made me question my integrity, so I indirectly asked what he would do in my case and what he thought about the subject. As the conversation progressed, he figured out my problem, he told me that I was a leader and a role model to many in the school. He compared to me to one of the greatest leaders, Martin Luther King Jr. He said that he idolized him for the work he had done, but recently he found out that Dr. King committed adultery. He said that leaders should show integrity in and out of their workplace, because they are always being watched by fans and critics, and any misbehavior questions the good motives of a leader.

This day I learned by experience what transformative organizing is, it is when we transform ourselves by having our values and actions aligned. Even though none of us are perfect, we should try to live our lives with full integrity, otherwise we risk contradicting our actions. There is no human that is without flaw. When looking at MLK we do not need to have a blind eye to his contradictions but we must look at him in his whole entirely-look at him as a complex man (as we all are). Otherwise we give the message that leaders must be flawless and if not they are not good people or organizers/movement builders. After learning this valuable lesson I have tried to live my life with fewer contradictions; because I value humility as a good character trait my actions must stride be humble.