Leymah Gbowee is “impolitely angry:” Social worker & Nobel Peace Prize winner tells us to transform our anger for social change

“It’s time to stop being politely angry,” said Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian social worker and peace activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. Leymah spent a weekend at Florida State this month, helping students and teachers learn how to harness their personal difficulties and anger at injustice into positive energy towards change.

Leymah likens us all us to sponges, going through life and “absorbing dirt all over the place.”  To be effective as agents of change, she says we need safe places where we can “squeeze out the dirt.”  Working with Liberian women who had survived war, loss, and displacement, Leymah piloted a process she called “shedding of the weight.”  During the day, she worked with women in standard social work settings, trying to address issues of food, housing, income and employment; but at night, she brought women together to tell their stories, express their pain, and “shed their weight.”  For Leymah, this process can be truly transformational and allows those who experience it to become healers and agents of social changes.

During her weekend at FSU, Leymah encouraged students to tell their stories, but also to set their goals to make the world a better place. She exhorted the students, “Imagine yourself stepping into a space and doing great things.  Young people, please don’t waste your life.”

At one point, this elegant woman pulled the turban from her head and used the scarf to “gird her waist.”  She told the assembled high school and college students.  “I am doing this for you, so that you can succeed.”  She explained that in Africa, women tie their headscarves around their waists in this way when there is work to be done.  In Leymah’s own case, her mother girded her waist and took over the care of Leymah’s young children so that Leymah could begin social work school—a move that radically shaped the direction of her life.

At a women’s rally that Leymah attended at Florida’s capitol, Leymah was so moved by one young woman’s story of parental abandonment that she got up from her chair and invited the girl to climb onto her back.  She said, “Climb on. I don’t think anyone has ever carried you before.”

Throughout the weekend, Leymah embodied social work’s dual commitment to individual healing and social change. We must heal ourselves, each other and our communities, and we must not sit back in the presence of injustice.  She said, “We must do things that will cause us to be unpopular, and we must never be afraid to rock the boat.”

Leymah visit was organized by PeaceJam Southeast, and partially sponsored by the College of Social Work. PeaceJam’s mission is to bring Nobel Peace Laureates together with young people in order to change the world. Jane McPherson, social work doctoral candidate, had the honor and pleasure of being Leymah’s driver and guide for the weekend.