Traci L. Hodges is a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program at the University of Missouri St. Louis. Her research interests are comparative adult education, African American adult education, and critical education. Having witnessed freedom protests in Madrid, Spain, and Ferguson, Missouri, she shares her reflections on how she took American democracy for granted, and describes how the experiences she encountered in Spain and Missouri provided a canvas to explore social movements within public spaces that provided opportunities for adult learning and political efficacy. In this article she describes how she framed this canvas of her freedom summer using two of Freire's (2013) stages of consciousness, specifically moving from the naive to critical transivity. Hodges explains how the protests in the square changed her perspective about Spain and reminded her of the history of injustice throughout the world disguised as explorations. Here she writes that on her flight home, she reflected on her experiences in Spain with her new outlook and compared them with her own place in society as an African American woman. Hodges says her experiences in Spain and Ferguson have transformed her views about her role as an adult educator and the social justice needs in her community and abroad.