We’ve continued to lean toward justice for all in 2019. This year has seen much happening in Baltimore and beyond (nationally and internationally) around movement building toward equity. We have been bringing healing into our justice spaces as we acknowledge the trauma in our minds and bodies requiring transformation for a transformed world. We talk more about love as the basis for justice calling back to Cornell West’s quote: “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public”.
In a country that espouses justice in its Constitution, it will remain our work to live into such a nation. The ignorance of the founding fathers assured a limited vision of justice for some. It is therefore our obligation as citizens to embrace our Constitution with wisdom and translate justice for all. So of course this means we accept struggle as our birthright: those whose ancestors did not look like or come from the land-owning race and class, and those who did. This requires us to be radical in love: wise, and more daring to be loving and inclusive than we know.
We also live in a country that has negotiated, through violence, for equal rights. Our violence does not exist only in the more obvious verbal and physical injury to our persons; it exists in all the systems that violate our personhood. These systems are framed in a capitalist economy that violates the rights of human beings to have fair wages, health insurance, adequate housing and education, safe neighborhoods and recreation, and healthy foods. Violation of the environment and all types of beings directly and indirectly feeds this system of greed and injustice. The transformation of these systems and structures built on greed and hatred will require a similar transformation in ourselves.
Concurrently the commander in chief of the country of the past 3 years unleashed a blatant push back toward a conservative nationalism and separatist ideology of white and wealth supremacy. His white wealth and power pulpit makes it more widespread and further entrenches and embodies this value of the nation, particularly in the weak, small-hearted, and ignorant. These last three years then have served to embolden us who seek love inside and outside of ourselves to uncover our hearts and find ways to bridge the separation between differences. Because like Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Dr. Martin Luther King, and other peace and spiritual activists have encouraged: it will not be violence that stops violence, but radical love and radical kindness.
Each year we move the pendulum a bit more toward justice by being courageous enough to love beyond our comfort zones, forgive, and see the complexity of ourselves in those we easily dismiss. In a country built on the ideology of exploitation, discrimination, greed, and ignorance what else can we expect but to spend our lives undoing these root causes of injustice: in ourselves and in our systems? As we step mindfully into the new year, let’s pledge to continue our walk toward freedom. Our steps must be deep and steady enough for the little feet coming after us to safely, confidently, and joyfully step into.
