This must have been an incredible moment to experience.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
There are a lot of reasons why I choose to fight for social justice, even when I myself am fortunate (through my happenstance birth as an upper-middle-class white woman) not to face most of these injustices day-to-day, and this (above) is one of them.
"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."
For a community night in November, Maria led our community in a great discussion about power (the community organizing group she works for is called POWER, and power is a critical part of community organizing). It's interesting to think about the power that each person has within his or her own community.
"One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."
Is complacency, then, a society's greatest enemy in the movement towards justice? Perhaps, and this is as much an incrimination of myself as it is of our nation's ability to sweep injustices under the rug when they don't directly impact the majority of us as individuals (which brings us back to the first quote...).
"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."
For a community night in November, Maria led our community in a great discussion about power (the community organizing group she works for is called POWER, and power is a critical part of community organizing). It's interesting to think about the power that each person has within his or her own community.
"One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."
Is complacency, then, a society's greatest enemy in the movement towards justice? Perhaps, and this is as much an incrimination of myself as it is of our nation's ability to sweep injustices under the rug when they don't directly impact the majority of us as individuals (which brings us back to the first quote...).
What injustice would Dr. King be non-violently working against if he were alive today? Nobel-prize-winning economist and NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman says, in sum, "Goodbye, Jim Crow, hello class system." After a discussion about the lack of mobility in societies of great economic inequality, his concluding paragraph speaks volumes:
"Mitt Romney says that we should discuss income inequality, if at all, only in 'quiet rooms.' There was a time when people said the same thing about racial inequality. Luckily, however, there were people like Martin Luther King who refused to stay quiet. And we should follow their example today. For the fact is that rising inequality threatens to make America a different and worse place -- and we need to reverse that trend to preserve both our values and our dreams."
And, finally, just because it makes me think, one last King quote..."Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?"
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