Citizen Rene (UndoneChaos Enoch)'s Page

The Social Justice at Four Bridges area and the Social Justice Blog exist for three reasons.

First, to promote critical thinking about social issues such as understanding the root of a problem rather than trying to solve merely the aftermath. In a world of instant gratification it is sometimes difficult to truly think critically about barriers to human rights. Are we looking at the root of an issue or simply cleaning up the aftermath?

There is a story I heard in a graduate class. Pretend you are sitting in a remote area of the world, thousands of miles from home, next to a moderately sized river. You are minding your own business thinking about how beautiful the surroundings are. You see a baby floating, in a basket down the river. Of course, you swim out to rescue the baby and bring it to shore. You take responsibility for that baby, care for it, and find the baby a home with a local family. Traumatized by this event you return to the river the next day, and the same thing happens again, and you follow through the same motions as the previous day, making sure this next infant is safe and cared for. You continue this ritual day after day, but then you find the numbers of infants floating down the river increasing, two a day, then three a day, and you continue to swim out and rescue the tiny humans until you are utterly exhausted emotionally and physically. A few weeks later it occurs to you that you should find out why this is happening. You take some supplies and head up the river, finding a village. As you get closer you realize there is someone debilitated by dehydration who is struggling to stand up. You walk through the village and find few people who are well and that most of the village seems to be suffering from some sort of epidemic. You talk to a women in the village and find out that the women have been sending their babies down the river because they are terrified their children will catch the epidemic and this seemed like the best chance of survival for these children. You ask the villagers permission to get medical help, and find it, and the babies stop floating down the river. It is a matter of finding the solution as opposed to trying to fix the after effect.

The second reason is to connect individuals with resources to create and be a part of change. There is so much information out there on atrocities being committed all over the world. It is easy to feel helpless and think there is nothing one person can do. This is actually not true, one person can make a difference, it is simply taking a moment towards that first step.

The third is to attempt to illustrate how different activist groups can work together for causes creating a larger and stronger voice. For the sake of argument lets say there is a poverty group of some kind protesting at city hall because the local housing authority is doing nothing about a landlord who is not making repairs which are becoming dangerous to tenants. It should not just be the poverty group who is protesting, women's groups should also be protesting this as poverty is more likely to touch females than males.