Thinking locally about justice

I have been working with homeless young men and women for the past 7 years at the Open Door and Next Door Shelters in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Over this seven-year partnership I have been learning about poverty and power in our community. There have been some real surprises.

We need more public dialogue on local suffering and injustice and on local decisions and practices. It is important to look at our life together as a community in terms of basic human need and equity.

I hope to contribute to this dialogue by sharing my observations and working out my thoughts on some of these subjects in this blog.

I believe there are people in local faith communities, in non-profit organizations that serve the poor, in local businesses and government offices who feel questions about justice and injustice are some of the most important questions in any time and in any community. I hope to encourage and contribute to our community conversation about these things.

We don't wrestle with these issues in a vacuum. The framework in which we wrestle with these issues is important. That framework involves several things for me. First, I was born seven years after the end of World War II. Photos and stories of the Holocaust on TV and in newspapers, magazines, and encyclopedias had a powerful influence on my thinking.

Another major influence during my childhood and youth was the emergence of the Civil Rights movement in our country. The Civil Rights movement turned a spotlight on injustice that was woven throughout the fabric of American life. This ferment also pushed into the forefront our country's practice of slavery.

These two elements of history -- the injustice toward the Jews and toward Americans with dark skin -- and how these injustices were accepted, affirmed, and promoted in society -- have shaped my sense of the importance of thinking about issues of justice and injustice in the life of one's community.

It is critical not to turn a blind eye to such things. It is essential and obligatory to listen to our neighbors.

Looking back at the powerful forces that first isolated the Jews, then led to systematic denigration, and finally to the murder of millions -- while life went on as usual for the bulk of German society -- we see that taking a careful look at our society's issues of justice is very important.

Seeing the lynching photos of small-town American citizens laughing in a mob beneath the body of an African American man hanging from a tree branch reminds me that we must not assume that common mores in a community are just.

Finally, I have been shaped by my experience in the Christian church, where I learned what still surprises me. The God described in the Bible is shown again and again to have a powerful concern for those who are a society's scapegoats, a deep alliance with the ones who do not have what human beings need to survive, a strong association with the cast out and rejected.

All these things have led me to believe that it is important to be alert and attentive to injustice in one's own time and place.