We Must Fight Injustice Everywhere

One of my all-time favorite quotes says the following:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."  --Martin Luther King Jr. 

I really adore this quote because I think it is so important to understand as we talk about injustice in our society. One of my favorite shows lately has been W. Kamau Bell's The United Shades of America and this past week the show covered community policing and police brutality. W. Kamau Bell mentioned the fact that while not all cops are doing bad things there are enough cops doing bad things for this to be a problem that we need to step in and solve.

So why is fighting injustice so important? A lot of people only consider what they and maybe their close friends are doing in the world. They might say something like "I'm not racist and none of my immediate family and friends are racist either, what else can I do?" In this age of social media it is so easy to get involved and change the world around you for the better. Sending a tweet, sharing social justice issues on your Facebook wall to educate your friends, and not being quiet when you see something wrong is so important.

You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train.

Another one of my favorite quotes is from the amazing Howard Zinn who said, "You can't be neutral on a moving train," I think about that quote so often when it comes to social justice issues and the injustices happening all across the United States today. If the train is moving toward inequality and you are not doing anything to stop it, that can't be great for society as a whole--even if you aren't the initial one making the train head toward inequality. 

You may not feel like you are contributing to the trains pace by being silent and still, but in a way you are. Back to W. Kamau Bell's statement, yes there are a lot of amazing cops out there, but by taking up for the cops who are horrible, they are not doing anything to get rid of police brutality in this country. There are amazing cops and there are cops who aren't amazing just like there are amazing and not amazing people. It is important that we don't stay neutral. It is important the the amazing cops actually say what some of these cops do isn't good so that we can train more amazing officers to take their place. We should be making sure that all of our cops have the proper training and are following proper protocol because they have a very important job--to protect and serve the communities they police.

Our train is moving in the wrong direction in a variety of ways from police brutality to LGBTQ+ inequality and so much in between. Instead of siting idly by like the injustice only affects a small amount of people, we have to come together as a nation and fight these injustices. We may not be able to clean up every single part of the country, but trying is the most important part. We can't continue to ignore these problems, because these problems feed off of being ignored. The longer these problems are ignored the harder it will be to control these problems later down the road. 

We have to act now, not later.

We have to stand up, show solidarity with the people who are affected by social injustice, and help them to the best of our abilities. We have the power to do amazing things, if only we act on that power.