What is social justice ? After almost four years of constantly being taught and exposed to various type of injustices I am confident to my answer for that question. Social justice is fighting for everyone's basic human rights ; regardless they're sexual orientation, race, religious beliefs, or any other characteristic that define people. Social justice is fighting against the intentional oppression that people face in their day to day life ; whether it be from a one group of people who believe they are superior or their own government. For example fighting for a cause that does not directly affect you is an example of Social Justice. The issue doesn’t have to affect you directly to take a stand against the issue. In my opinion people can’t really use Social Justice in a negative way. It was created as a term that gave people the power to fight against the wrong issues. The wrong Social Justice Social justice is a very strange word, because it has a definition but way more interpretations. One example of social justice that is most people are familiar are with organization writhing our community ; for example, ELVEJO has solved many of the social injustices our community faced. The power plant being shut down because of the pollution the resident had to deal with. Our school has taught us some many different injustices happening in different parts all over the world. Learning all these new things really does open our eyes to things that might not be happening to us, but can be happening to someone somewhere. I remember coming in my freshman year thinking Social Justice had to do with government or law; however, the actual definition of the word was way more important than that. After years hearing about Social justice and injustices I was able to define Social Justice in my own word.
Our society has not achieved social justice because of drive and hunger to be better than everyone else. Even though some people have it all they still want more. Greed and own well being has surpassed our generosity towards other people. When people have already reached goals they still don’t give back to others. We live in a time where profit and money is more important the a living person's life. A perfect example of this is slavery. Slavery was one of the biggest injustices that happened in our world. A whole ethnicity of colored people were pinned with a word “race” and subjected to work under terrible conditions. These people were expected to do hard labor in return for nothing, they basically worked in inhumane conditions; as a result of their skin color. All the white plantation owners didn’t care about the workers they only cared about the money they brought them and the services they offered. The greed in them made it easier for them to ignore the fact that they were treating human beings like trash. An example nowadays is big corporation going over seas. They do this in order to get cheap workers in a different country. A country where labor laws are not as strict as here, United States. This would allow them to give their workers whatever salary or wage they want, which is usually nothing. This is the same thing as slavery, but is still accepted in places. The obstacle is wanting more and more things, even though we do not need it. People are constantly buying things to feel like they are as good as others. This drives the want for money and cause a social injustice to happen between the rich and the not so rich. Anyone can be part of the struggle. The struggle is the part that you do in order to get your voice heard and get something done’ for example, our community members were tired of not having another high school available to the student in the community. They then asked for another school to be built, but when they ignored them they had to fight back. They were able to organize a small group of community members to hold relies and peaceful demonstrations. Then they finally began the hunger strike, that they will not eat till they agreed to open a new school. They were able to fight for what they thought everyone could benefit from, and they were able to win. I honestly hope that in my future I am able to continue learning about injustices not only in my community, but all around the world. My example would be teaching other about injustices happening everywhere, like our teachers taught us. I wouldn't have huge lessons about it, I would mostly mention the important parts to them. I just want to let people know what's going out side of this “perfect country”. I plan on taking what I have learned with me for the rest of my life. I really want to continue learning about injustices all over the world in college. I really find all these new things very interesting and sad at the same time. I feel so bad whenever I see or hear about people who are not being treated equally, and are suffering as a result of the injustice. I have planned to carry on my learning while still including social justice ideas. Which means that I want to stand up against issues I don’t agree with. I also plan on continuing to help people, because I really enjoy doing stuff like that.
"Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained." -Helen Keller