This winter marks four years since I lost a very good friend too soon.
A great person, who made everyone she connected with feel valued to no end. She seemed to see everybody in the best light possible, and in doing so, made them all a little more like that version of themselves.
Whenever I think about our friendship, there are plenty of memories to draw upon, but the thing that stands out more than any specific event is that feeling. The feeling of being celebrated and valued by somebody else. It was the basic building block of every action she took on, from giving other people rides to taking on office tasks, phone calls and stationery.
That was the material. The material was the good stuff, and four years later, it lasts.
I suspect most changemakers: activists, organizers, advocates, nonprofit leaders, have had someone in their lives who seemed to embody the values of change, justice, and unity, despite having a position removed from what we think of as the front lines. The barber who knows how to listen. The grandmother who gives and gives and gives. The person who always sees the best in you.
I love these people. And I’ve met so many of them around the world. They’re in preschools in Johannesburg. Special-ed classrooms in the Central Valley. Farms in Guatemala. And as they live lives full of seemingly ordinary things, those who witness it know that they are exactly what the world needs.
Good material.
The Justice Conference came with a pretty sweet swag bag.
A cardboard-brown moleskin, to remember all those hot, thought provoking quotes. A bracelet of beads, courtesy of a nonprofit, that was providing jobs and counseling to women escaping violence in India. A sample of coffee beans from Haiti, from these guys who told me about how Haiti used to have a robust coffee industry until US foreign policy ended it. Now they wanted to bring it back.
The item that stood out to me most, though, was the actual bag that it all came in. An actual burlap sack, re-shaped into a sleek tote. On its side, the slogan for the conference that year.
Justice is a Garment
Love is a Thread
One speaker, who I still remember all these years later, simply referred to justice as the perfect relationship between all. All living beings. All creatures. Neighborliness. And this calls for love to be the lasting material from which its woven. You can’t bring forth your macro-level vision of justice if you’ve neglected the core component of love.
When it comes to pursuing justice, I love and appreciate the role of strategic thought. I think a lot of good can be done by concentrating willpower and effort. I know that love can and often does take the form of forcing the hands of power towards some systemic change. I know that for so many people we love, that change can’t come soon enough.
But as we do the work, I think the material matters. There are many counterfeit products that could send someone down a path that looks like the one that leads towards justice, ego being one of the big ones.
But it’s further down the road where we see the real difference in material. Some hold up. Others don’t.
