Part 3 of 4 in a series on what it actually looks like to live out justice, not just believe in it. Start here, or catch up on the whole series so far.
For years whenever another news story broke over racial injustice in this country, my response was reliable and almost automatic.
Rodney King. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Emanuel AME Church shooting in South Carolina by a while supremacist gunman during a Bible study. Philando Castille. And the list goes on.
I’d feel that familiar burn of indignation and reflexively send money to a couple of organizations doing racial justice work. Sometimes it was a one-time gift after something particularly awful made the news. Sometimes it was just renewing a recurring donation I’d set up years earlier. Either way, I felt like I’d done something, and if I’m honest, I felt like a justice advocate.
Then George Floyd was murdered, and something in me finally caught up to what should have been obvious a long time before. I sat with that video, and with everything that came pouring out in the weeks after it. It forced me to review what my actual life looked like day-to-day and week-to-week when it came to racial justice. And the honest answer was that my concern for racial injustice lived almost entirely in my bank statement. It hadn’t meaningfully made its way into my neighborhood, my workplace, my church, or my ordinary day. I had built an entire identity as someone who cared, but the evidence for it was merely a string of transactions. Ugh.
The difference between performative justice and organic justice is not about intensity. A quiet and boring weekday can carry more justice in it than a march that makes the local news. The real question is whether it shows up when nobody’s watching and nothing’s trending in the news.
When the Check Is the Whole Thing
Giving money to good organizations doing hard work means something. It funds real lawyers and advocates, and it enables real programs that need real dollars to exist. Writing that check or setting up that recurring gift means moving resources toward something that matters. That is significant and deserves to be treated like a genuine contribution rather than dismissed as fake.
The trap is letting the giving stand in for the whole project. It’s feeling the sting of a headline, sending one hundred dollars to a legal fund, and quietly considering it handled for the month without asking what it would look like to actually live differently because of what I’d just read. That’s what I was doing. My money was doing something, but I wasn’t. And it took me embarrassingly long to notice that the donations should have been the start instead of the finish line.
What This Actually Looks Like When It’s Working
If performative justice is an event, organic justice is a habit. Unlike the individual activities you schedule alongside your other activities like medical appointments or times working out at the gym, it’s a set of defaults baked into and woven through your routine.
Two pieces we’ve already talked about in this “Let’s Get…” series set the stage for this present article. “Let’s Get Messy…” is about proximity; that is, letting your actual life connect with people whose situations are different from yours instead of managing justice from a safe, clean distance. And “Let’s Get Specific…” is about naming actual people, actual numbers, actual situations instead of gesturing vaguely at “the poor” or “the marginalized” like they’re merely a category rather than a human being. Organic justice takes both of those themes and just keeps them running in your current everyday life week after week after week.
The List
This is the part of the article you should bookmark, because it’s going to run long. On purpose.
What follows is a working list of ideas, gathered loosely by area of life, meant to give you practical and feasible options to consider as you figure out what it looks like to get busy doing justice in your life instead of just believing in it.
I don’t believe that it’s a lack of conviction that usually explains a gap between believing that justice matters and actually practicing it. It’s more likely the lack of specific, doable ideas or opportunities sitting in front of you on the day you finally have twenty minutes or a day off and the will to use them well.
So think of this as a long menu, not a syllabus. Skim it, argue with parts of it, delete what does not work for you, and add your own items in the margins. Let it give imagination something concrete to grab onto. Read the whole thing. Then pick one.
In your household and close relationships
Stop letting a stereotype-laced joke go unchallenged among your friends or acquaintances without a word from you.
Notice who gets left off your dinner invite list and ask yourself honestly why.
Teach your kids the actual name of the family down the street instead of “those people.”
This month, invite someone to your table who doesn’t look, vote, or worship like you do. On purpose.
On Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas or another family-oriented holiday, invite an immigrant family to join you for the meal—like they’re part of the family. If they’re not family when you invite them, they’ll likely feel like it by the end of the meal.
Correct yourself out loud in front of your kids when you catch your own bias, so they see the correcting and learn how to do it themselves. Because the learning and growing should never end.
Ask your spouse or roommate what they’ve noticed about how you talk about people who are struggling. Do you tend to be judgmental, condescending, or empathetic?
In your congregation
Ask your church leadership a direct question about where the benevolence fund actually goes, how decisions get made, and what community needs it’s intended to address and not intended to address.
Volunteer for the ministry nobody wants, the one with the food pantry organization, the clothing drive sorting and distribution, or the shelter overnight shift.
Request a sermon series on a specific justice topic instead of hoping one shows up eventually. And follow up and ask why if it doesn’t happen.
Show up to the meeting where budget decisions get made and funds are prioritized.
Offer to drive someone to church who doesn’t have reliable transportation, every week, not just once. If you don’t know who, ask your church leader for suggestions.
Identify three or four local churches in your city with active justice ministries and set up a meeting with one of them for yourself and your church’s leader, elder or deacon to learn how and why they do what they do.
In your neighborhood and city
Go to one school board or city council meeting this quarter, even if you don’t speak. Or, do speak up. Check the pre-published agenda so you attend when a compelling topic will be discussed.
Learn one specific statistic cold about your own city, like the eviction rate or the average wait time for affordable housing and be able to say it without looking it up.
Introduce yourself to a neighbor whose native language isn’t English and learn how to say their names correctly. And follow-up by greeting them by name or using their individual names in a follow-up card.
Show up at a neighborhood association meeting and ask who’s being left out of the decisions. Those without notice of the agenda? Those with limited transportation options? Those who work at the usual association meeting times. Those without childcare (if not provided by the association)?
Find out who your city council representative is (for local advocacy), not just your state senator.
Donate your outgrown but good condition young readers books to a local public school library in a lower-income neighborhood. And volunteer to help organize or refresh that library if needed.
Purchase the complete or partial list of books that received recognized awards for excellence, diversity, peace or justice in children’s books, and then donate a set of them to one or more local low-incomed or underfunded schools. Top recognized children’s book awards include:
The Coretta Scott King Book Award, given annually by the American Library Association, honoring Black authors and illustrators whose work reflects the African American experience.
The Pura Belpré Award, also administered through the American Library Association, honoring Latino and Latina authors and illustrators whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates Latino cultural experience.
The Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, given by the Jane Addams Peace Association, specifically for children’s books that promote peace, social justice, world community, and equality between the sexes and among all races.
The Newbery Medal, the oldest and most prestigious American award for excellence in children’s literature generally, given by the American Library Association.
The Schneider Family Book Award, given by the American Library Association, honoring an author or illustrator for a book that embodies the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.
The Stonewall Book Award, specifically the youth literature category, honoring books of exceptional merit relating to the LGBTQ experience.
By yourself or with a group of friends, join an ethnic heritage celebration in the community to learn more about a community you’re unfamiliar with, for example:
Lunar New Year celebrations celebrated widely by Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean communities, often with parades, lion dances, and night markets.
Juneteenth celebrations marketing the end of slavery in the U.S., now held in most major cities with music, food and historical programming.
Diwali festivals, the Hindu festival of lights, celebrated by South Asian communities with lamps, fireworks and public gatherings open to anyone curious.
Black or other Heritage film festivals offering perspectives from the lived experiences of those communities.
Native American powwows, intertribal gatherings with dancing, drumming, and vendors, often open to the public and genuinely educational if you go with a spirit of respect rather than spectacle.
Oktoberfest and other European heritage festivals like Greek Fest or Scandinavian Days which are easy to overlook as “heritage” events since they’re mainstream.
In your money and time
Move your banking to an institution with a documented community reinvestment record or ask your current bank what theirs looks like. Research first to learn and then act.
Tip like the person serving you is trying to make rent this month, because they probably are.
Turn one of your one-time donations into a recurring monthly gift, even a small one. And subscribe to that organization’s newsletter to keep up with events and developments.
Give to a specific local organization by name instead of a general national fund. Ideas include: a food bank or pantry, the nearest low-income tiny home village, a transitional housing program in your community, a youth center or after school program serving low-income neighborhoods, a local crisis pregnancy center, an immigrant or refugee resource center, a domestic violence or suicide prevention hotline operating locally, or any others. If unsure, ask any local nonprofit for other suggestions.
Set a recurring calendar reminder to check in on the same cause every quarter instead of only when it’s in the news or at the end of the year when considering tax deductible donations.
Buy from a small, local, minority-owned business you’ve been meaning to try even if not the cheapest or not the most convenient location. And get to know the owner’s or workers’ names so you can use them every time you return.
In your voice
Write a letter to a representative instead of reposting someone else’s outrage. Registering your local voice with local elected officials makes a difference.
Comment under your real name and real face instead of hiding behind an anonymous account.
Have the conversation you’ve been avoiding with the relative who says something you know isn’t right, instead of just muting or ignoring.
Say something with friends or family when the dehumanizing joke gets made, even if your voice shakes a little.
Ask a direct, specific question in a meeting where an unfair decision is being made, instead of bringing it up privately afterward where it’s safer and quieter.
Correct a false claim you see repeated in your own social circle, even when it would be easier to scroll past.
Pick One
If you’ve gotten to this point of the article, it means you’ve read the full list. But a list read is not a list lived. Do not close this article having absorbed thirty-plus ideas and acted on zero of them.
But don’t pick five either. Pick just one to start. One specific item from this list that you can mark on a calendar and tell a friend you’re doing so they can ask you about it later.
Do it this week, while the article is still fresh in your mind.
Six Months From Now
Organic justice gets measured by whether it’s still there in six months, quietly, when nobody’s checking on you and nothing about it is interesting enough to post. My years of giving failed me because I let them stand alone, with nothing else in my week catching up to them.
For Further Reflection
What’s the one specific thing from this list you’re actually doing this week, and who’s going to know about it besides you? And who can you ask to join you in that thing to provide support and courage?
Next week: after all that work, the “Let’s Get….” series closes with why the fight actually needs a dance floor. That’s “Let’s Get Jiggy Wit It...”. Check back for that, if even just to see what’s “jiggy” means.
Thank you Harvey. Just reading A Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns, and your call and his call to do one thing, take action, don't do nothing... so important when we are faced with enormity of need and injustice in our world which can be so paralyzing.