Hellraising for the Long Haul

Utahns Against Hunger: To Increase Access to Food Through Advocacy and Education.  Does that sound boring? I promise you it isn’t and I get to go to work every day to make sure that everyone has access to food.  I get to try and level the playing field so kids, the elderly and disabled so they can eat.  Plus, I tell people I get paid to complain..which suits me.

So I asked Deanna how much time she wanted me to take, and she said no longer than 15.  I’m more used to giving public testimony where I have 3 minutes if I’m lucky- so I hope you will forgive me if this is less than 10.

 I get asked a lot about why I do this work, and what keeps me motivated.  It basically comes down to two things for me: 

• Family – I had parents who always and literally made room at the table for everyone, we always had extra people at our house and food was central to every family event.
• The second was my experience in Chile, I spent time in a lot of very poor communities and experienced the kind of generosity that still moves me too tears.  The families we worked with gave us the best they had and would often go with themselves to make sure we had something to eat.  It humbled me and made me see the world in an entirely different way.  I also saw great wealth and the disparity bothered me a lot, it made me mad. I saw families who worked until they were bone weary and still could not provide for their families.

And I knew I really wanted to do something to change the world, I came home went to the U and started volunteering at Utahns Against Hunger and I saw the same thing happening here and 26 years later doing work that has been being built on for almost 40 years. 

I’ve been thinking a lot and talking to friends about social justice over the last few weeks, especially as I have paid attention to what is going on in Baltimore, in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray and we have watched an American City, literally go up in flames.  

The Supreme Court heard the case for marriage equality this week, will our LGBT family, friends and neighbors have access to the same rights as all Americans?  

Last night I was talking to my friend Margaret about all of the things going on in the world and how tumultuous it feels, and how it feels like we are losing ground on women’s rights, civil rights, voting rights and so many other issues.  Our conclusion was this; that while change does take a long time and that change challenges people’s beliefs and their sense of security and challenges who they are, we WILL do the right thing as a country- and to quote my favorite social agitator Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

So in the face of these challenges, how do we commit to any issue and stay in it for the long haul? 

•   First I think we have to know and acknowledge that change can take a long time: Women have had the right to vote for less than 100 years, interracial couples have only legally been able to marry for less than 50 years, and the voting rights act was passed just 50 years ago.  

• Second, and maybe the hardest to grow into and understand is that it’s not about you, it is about changing a system of injustice. I think it is easy to feel frustrated, to feel like what you’re doing isn’t changing things all that much. Sometimes, it seems for every step forward there is some kind of push back – but you know what? That’s okay, the progress we make, the changes we fight for shouldn’t be easy.  We don’t stay committed to something that is easy, passion for a cause comes from understanding an issue, taking the time to know what it means to be stopped and frisked by the cops because you are a young black man, to understand climate change and how it impacts our environment, to understand who is going to bed hungry at night because they can’t afford groceries, and that the road to peace, requires peace.

You, as young people, you who have decades before you to make a difference, have to be all in- to be willing to find that issue, that cause that you will stand up for. You are what and why the fight for social justice continues, I look at this list of organizations and causes that you have all committed time and energy toward and it makes me hopeful, hopeful that we have a generation of kids who are committed to making the world a better place. Who can see beyond themselves and work for better, healthier and more equitable communities.

The work for social justice isn’t about each of us individually, it is about us collectively, as a community coming together to make sure that we hold our policy makers, elected officials and each other accountable. We must share the belief that each one of us can make a difference, and that while the road to social justice may be long and it may be rocky, it is worth it, the work is important and we must keep doing it.  In order to affect change, we all have to be committed Sleeves up, heart out, all in.