Freedom comes at a cost.
This is something I’ve been learning for years now in justice work:
1. Hope and Easy Engagement. People are not motivated by hopelessness – so every justice campaign that has any long-term possibilities of actual change needs to be motivated by hope and everyone gets to start somewhere. Easy engagement (the idea that anyone can be part of a movement to end injustice) is a key ingredient to allow people to hear and then join in the great and beautiful call to live another way!
2. Reality and Slogan Busting. Now, the hard-core justice folks know better than to believe a fancy website with some cool slogans. If we are honest the reality of trying to get girls/women out of the sex trade, healed and helped and living whole lives is a heck of a long road and difficult journey. This is not going to happen with a bumper sticker and a hopeful ideal.
So hope and easy engagement can easily collide with reality and slogan busting and make justice even harder than it is already – but I think we can hold these things in tension in a way that keeps the long road to freedom in touch with the hopeful folks who are just beginning the journey – perhaps offering injections of much needed hopeful, less cynical and more idealistic notions of freedom and possibilities and those who are just beginning get the long-term view, wisdom and experience of the tired but committed crew of justice fighters.
In other words – this could be really good news for everybody.
Let’s do more things together for the long haul towards freedom.
