The American lawyer, social justice activist, and founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative talks Dua Lipa through how we can impact the causes we care about in the latest episode of our podcast, At Your Service – out tomorrow, Friday 14 October.
- Commit to proximity – we must find ways to get closer to people who are excluded, marginalised, and disfavoured. When you are proximate, you hear things you wouldn’t otherwise hear, and see things you wouldn’t otherwise see. So many of our elected leaders are failing because they are creating policies and making judgements that are crafted in places distant from the people who are impacted by those policies and judgements.
- Changing the narrative – I don’t think it is enough to debate policies and issues, you must understand the narratives underneath a lot of these policies. There are narratives in the world that are fostering bigotry and violence, and hatred of others. We have to change those narratives and call them out.
- Hope – I am persuaded that hopelessness is the enemy of justice. I think injustice prevails where hopelessness persists. I think our hope is our superpower.
- Be willing to do things that are uncomfortable and inconvenient – we like comfort! And there is nothing wrong with comfort, but it does mean we are going to have to make a choice to do the uncomfortable if we are going to advance issues that need to be advanced.
