good afternoon everyone thank you so
much for making time out of your day to
participate in this really what’s an
exchange of ideas I really appreciate
the organizers for not only putting this
event in a time where the sharing of
ideas that are informed is so rare where
there’s not a lot of people listening to
all of the noise for really creating the
space for us to share what are things
that we’re passionate about and things
that we see as being important for
shaping the future what I want to talk
about today is that the topic is
envisioning a more just future and how
we can work together to develop our
capacity to enact social justice moving
forward I have the privilege of having
the best job of the world of being a
faculty member at the University of San
Francisco in the School of Education
where we have an explicit mission it’s
in our mission statement to Center
social justice in our work I have
brilliant colleagues who are some of the
leading minds leading activist community
organizers in the nation but the best
part of my job are my students my
students come into this space with a
passion about the world they want to see
social justice they’ve lived social
injustice and they are committed they’re
devoting their lives being paid not very
much to live in the Bay Area but to
teach young minds to organize as
activists as educators to really try to
work towards a better world and when I
think about what can shape the future I
take hope and inspiration from them who
are committed to it and living it every
day before I share some of the things
that I’ve learned from them I want to
make sure that we are on the same page
about what social justice is social
justice has become a bit of buzzword in
certain circles it’s been appropriated
in a lot of ways to take on different
meanings so I want us to be on the same
page about what I mean about it
and how I define it before we move
forward and to do so I want to break
down just the two different parts of the
phrase social justice and first by
thinking about the concept of justice
when we think of justice we think it
really carries within our society
this individual notion that justice is
something that’s mine it’s something
that I can hold it’s something that if I
have it maybe that means someone else
can’t have it and it means that it can
be taken away from me right it manifests
within the criminal justice system right
where justice looks like 2.3 million
people being incarcerated currently
which looks that’s the sigh three times
the size of my hometown of Miami plus my
my current home of Oakland combined
three times that population are
currently in our nation’s jails in
prisons without some without trial some
for the rest of their lives many will be
released and not be able to find
employment after that’s how justice
manifests through this system right and
it’s not all bad for the lawyers and
people who work to uphold justice in
society much appreciation and there’s a
lot of hard work in this so but we’re
centering on issues of oppression and
what that looks like so once we go from
justice on its own and we combine the
social what this does is it takes
something that’s tangible something that
zero-sum and it makes it infinite it
centers our humanity it centers our
connections as people are connections
within a society right that we have this
contract to one another to uphold
justice not just for me but for you and
for everyone in this room everyone in
video right everyone around us and it
makes us think about the many ways that
injustice is are allowed to perpetuate
we need I mean it sounds cliche but we
need social justice now more than ever
right last year
300,000 children’s bodies were sold for
profit in this country in this country
black Americans unarmed black Americans
are two times more likely to be shot and
killed by police officers than than
white Americans Native women are
murdered at ten times the rate of the
national average right so holding
ourselves accountable
to what extent is justice manifesting
socially right we see these in justices
around us you know income wise 1% of our
nation contains more wealth than 90
percent of our nation this isn’t justice
right we’re struggling and so why it
might be easy to celebrate the strides
that we’ve made we also need to be
holding ourselves accountable to the
ways that these and justices have been
allowed to be normalized it’s normal
that children are kidnapped from their
homes and their bodies are sold on the
streets it’s normal that Native women
are murdered this is normal if we
understand what normal means it’s common
and you would think you know well surely
our nation’s leadership doesn’t know
about this you would think surely that
the people who are upholding justice in
society don’t know about this that if
our president knew that children were
being kidnapped from their homes and
their bodies sold in the streets that he
would go into a Twitter frenzy to try to
rally everyone to really make a
difference right to really change this
but these things don’t happen and
there’s a lot of reasons why we hold
these ideologies about who we are as a
nation a collective identity things like
if you pull yourself up by your
bootstraps you can succeed first of all
it’s physically impossible to lift
yourself up by your bootstraps um I had
to google what bootstraps were and kind
of the mechanics of what that is but it
is physically impossible but this has
been the shining beacon for a country
right and why so many people will risk
their lives to come to the United States
it’s also the justification for saying
well I worked hard and I got to where I
am and you’re at the certain place where
you are currently so you must not have
worked hard and this must be your fault
it allows us to individualize injustice
versus thinking about injustice in two
individuals as being something that our
society has created and perpetuates
and individually we also have these
psychological barriers that make it hard
to challenge these ideologies like
meritocracy we have this thing inside of
us that makes us want everything to be
the same right it makes us want to have
parity and all of our beliefs when that
doesn’t happen we face what’s called
cognitive dissonance the experience of
cognitive dissonance which is when
you’ve taken a belief that challenges
something that you hold dear that
feeling of discomfort is as strong as
thirst it’s the same feeling as being
sitting in your car and la traffic on a
hot day when your AC has broken down and
you’re you’re sitting in the heat and
you have nothing to drink if you can
center in that feeling we go through
that emotionally and possibly don’t even
realize it and so when we get this in
information that challenge is what we
hold dear
we need to alleviate it we need that cup
of water we need lemonade or Gatorade or
whatever you drink your beverage of
choice to address your thirst which
might take the form of reducing the
importance of these new beliefs and
attitudes like well you know I live in a
safe neighborhood I’ve worked really
hard so my children are safe right so I
don’t I I can just reduce the importance
of this new information can challenge
these beliefs that we just acquired um
and say well actually your facts aren’t
true what’s your end pain and for the
statisticians in the room we can try to
bring in the series of different facts
that might better support our claims
right more comforting lies like the
image suggests or we can change one or
more of our attitudes or beliefs we can
do the hard work that it takes to
challenge what we think we know and
expand it and to really understand the
world differently it’s really hard to do
it doesn’t happen all the time
so what do we do instead so instead we
might celebrate single instances and say
well you know police brutality isn’t a
thing look there was this officer who
was giving out
ice cream cones in this one town near
Ferguson where you know there were large
riots around police brutality
so that must discredit what happened or
we’ll use alternative ideas to help
justify the things that we already
believe right which there’s infinite
ways that in the age of the internet
before back in the day for those of you
in the room who may not remember there
used to be these things called
encyclopedias where if you had a
question you had to look it up and that
went through some sort of verification
process now on the Internet knowledge is
freely shared and distributed which is
positive in a lot of ways and in a lot
of ways presents these alternative facts
mechanisms where we can draw from
different sources of knowledge to
justify our own beliefs conveniently or
we become internet trolls losing you
know family member many family members
have been lost in these past two years
in particular because of trolling on the
internet because of vicious if you ever
want to lose faith in humanity read the
comments section on almost anything
that’s posted online so these are the
ways that we engage instead of doing
this difficult work that it takes to
change our ideas to expand our ideas to
engage in the dissonance and the
understanding that we need to be able to
recognize the humanity and one another
and enact social justice so when we
don’t seek to understand and instead we
seek to defend our own ideas what
happens is that the burden of justifying
the humanity of large groups within
society fall onto those who’ve been most
marginalized it falls on to the one
student in the classroom to speak to a
marginalized experience it falls on
activists risking their lives to just
say to the world black lives matter and
you need to recognize this as a system
it unfairly puts that burden and then as
a society we normalize ignoring it we
normalize not implementing the changes
that are needed to enact justice more
broadly more socially we engage in acts
of violence to justify
why it is that people shouldn’t be heard
we allow these tensions to manifest
within the spaces that we control so I
don’t want to end on the doom and gloom
right because there are ways that we can
work better and this is one small way
that I’m challenging all of you to think
about when you feel that feeling of
thirst when you are walking down the
street and there’s a group of activists
voicing about a particular issue that
challenge is what you hold dear engage
in that dissonance sit in that
discomfort sit in the feeling that maybe
what I know about the world can be
expanded and maybe what I know about the
world is wrong maybe it’s true for me
and I need to reflect on the privileges
that have allowed that truth to be real
for me and instead let me sit in it let
me work on it let me reach out and
expand myself in ways that I can and
once you’re good in that process of
self-discovery how about reaching out to
others to engage with them to support
them in their own dissonance it’s very
easy to get really frustrated with
people and the burden of making other
people understand does fall on certain
people disproportionately but I’m
challenging you to engage in that
process of bringing others to sit in
that discomfort engage in it don’t run
away from difficult conversations don’t
and don’t guys it under your wanting to
be polite right but having that hard
conversation with others the second
takeaway is I want you to engage in
critical thinking this is an institution
that prides itself and being a source of
critical thinking but don’t just think
critically and you know so what
questions you have but what questions
you have about the oppressive structures
that surround us in what ways are you
thinking about the assumptions we make
about the world that could be deserving
groups of people disproportionately
engage in these really important ways of
questioning the world around us centered
on understanding power understanding
privilege understanding oppression
so what I wanted what I was hoping to
talk about is that social justice is not
some finish line that we’re all gonna
cross together holding hands and we are
the world moment because the moment we
achieve one one triumph in the right of
civil rights and social justice there’s
another one that we’ve been
systematically blinded to and so we need
to think about social justice not as a
finish line but as a process as
something that everyone needs to be
engaged in everyone needs to be
continuously engaged in and that we need
to work better together to achieve thank
you very much
much for making time out of your day to
participate in this really what’s an
exchange of ideas I really appreciate
the organizers for not only putting this
event in a time where the sharing of
ideas that are informed is so rare where
there’s not a lot of people listening to
all of the noise for really creating the
space for us to share what are things
that we’re passionate about and things
that we see as being important for
shaping the future what I want to talk
about today is that the topic is
envisioning a more just future and how
we can work together to develop our
capacity to enact social justice moving
forward I have the privilege of having
the best job of the world of being a
faculty member at the University of San
Francisco in the School of Education
where we have an explicit mission it’s
in our mission statement to Center
social justice in our work I have
brilliant colleagues who are some of the
leading minds leading activist community
organizers in the nation but the best
part of my job are my students my
students come into this space with a
passion about the world they want to see
social justice they’ve lived social
injustice and they are committed they’re
devoting their lives being paid not very
much to live in the Bay Area but to
teach young minds to organize as
activists as educators to really try to
work towards a better world and when I
think about what can shape the future I
take hope and inspiration from them who
are committed to it and living it every
day before I share some of the things
that I’ve learned from them I want to
make sure that we are on the same page
about what social justice is social
justice has become a bit of buzzword in
certain circles it’s been appropriated
in a lot of ways to take on different
meanings so I want us to be on the same
page about what I mean about it
and how I define it before we move
forward and to do so I want to break
down just the two different parts of the
phrase social justice and first by
thinking about the concept of justice
when we think of justice we think it
really carries within our society
this individual notion that justice is
something that’s mine it’s something
that I can hold it’s something that if I
have it maybe that means someone else
can’t have it and it means that it can
be taken away from me right it manifests
within the criminal justice system right
where justice looks like 2.3 million
people being incarcerated currently
which looks that’s the sigh three times
the size of my hometown of Miami plus my
my current home of Oakland combined
three times that population are
currently in our nation’s jails in
prisons without some without trial some
for the rest of their lives many will be
released and not be able to find
employment after that’s how justice
manifests through this system right and
it’s not all bad for the lawyers and
people who work to uphold justice in
society much appreciation and there’s a
lot of hard work in this so but we’re
centering on issues of oppression and
what that looks like so once we go from
justice on its own and we combine the
social what this does is it takes
something that’s tangible something that
zero-sum and it makes it infinite it
centers our humanity it centers our
connections as people are connections
within a society right that we have this
contract to one another to uphold
justice not just for me but for you and
for everyone in this room everyone in
video right everyone around us and it
makes us think about the many ways that
injustice is are allowed to perpetuate
we need I mean it sounds cliche but we
need social justice now more than ever
right last year
300,000 children’s bodies were sold for
profit in this country in this country
black Americans unarmed black Americans
are two times more likely to be shot and
killed by police officers than than
white Americans Native women are
murdered at ten times the rate of the
national average right so holding
ourselves accountable
to what extent is justice manifesting
socially right we see these in justices
around us you know income wise 1% of our
nation contains more wealth than 90
percent of our nation this isn’t justice
right we’re struggling and so why it
might be easy to celebrate the strides
that we’ve made we also need to be
holding ourselves accountable to the
ways that these and justices have been
allowed to be normalized it’s normal
that children are kidnapped from their
homes and their bodies are sold on the
streets it’s normal that Native women
are murdered this is normal if we
understand what normal means it’s common
and you would think you know well surely
our nation’s leadership doesn’t know
about this you would think surely that
the people who are upholding justice in
society don’t know about this that if
our president knew that children were
being kidnapped from their homes and
their bodies sold in the streets that he
would go into a Twitter frenzy to try to
rally everyone to really make a
difference right to really change this
but these things don’t happen and
there’s a lot of reasons why we hold
these ideologies about who we are as a
nation a collective identity things like
if you pull yourself up by your
bootstraps you can succeed first of all
it’s physically impossible to lift
yourself up by your bootstraps um I had
to google what bootstraps were and kind
of the mechanics of what that is but it
is physically impossible but this has
been the shining beacon for a country
right and why so many people will risk
their lives to come to the United States
it’s also the justification for saying
well I worked hard and I got to where I
am and you’re at the certain place where
you are currently so you must not have
worked hard and this must be your fault
it allows us to individualize injustice
versus thinking about injustice in two
individuals as being something that our
society has created and perpetuates
and individually we also have these
psychological barriers that make it hard
to challenge these ideologies like
meritocracy we have this thing inside of
us that makes us want everything to be
the same right it makes us want to have
parity and all of our beliefs when that
doesn’t happen we face what’s called
cognitive dissonance the experience of
cognitive dissonance which is when
you’ve taken a belief that challenges
something that you hold dear that
feeling of discomfort is as strong as
thirst it’s the same feeling as being
sitting in your car and la traffic on a
hot day when your AC has broken down and
you’re you’re sitting in the heat and
you have nothing to drink if you can
center in that feeling we go through
that emotionally and possibly don’t even
realize it and so when we get this in
information that challenge is what we
hold dear
we need to alleviate it we need that cup
of water we need lemonade or Gatorade or
whatever you drink your beverage of
choice to address your thirst which
might take the form of reducing the
importance of these new beliefs and
attitudes like well you know I live in a
safe neighborhood I’ve worked really
hard so my children are safe right so I
don’t I I can just reduce the importance
of this new information can challenge
these beliefs that we just acquired um
and say well actually your facts aren’t
true what’s your end pain and for the
statisticians in the room we can try to
bring in the series of different facts
that might better support our claims
right more comforting lies like the
image suggests or we can change one or
more of our attitudes or beliefs we can
do the hard work that it takes to
challenge what we think we know and
expand it and to really understand the
world differently it’s really hard to do
it doesn’t happen all the time
so what do we do instead so instead we
might celebrate single instances and say
well you know police brutality isn’t a
thing look there was this officer who
was giving out
ice cream cones in this one town near
Ferguson where you know there were large
riots around police brutality
so that must discredit what happened or
we’ll use alternative ideas to help
justify the things that we already
believe right which there’s infinite
ways that in the age of the internet
before back in the day for those of you
in the room who may not remember there
used to be these things called
encyclopedias where if you had a
question you had to look it up and that
went through some sort of verification
process now on the Internet knowledge is
freely shared and distributed which is
positive in a lot of ways and in a lot
of ways presents these alternative facts
mechanisms where we can draw from
different sources of knowledge to
justify our own beliefs conveniently or
we become internet trolls losing you
know family member many family members
have been lost in these past two years
in particular because of trolling on the
internet because of vicious if you ever
want to lose faith in humanity read the
comments section on almost anything
that’s posted online so these are the
ways that we engage instead of doing
this difficult work that it takes to
change our ideas to expand our ideas to
engage in the dissonance and the
understanding that we need to be able to
recognize the humanity and one another
and enact social justice so when we
don’t seek to understand and instead we
seek to defend our own ideas what
happens is that the burden of justifying
the humanity of large groups within
society fall onto those who’ve been most
marginalized it falls on to the one
student in the classroom to speak to a
marginalized experience it falls on
activists risking their lives to just
say to the world black lives matter and
you need to recognize this as a system
it unfairly puts that burden and then as
a society we normalize ignoring it we
normalize not implementing the changes
that are needed to enact justice more
broadly more socially we engage in acts
of violence to justify
why it is that people shouldn’t be heard
we allow these tensions to manifest
within the spaces that we control so I
don’t want to end on the doom and gloom
right because there are ways that we can
work better and this is one small way
that I’m challenging all of you to think
about when you feel that feeling of
thirst when you are walking down the
street and there’s a group of activists
voicing about a particular issue that
challenge is what you hold dear engage
in that dissonance sit in that
discomfort sit in the feeling that maybe
what I know about the world can be
expanded and maybe what I know about the
world is wrong maybe it’s true for me
and I need to reflect on the privileges
that have allowed that truth to be real
for me and instead let me sit in it let
me work on it let me reach out and
expand myself in ways that I can and
once you’re good in that process of
self-discovery how about reaching out to
others to engage with them to support
them in their own dissonance it’s very
easy to get really frustrated with
people and the burden of making other
people understand does fall on certain
people disproportionately but I’m
challenging you to engage in that
process of bringing others to sit in
that discomfort engage in it don’t run
away from difficult conversations don’t
and don’t guys it under your wanting to
be polite right but having that hard
conversation with others the second
takeaway is I want you to engage in
critical thinking this is an institution
that prides itself and being a source of
critical thinking but don’t just think
critically and you know so what
questions you have but what questions
you have about the oppressive structures
that surround us in what ways are you
thinking about the assumptions we make
about the world that could be deserving
groups of people disproportionately
engage in these really important ways of
questioning the world around us centered
on understanding power understanding
privilege understanding oppression
so what I wanted what I was hoping to
talk about is that social justice is not
some finish line that we’re all gonna
cross together holding hands and we are
the world moment because the moment we
achieve one one triumph in the right of
civil rights and social justice there’s
another one that we’ve been
systematically blinded to and so we need
to think about social justice not as a
finish line but as a process as
something that everyone needs to be
engaged in everyone needs to be
continuously engaged in and that we need
to work better together to achieve thank
you very much
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