Make Justice Normal: what’s in a name?
The name of our collective, Make Justice Normal, is a litmus test. If that is also your goal or purpose, let’s go!
When we first founded MJN, we didn't have full framework for justice that we could live by. But we knew we needed one, and we knew that this idea held us in care with one another. The name helped us to quickly find our people and move forward in solidarity. The radical collaboration that is required to have a chance at normalizing justice demands deep alignment to persevere through challenges sure to come.
Calling something Make Justice Normal could be an organizational mission – and a personal manifesto – in one. Indeed, making justice normal had to be something we wanted desperately and authentically for our own bodies and lives, as much as we did for the systems that governed us: democratic systems, health systems, financial systems, and environmental ecosystems (i.e., the entire planet).
Although we have now embraced our name and developed a meaningful framework to practice it, we initially wondered: was the name too big? Could we really set a bar so high? Were we setting ourselves up for failure in a world in which injustice is normal? Could we embrace the emergence of it all?
“Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.” — Alice Walker
Inspired by organizations called Made With Black Culture and End Poverty Make Trillions (EPMT), we were emboldened by the clarity of the name, and we knew that something abstract that required paragraphs of explanation to understand who we were and what we aspired to do just wouldn’t work.
But, who were WE to try to do the impossible? As Margaret Meade so eloquently put it, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has.” (See also: every movement toward liberation ever – enslaved Africans and their allies in the United States, independence movements to unburden countries of their colonial oppressors, the civil rights movement, worker’s rights movements, the women’s rights movement, the indigenous rights movement, the fight for climate justice, Rev. Barber and his vision of a multi-racial coalition for a true democracy.)
Even just a few people working together can do alot. Together, we can help inspire people to imagine a world in which liberation is possible, and help unshackle mental narratives that are the first barrier to change.
We are working towards a world that is more just, where power and capital shifts more equitably into new hands, causing less harm and more good for more people and the planet, where people have more codified rights and more access to democratic participation. We are not original or unique, and that gives us gratitude, humility, and hope. In the words of the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”
Our contribution to the struggle is to add our energy to the relentless striving towards the goal of normalizing justice that preceded us and will continue long after we are gone. Is there a more worthwhile cause?
