On the eve of Martin Luther King Day, it feels fitting to ponder justice, not as a lofty ideal but as a manifestation of human desire brought to life in our conscious stirrings toward it. Across the globe this past year, protest movements spanning northern Africa and the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Russia, North and South America, have articulated the hunger for justice, longing for freedom, and growing discontent with economic disparity no less apparent now than when the Hebrew prophets warned against the excesses of accumulation over two millennia ago.
The eloquent evocations of justice, the sharp analysis of militarism, racism, and capitalism Martin Luther King offered fifty years ago resound today: which begs the question: why do the wheels of justice spin round and round in endless iterations? What makes an equitable world so elusive? How is it one specie can contain so many competing desires that strand us in a rut of our own making?
If we turn to the prophetic scriptures Dr. King consulted, we find clear exhortations not to trample the poor or ignore the afflicted along with admonishments against violating national neighbors—all cloaked in the wrath of God. “I shall send a fire on Judah and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem.” In the book of Amos, Yahweh expresses particular outrage at the inequities of a people brought out of bondage who in turn enslave themselves with their own hubris and hunger.
Because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of
grain,
you have built houses of hewn stone but you shall not live in
them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards but you shall not drink their
wine.
For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are
your sins—
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe and push aside the needy in the gate. Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time.
Seek good and not evil that you may live and so the Lord, the God of hosts
will be with you, just as you have said.
Hate evil and love good and establish justice in the gate.…
Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.
(Amos 4:11-15a, 24)
The commandment unambiguously expressed sounds simple but carrying it out has clearly eluded us—for all our attempts we remain stuck in the cycle of imbalance. The courage of protesters in Tunisia and Egypt, Syria and Yemen bespeaks the human longing to be free even unto death; yet the tyrants who fire on their own people, do they imagine themselves small-scale models of Yahweh raining fire on Judah? Somehow do we each feel justified? Are we humans just too thick-headed or thick-hearted to get it or is this the paradox into which we are born?
Last Sunday I spoke of my discomfort at the disparity of conditions I encountered on safari, itself an ode to privilege. I bemoaned the working conditions of men who wait on guests at a fancy lodge, wishing they could experience the luxurious accommodations I did. And on the drive home, I tuned into “This American Life,” which featured monologist and self-admitted Apple computer devotee Mike Daisey’s one man-show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” an exploration of how Apple products are made. Daisey traveled to China, spoke with a hundred or so workers at Foxconn, a huge electronics manufacturing plant that employs hundreds of thousands of workers who live in dormitories far sparser and toil in conditions far more grim than any of the Zambians I met. Far longer hours and lengthier separations from family, far more dangerous and degrading conditions, with a notably higher rate of suicide among workers. Reminded again of the relativity of life, I understood better the lodge managers who themselves felt no concern about working conditions for their staff, knowing what life in the village is like.
The second act of “This American Life” fact-checked Mike Daisey's findings and reported on Apple's accountability to its own corporate standards of social responsibility. Certainly the company strives to achieve acceptable standards. The question remains of course: acceptable to whom?
Just as I encountered complexity in Zambia where tourism plays a major economic role in the South Luangwa region, legions of factory workers in China lifted out of the most dire poverty into a quality of life still unimaginable to those of us who benefit from their labor present a confounding dilemma. From a distance it is easy to decry sweatshop labor and insist that all forms of it be dismantled. I might have jumped on a similar cart in Zambia, declaring my willingness to forgo seeing the wondrous wild animals if doing so would allow them a better quality of life. If I thought I could have convinced all the privileged safari-goers to go home happy with postcards, I might have tried—before I thought through the reality that game parks only exist if they bring in revenue from tourists. Otherwise, governments would sell off the land and any naturally occurring resources to business interests and the locals would convert the revenue-bearing wildlife back into bushmeat.
The question is never one of absolutes. Nowhere in the hospitality industry do the workers enjoy the amenities of guests; yet if vacationers quit traveling and business folks telecommute, the people who depend on the industry for their livelihood suffer. So people of conscience lobby for better working conditions, which means reforming the system not dismantling it.
So too with sweatshop labor. Though some unilaterally oppose it others insist without those jobs millions of people would endure far harsher conditions in rural areas with no options. New York Times editorialist Nicholas Kristof writes passionately about children picking trash from toxic heaps in Phnom Penh who dream of a job in a factory. Years of living in Southeast Asia inform his stance that while sweatshops are not optimal or even desirable relative to the standards we live within, they are often less hazardous, taxing or oppressive than the conditions millions otherwise face. And he argues, they provide a rung on the ladder out of abject poverty.
Some of us will cling to Kristof's assertion the way the guilty grasp at the nearest rationalization. We will breathe a sigh of relief or shake off the pall of culpability as we click along our wireless keyboards or tap tiny messages on our smart-phones. The horrific conditions Mike Daisey finds in China jar us, perhaps even destabilize us until the next ding of incoming mail or a tweet diverts our attention.
This is the endless paradox: the uprisings known as The Arab Spring that morphed into a European Summer and American Autumn—resplendent with Occupiers blanketing the ground as vociferously as deciduous leaves—gained global consciousness via cell phones and laptops assembled by workers every bit as constrained by the tyranny of exploitation as protesters constrained by the tyranny of despots or powermongers run amok.
The tweets, photos and instantaneous blogs documenting brutality, resistance, martyrdom—combustion literal and figurative—did not ignite revolution but they fueled movements around the world.
Where on the spectrum of justice do smart phones fall?
Not unlike the animals beholden to intrusive tourists who simultaneously compromise and sustain their habitats, the livelihood of millions of Chinese workers depends upon billions of mobile phone and computer users, who in turn rely on them to stay connected, transfer money and foment democracy.
How can it be that the instruments used to bring forth justice are wrought without it?
See, the Lord commands, and the great house shall be shattered to bits, and the little house to pieces…
Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow the sea with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood … Hear this, you who trample of the needy, and bring ruin to the poor of the land, saying “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath so that we may offer wheat for sale?”…
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account and everyone mourn who lives in it…
I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. (Amos)
Again and again we sink ourselves by dint of greed or thoughtlessness; we succumb to the longings of excess; we ignore the plight of others and the prophets warn that God Almighty will turn from us. In neo-pagan terms the injunction might translate to “The earth she be angry. She will continue to quake. The winds will twist into cyclones, the rivers will swell and plains will flood until the next drought. What you do unto the planet it shall do unto you.”
Do we create an endless cycle of suffering through our own recalcitrance? Do we elude justice while thinking it eludes us—or is it the divinely placed fruit just out of reach that keeps us from growing slack or self-satisfied?
Perhaps it is not surprising that prophecies penned by scribes, whether they be dictations of God or the wishful thinking of humans, often end in redemption. We may be hard-wired to construct narratives of salvation. The book of Amos ends with the restoration of David's Kingdom: “The time is surely coming says the Lord, when the one who plows shall overtake the one who reaps…I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them.”
Martin Luther King liked to quote Theodore Parker's line: “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” When King acknowledged shortly before his assassination that he might not reach the Promised Land, some took his prescience as a personal prophecy, a foretelling of his impending death. But in the true nature of prophecy that extends beyond self-prognostication King may have been referring to all of us. It might be part of the human condition to register the geometry of the arc without being given the capacity to complete it. We note that the arc is moral, that it curves in a particular direction; and like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow we run after it. Perhaps though it is not ours to obtain but only ours to seek. Like Moses and Martin Luther King we glimpse a land of milk and honey where “the mountains shall drip with sweet wine.” (Amos) We cradle the promise of restoration. And deep within the soul’s DNA is a helix doubling back on itself, reiterating our yearning so that each generation produces a fruit vendor in Tunisia who sparks a movement, an Egyptian-American journalist in Cairo who risks her life to report the truth, an anthropologist in New York who declares we are the ninety-nine percent, a retired police captain in Philadelphia who occupies his city, a poet in Mexico who stands up to the drug cartels, a blogger in Russia who refuses to be silent, and hundreds of thousands more who raise their hands toward the high-hanging fruit. In those moments destined to recur even as they evaporate our longing for justice stirs—and the arc bends. Amen.
