By Catherine Fairbairn, GSIC
The Social Justice Network was established in 1996 following a two-year process involving many sisters in our Grey Sister Community and many members of the laity who were seeking a way to respond to the needs of our time. The general consensus was that there was a need for people to become more informed on issues relating to social justice and to become involved in some kind of action on behalf of the victims of injustice in our country and world.
The Grey Sisters leadership then invited me to follow up on the decisions of that process and I began what has come to be known as the Social Justice Network. Every second month, from September to June, I publish a paper on a specific topic related to social justice as a means of helping people become more aware of what one seldom hears about in the mainstream media and encouraging them to take some specific action often related to advocating for systemic change.
In an age of economic globalization that promotes profits over people and human rights, that neglects or ignores the disabled, the frail, the marginalized, that uses people and resources of developing countries as a means to enrich the already powerful and wealthy countries, that threatens to privatize our treasured public institutions, the Social Justice Network strives to be a voice for justice locally, nationally, and globally by becoming more informed and by taking some positive action to bring about systemic change. In the process, our own lives are changed.
I remember doing research for one of my earliest papers and being horrified to learn that in the filming of 101 Dalmatians, the dogs who starred in the Disney film stayed in small dog motels, had round the clock care and personal trainers, while the women who sewed the children’s clothing were paid six cents for each garment they finished (garments that sold for $19.99).
Not long after that, I listened to a tape by Thomas Gumbleton, the now-retired auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit, whose whole life and person are dedicated to the reign of justice in our world. Two of his messages are forever burned into my memory: “No-one has the right to be a billionaire in a world where 40,000 children die of hunger-related diseases each day;” and the haunting words an El Salvadoran peasant said to him: “You will never understand violence unless you experience the violence done to your spirit watching your own child die of hunger.”
It was experiences like these that catapulted me into my work and inspired me with a passion to communicate to others the information I had the opportunity and time to learn.
I find myself reflecting every day and in my papers on our call to examine the cold-blooded terrorism we export to the poorest countries in the world, most of whom cannot retaliate against us. Some of the issues of the Social Justice papers have dealt with this ‘Western’ aspect of ‘terrorism’. Two dealt with the cold-blooded policies of the IMF and the World Bank which demand privatization of public services such as water, health care and education in the debt-ridden developing countries of the Global South as pre-requisites for obtaining loans or other financial assistance. We, as part of this system, are responsible for starvation and death resulting from the imposition of user fees for health care. And we, who consider education as a basic human right for our children, are complicit in depriving children of the developing world of their basic right to education.
The bi-monthly papers have also been centered on the poorest of the poor in Africa; on the growing corporate control of the world’s seeds, food, water, culture, human welfare, land, shelter, forests; on the plight of the sinned against Indigenous peoples of Canada and the world; and on the erosion of democracy and Medicare in Canada.
Our ‘Network’ has championed such Canadian heroes as Percy and Louise Schmeiser, senior citizen farmers in Bruno Saskatchewan who spent their life savings taking on the Monsanto corporation over the rights of farmers to own seeds; and Stephen Lewis in his personal and passionate commitment to get justice for the victims of AIDS in Africa.
This is what the Social Justice Network paper is all about: helping us become more aware, helping us make connections between our choices and the Gospel imperative to love our neighbour as ourselves, helping us become involved in action so that we can make a difference for the reign of God’s justice in our world, remembering in this post-September 11 time that the measure of justice in our world will be the measure of peace.
The following archived copies of the Social Justice Network paper are available in PDF form: