Justice

Just finished watching Hotel Rwanda again and it was just as good and powerful as it was the first time - maybe even more powerful this time around. Powerful movies do that. They suck you in and sit you down. Pulled in and set hostage, they won't let your eyes escape even if they wanted to. They share their stories relentlessly as you become less an audience and more a ghost: a quiet existence in the background of onscreen experiences. But at the end of the movie, we're all still ghosts: spectators who float on in life, always flirting with the romance of justice but never manifesting our hands on its responsibility.

I remember standing with my friend Grace Ko on library walk one day handing out red envelopes adressed to President Obama. That's when this girl came up to me and started hounding me with trap-questions about abortion, conception, Women's rights and other lightning rod topics. I could tell she didn't want to really see or understand my point of view and that she just wanted to argue and make me look like a chauvinistic fundamentalist idiot (trust me. it was pretty obvious). The more I listened to her, the more I grew impatient. though I laugh about it now, I remember praying even for patience. That's when she asked me:

"If you care so much about life, why aren't you doing anything about sex-trafficking? systemic poverty? international genocide?"

I was cut deep. half-embarassed and half-angry, I swallowed my guilt and let it run its rightful course because I was exactly that: guilty. I remember feeling naked; I wanted to hide. I hated the idea of being convicted by the one rubbing salt in my wound. I think I still do. 

I wanted to tell her how wrong she was. I wanted to defend myself and brag about how compassionate of a person I thought I was and how I was taking a stand for justice by being on library walk promoting the red letter campaign. In my mind, I wanted to tell her to shut her trap and tell her that there was no way that I could carry all the burdens of the world on my shoulders or how I could never possibly feed all the starving people in the world by myself and that she probably didn't care about anything them either. But I couldn't because no matter how much it hurt to hear those words coming from her lips, it bore a great deal of truth. It reminded me that I must never fall more in love with the idea of social justice than actually being a part of it, lest I become a ghost, clapping and applauding the a film whilst holding little to no regard for the injustice behind the screen. 

When we do nothing, the world continues to burn and people pay the price in blood.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do now. But of this much I'm certain: I must care.

Don Cheadle murders the movie btw. He oozes intensity. sheesh.