JUSTICE

I thought today about a single word. It followed me, and the challenge came to face it. It was justice. It has followed me throughout my life, seeking it, not normally for myself, but truly the quest has been to find it for others, for the environment, and for the last 40 years, seeking it for a place, so very damaged that it bleeds and bears down in weighty ways to harm people I have come to love.

It hasn’t been easy. Seeking justice can mean speaking out and, and I am shaking my head at remembering, I transferred colleges so as not to have to take… SPEECH.  At one point after dropping out of college to go be an artist in Taos, New Mexico, having to actually go back to college because being an artist also meant talking to strangers about my own art! I joined Teacher Corps and got a degree in Education, so I could teach. But what is that? TALKING. So I went back for a Masters degree in Counseling, so I could?  Listen. Not talk.

It was then that I learned there were great reasons that could arise where I would have to speak to defend, seek assistance and even testify FOR my students if they required access to justice. I learned to speak for my students as their ally and mediate situations with teachers, and yes, principals, and later to superintendents.

Somehow, I found my way onto what a school district does to look like justice for teachers, the grievance committee. It meant having the responsibility to speak for teachers who were being reprimanded or even threatened with loosing their jobs in small settings requesting justice for wrongs.

The first year I worked at Will Rogers Junior High, one of my ninth graders was pregnant and I had to go with her to break the news to her family and speak for that child that she be treated with compassion, what justice can feel like when it is given to a endangered person.

That experience and others like it, inspired me to work with the school nurse to put together an afterschool sex education program, WITH PARENT PERMISSION. That was the year the Tulsa TV station came in a helicopter to investigate the complaints about it. These children had a right to know more about their own bodies, to assure they had information. But then they needed to also know how to speak up for themselves. How could a speech-weakling help them?

I got trained by Paula Englander-Golden in Say-It-Straight, a communications break-through. “Have you ever been in a situation when you very much wanted to say no, but said yes instead?” Boy, had I. So, with the training, I learned to say what I needed to say, and I could also more easily say it for others, beside myself. My job got easier. I was a better counselor, a better advocate, a more able grievance committee chair person.

When one-third of our Indian children were found to be lead poisoned in the early 90’s, a fact we learned from a young man simply trying to get a better job and needing to do a thesis project, he himself learned about justice by listening to many of YOU who were learning how to teach little children to protect themselves from lead poisoning, while we waited for the EPA to do the long work of removing the toxic soil throughout the county that was poisoning them. That young man was inspired about justice HERE and went home and found justice for the long suffering he had had as a child from his own father, and had him charged and convicted for abuse.

When EPA was holding public meetings, I talked my friend Rita to come sit with me on the front row. She would ask questions FOR ME. I had found another way of seeking justice by PROCY! 

None of this is easy. But Justice requires it. AND that is what you are learning, you are learning and you are acting on it, in the case of the comments YOU all made to DEQ over the 2 recent Air Permits.

Don’t stop, now even our country will need you to exercise your voice and clear your throat and make sure we keep fighting for Justice for all. Remembering, “You can also commit injustice by doing nothing." –Marcus Aurelius

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim