“Before there can be justice, there must be empathy. Before there can be justice, there must be a quickened sense of injustice. Our goal is not bigger and better federal programs or more federal dollars — more bureaucracy — public or private. Our end is justice: our end is opportunity. And we will reach it only through a coalition of conscience which unites us all.”
Our Quote of the Week provides a vision for society that is guided by empathy and whose ultimate goal is to give each member of society the opportunities they need to thrive. Importantly, Sargent Shriver’s vision includes leadership that avoids bureaucracy for its own sake, and that acts only in the pursuit of justice for people.
This week’s quote is from Sargent Shriver’s 1965 Address at the 88th Meeting of the American Bar Association. An attorney by profession, Shriver often spoke at such gatherings so that he could enlist legal professionals in the War on Poverty.
As the Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) under President Johnson, Shriver had been given the task of examining the root causes as well as the effects of poverty, and of creating programs that could address them. One of factors that allowed poverty to persist, reasoned Shriver, was that people who could not afford legal representation had no protections against injustice. To address this, one of the poverty programs he launched was Legal Services for the Poor. Based on the work of a pair of young attorneys, Jean and Edgar Cahn, Legal Services’ community lawyering approach empowered people who could not otherwise afford an attorney to seek legal representation in cases of exploitation and other abuses.
We leave you to consider these other words from this powerful speech:
“We live in an age where delegations of authority have cumulatively nullified the accountability of officials in a democracy.”
When operating in such an age, acting with empathy, providing opportunity, and speaking up for justice are paramount, as some of our leaders are failing to do so.
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