Vision and the Pursuit of Constructive Social Change

by Holly Hanson

About: At this moment in history, when we are confronting the reality of systemic racism and when a global pandemic is revealing in deadly detail the consequences of extreme inequality, we need to pay attention to the process of social change. The intolerable reality of African American men killed by police has drawn thousands of people around the world into public rejections of racist structures, symbols, and thought. The coronavirus lockdown has been a massive and powerful exposure of what is not working about the social structures we have. We have seen the inherent weakness in organizing our production of goods and food in gigantic factories far removed from the consumers of those products. We have seen the fundamental injustice of paying people less than a living wage and not giving them health care. The move away from normal life has illuminated what really does not work, and has motivated a desire for structures that are more conducive to human dignity. But how do we pursue a path of constructive social change? How do we even recognize the direction that path would take?