on justice
َ ّ ِ ِب ْس ِم يم ِ الل ال َّر ْح َم ِن ال َّر ِح In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merficul.
One Report is spiritually-minded content for people of all beliefs and backgrounds. This publication is borne from a reflection of the teachings of the Baha’i Faith but our contributors are from varied faith backgrounds. The goal is for One Report to offer space for people from all perspectives to discuss and reflect on topics of faith and spirituality. In a time of turmoil, One Report hopes is a source of unity and collaboration. It is an opportunity for people to learn from one another and share in ways that feel relevant, pressing, stirring, and elevated. Thank you.
One Report is edited by Anisa Tavangar with Maya Mansour. Illustrations in this issue are by Juliet Bogan.
the grand jury hears my prayer Written by Annabella Correa-Maynard
When the jury acquitted George Zimmerman, I prayed and cried. At fourteen years old I could only comprehend a system where a man would atone for his mistakes, and God would grant justice. I thought it was a mistake. But what followed were more deaths, more prayers, and more tears. No atonement. No justice. Instead, each death felt like it outweighed my words; could it possibly be that these words were just hollow pleas flung toward a system that disposed of Black lives? These days are different. I feel like I am begging God to stop slaughtering and sensationalizing black people, my people, especially black women, my sisters. The only proper prayer I know is the Lord’s Prayer. But I seriously wonder if my words can extend eternal life so that it’s not just limited to God’s sons, but also his daughters, Breonna, Sandra, and Riah. If those are the only daughters that I can name, then eternity must be limited to the borders of my memory. Although if I don’t say even the ones I do know, I fear that they get lost. My mother tells me to never underestimate the power of prayer, that it’s a continual process. As if prayer and #SayHerName are inextricably bound to the same court of justice. I’m skeptical, and yet I still pray.
"...that justice, as a faculty of the soul, enables the individual to distinguish truth from falsehood and guides the investigation of reality, so essential if superstitious beliefs and outworn traditions that impede unity are to be eliminated; that, when appropriately brought to bear on social issues, justice is the single most important instrument for the establishment of unity..." the
Universal
house
of
justice
god as justice Written by Hadar Cohen
I wanted to learn about justice, so I looked into books and legal systems and listened to leaders of movements speak. Sometimes I found resonance, most often I found more injustice. Like when we speak about feminism but leave out capitalism and colonization. Or when racial violence is addressed but militarization is unquestioned destroying lands and histories of peoplehood. And when our governments claim to defend, but only continue to harm, sometimes as a massacre, sometimes slowly over time. The truth is, I couldn’t find justice anywhere on this earth. Not in history, not in politics, not in communitie. Everytime I came close to glimpsing this value I so cherish, an unexpected tinted glare of oppression would remind me that there is no purity here. Humans have remained flawed, despite their best and worst intentions. Yet I still desire to know justice in its pure form. What does it feel like to know that no harm shall go unaddressed? To see the myriad of invisibilization techniques that cover over traumas, pains, and cries. To have the power to act through interventions against established systems firmly founded on geonicide and patriarchy and white supremacy. Then I remembered God.
God is a figure in scripture, a projected imagination, a moral judge. But God is also real. Real in the sense of beyond and through our experience. Our notions for dictating what is real is dependent on our experience which has been conditioned by multiple systems of oppression. These forms of social conditioning are not trustworthy in discerning “the real” from “the unreal”. The work of justice is about examining our own
"My help comes from the lord, maker of heaven and hearth. he will not let your foot give way; your guardian will not slumber; See, the guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps!" [psalms,
121:2-4]
conditions of perception, experience and knowledge and interrogating their claims on us. Just as the gender binary is not real, so to our experience of ourselves can be called into question. These peeling layers of perceived truths expose the reality that truly we do not know. This is the ground of my faith— the mysterious unknowing of all that is happening. The fight for justice becomes the pursuit of learning the ways of God - the Ultimate Knower, about bowing down to a truth greater than our conscious understanding of reality, about believing that though this world is filled with injustices - it is not the only world of existence. Rather God dwells in infinite realms, weaving and intersecting between dimensions, playing the beauty of life. What we know here on earth is not the complete truth but rather masks of illusions upon illusions of distorted truths. My spirituality teaches me that My Creator, My Beloved, My Governor deeply cares about justice in this realm and all realms. That God does not and will not slumber or sleep in the face of injustice. That justice in its pure form does exist, even if it is unattainable through humans. This faith in justice as truth propels my work, my prayer, my existence. To know justice is to know God.
“There is no concept of justice in Cree culture. The nearest word is kintohpatatin, which loosely translates to “you’ve been listened to.” But kintohpatatin is richer than justice - really it means you’ve been listened to by someone compassionate and fair, and your needs will be taken seriously.” Edmund
Metatawabin
faith in the cycles Written by Maryam Jaberi Illustration by Maryam Jaberi
While reflecting on the idea of justice and peace-making on a much more fundamental level, think between families and friendships, I came across this quotation from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:
“Each one of the luminous bodies in this limitless firmament has a cycle of revolution which is of a different duration, and every one revolves in its own orbit, and again begins a new cycle... In the same way, for the whole universe, whether for the heavens or for men, there are cycles of great events, of important facts and occurrences. When a cycle is ended a new cycle begins…” Seeking justice and peace works similarly, the agony and turbulence you face along the way eventually end, and we have a chance to try again. The past is reflected on and feelings of gratitude flow through us because we preserved, grew, and now obtain greater
knowledge for our future efforts. The period of transition from old to new cycle fosters the hope that keeps us afloat, time and time again. In a conversation about justice with my father, he shared with me that true justice exists because the Next World exists. By this he means that our actions and consequences don’t see a final result on this earthly plane. Accepting this allows for personal detachments to grow and our focus on tangible problems becomes greater. Beyond this, it also humbles us in the face of contention and pain; knowing we have limited control becomes a bounty. I started to visualize what it meant to gracefully take on a new cycle and be content with all the series of events that are contrary to our wishes. Repeatedly the image of an olive branch would come to mind. The most well known symbol of peace started to become a symbol of strength and an illustration of the nobility of mankind. Each branch works to plant the seeds of justice in the forefront of our minds, enabling a new culture of learning, questioning the status quo, and continually striving for excellence.
"Justice and equity are twin Guardians that watch over men. From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations." Baha'u'llah
love and justice Written by Jonathan Simcosky
“Love and Justice are not two.” Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Sensei So often it seems to me we call upon other words to help us understand Justice. I grew up in a world that understood justice in the top down, rule of law, crime and punishment, way of thinking: criminal justice. Later in life I found myself serving on committees that sought to right the wrongs of past generations by exercising our privilege: social justice. I’ve worked in food justice and economic justice and in this historic moment we’re all confronting the realities of racial injustice. The First Testament prophet Amos wrote of Justice rolling down like waters. And, at least in my mind, the image that that now nearly cliche phrase evokes is of a mighty river bursting a hubristic dam: uncontrollable and unconstrained.
While Amos goes on to connect the affluence of justice with an ever-flowing stream of righteousness, in modern parlance Justice is more often associated with systems, administration, and authority. Rigid. Manufactured. Corruptible. Benjamin Franklin included Justice as one of his thirteen virtues essential to cultivating his own character as well as the development of a young nation. He defined Justice this way: “Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.” What strikes me about Franklin’s definition is how personal and positive it is. He’s not talking about who has what authority to mete out justice, but the personal responsibility we each have to “wrong none.” And even more radically, he rejects the lens of punishment, or wrong-righting, we so often associate with Justice and notes, alongside wronging none, the co-responsibility to claim “the benefits that are your duty.” (Whether he actually practiced justice justly is a question for another time.) As a follower of Jesus I’m reminded of his teaching to love my neighbor as myself— so simple and yet so devastatingly transformational. How about this for a working definition of Justice? What is good for my neighbor/enemy is also good for me. When confronted with unfairness— whether profoundly painful or passively annoying— our response most often seems to me to be to appeal to our systems of authority to step in and correct it on our behalf. While it’s undoubtedly true these regulatory systems are both inevitable and complicit in the complex and conflicted management
of society, as a person of faith they are not the primary means by which I live and move and have my being. On the contrary, the greatest commandment according to Jesus is to love: first our God and then our neighbor. What if we started to think of Justice as nothing more than Love, plain and simple, mighty and transforming? What if we got swept away in that ever-flowing stream? What would we lose? Where might we go?
justice free of vengeance Written by Olivia Baker
Despite a nation in turmoil, the protests of the past few weeks have precipitated major changes in the conversation surrounding justice in America. There has been an outpouring of conversation recently about how best to achieve justice for the countless victims of police brutality and although I consider myself an active part of this dialogue, I was asked a question recently that made me take pause. “What does justice look like free of vengeance?” At first this question felt like an affront to me and my anger. Why should the oppressed be expected to take the high road? How can you ask the silenced to swallow their anger? “What does justice look like free of vengeance?” The more I thought on it however, the more the question reverberated around my brain. I realized I felt uncomfortable because that simple question revealed a host of discrepancies in my ideas of justice. I began to recognize the chasm of my anger preventing me from uniting my disjointed theories and praxis of justice. It is inconsistent to seek to utilize for justice the very systems that I advocate dismantling, and yet it feels like nothing short of a betrayal of those who lost their lives to accept anything less than the most severe punishment for those who took them. In order to make space for more honest and productive activism, how can I move myself from
a place of seeking liberation for some but retribution for others? “What does justice look like free of vengeance?� For me, the answer lays in my conversations with God. It is through my connection with God that I am able to diffuse my rage and move through my desire for vengeance. It is through God that I find empathy for those who uphold the inequalities of our society, realizing that the most just future I could imagine is one in which the oppressors are liberated from their role in the system as much as the oppressed. It is so tempting to condemn and crucify the perpetrators of harm as evil, to be blind to any commonality between us. But it is God who reminds me that there is a divine thread that runs through all people, and that it is those same systems making victims out of boys which are also making monsters out of men who kill them. It is through humbling myself before God that I am able to include even the most seemingly undeserving in my vision for justice, and begin to move away from anger and retribution, and continue on the road to healing redemption.
"We sent Our Messengers with clear signs and sent down with them the Book and the Measure in order to establish justice among the people..." [Quran
57:25]
comfort women in st. mary's square Written by Jaco Beneduci 显正
Kintsugi is the act of repairing broken ceramic by sealing the cracks with gold –a process that results in something more beautiful than the original. Sources will tell you, The ceramic is the past, the cracks are crimes, and the gold is to honor the cracks –to make them more noticeable. The Mayor of Osaka has told San Francisco: they couldn’t be friends no more, because of a statue hidden in its own bleak corner in Chinatown. Three girls sculpted out of brown metal, holding hands, connecting angles, standing with their backs to a pocket of emptiness. Their casting is not smooth, it’s textured. Their surfaces are covered by the careful slashes of the sculptor’s knife. Their color is a gradient of oxidized tones: rotten jade to dark-ground brown. None of it is golden. They look thirteen –one wore a buttoned dress like she was going to school, the other was Chinese and the last was Korean.
The statue will tell you: 500,000 girls were stolen by Japan –some in cheongsams –some in hanboks –and some in small buttoned dresses, to have sex with the soldiers of the rising sun. Japan was mad, Japan was mad. Osaka will tell you how Japan was mad. The old and textured woman –fixated in emptiness, freezes her eyes upon the girls. She’s wearing the same hanbok and gradient bronze. She’s one of them; she’s part of the statue, she’s a “Comfort Woman.” One of 37 living, of thousands taken, whose stories are the broken textures hiding under the lacquers of a kintsugi’d ceramic. Japan will tell you, in Kintsugi the ceramic is history. But I don’t think the ceramic should be history at all, but it is –it has cracks. It’s an artifact tattooed with uncomfortable and jagged truths alongside painted depictions and smooth surfaces. But how can you see? Every jagged number on that streaking scar, every angle of what is broken if it’s covered in gold? Cracks are made out of negligence and clumsy violence; I see eye-sores imprisoned/covered by the sweetshimmering color of joy and fortune and prosperity. I see a thousand angry letters instead of a thousand paper cranes.
"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" [Micah,
6:8]
"O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives." [quran,
4:135]
"O SON OF SPIRIT! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee." B
a
h
a
'
u
'
l
l
a
h
"When watching after yourself, you watch after others. When watching after others, you watch after yourself." b
u
d
d
a
h
“...the breeding-ground of all these tragedies is prejudice: prejudice of race and nation, of religion, of political opinion; and the root cause of prejudice is blind imitation of the past— imitation in religion, in racial attitudes, in national bias, in politics. So long as this aping of the past persisteth, just so long will the foundations of the social order be blown to the four winds, just so long will humanity be continually exposed to direst peril. [...] The first [teaching] is the independent investigation of truth; for blind imitation of the past will stunt the mind. But once every soul inquireth into truth, society will be freed from the darkness of continually repeating the past.” A
b
d
u
’
l
-
B
a
h
a
Keep in touch. Follow us on Instagram @onereportmag Support us patreon.com/onereportmag Email us onereportproject@gmail.com Read more at issuu.com/onereportmag