Gerry Georgatos – The road of social justice is one with no end in sight and it is one without cobble, faithful only in its tribulations and headwinds. It is one that does not speak of the future but of long tomorrows, of sacrifice and courage to change the world in the striving to leave no one behind.
There is more social justice today than ever before but yet the majority of the world ambles in deprivation, and with many trembling in injustices and cruelties. Social justice achieved and human rights unfolded are but light rains in perennial fiery storms. The hubris of the muddled minded remains the human narrative and the long tomorrows will continue but the social justice struggle flickers hope, unfolds its vocabulary, adding to it daily, widens us cognitively and dialectically despite the pitchfork standoffs.
Gilded cages still rule, power is elite, deep states shadow, but the rebel whispers of love are stoic.
The horrendous lie of our generation is that poverty is being reduced but seven out of ten humans live on less than AUD $10 a day. But there shall come a day when we will not be indentured to the dollar, petrochemical or other concoction. As slavery has been challenged, patriarchy dismantles, -isms defined and questioned, so much more will be journeyed.
Our contemporaneous connectedness in the digital age, despite the Orwellian catastrophes awaiting, has brought the ability to mass organise around information, to flicker further hopes, to do more today and tomorrow at rapidity yesterday did not know.
There is no promise that the long tomorrows will culminate in the social justice and the universal good that the desolations of today and yesterday urge, crave, need. We live out our generations never knowing but the trying matters.
We are midnight’s children, and also morning’s rise, and in my view, it matters what we do with our short stretch on this earth, in that we do as much can, as others did before us, to leave fewer of us in the margins.
It only matters what you think of yourself.
Sacred Texts: The Book That Made Me an Activist
· Melbourne Writers Festival 2018
Carly Findlay, Gerry Georgatos, Sisonke Msimang and Jeff Sparrow discuss the texts that set them on their activist paths, and their ongoing influence on their practice. Chaired by Nic Holas. Recorded live at Melbourne Writers Festival 2018.
- Gerry Georgatos is a suicide prevention and poverty researcher. He is also the national coordinator of the National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project.
- Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636.
