Journey Toward Justice 24

This chapter is titled 'The Structure of Social Justice Movements.' Injustice can be meted out to an individual by another individual, but it can also be in the form of one community towards another community over a long period of time. In the latter case, removing injustice gets complicated and oftentimes it takes times too. But history has shown that injustice of such sort has been addressed. Addressing injustice at social level take three stages, generally speaking. First, it involves identifying the victims. Laws may be discriminatory towards certain group of people or it could be public practice or perception. Whatsoever, identifying the victims comes as a first step. Second, it involves responding the situation emotionally. Responding must involve emotions because unless people come up with 'this must not continue anymore', it is unlikely to generate social change. Third, it involves activation, which is to critique the ongoing practice or analyse the source of such practice and then critique. Critiquing this way may generate social conflict because those who perpetuating the practice may not want to change their way of functioning or those who are enjoying power at the expense of the victim may not want to give up power. Given that a social change is required, oftentimes this may generate hostile conflict. 

Of course, Nick mentions that not all the social justice movements may follow this pattern in exact sequence. But then it's fair to generalise the pattern!