Quotes About Social justice

The opportunities presenting themselves to us at the dawn of the third millennium are no longer those of the great post-war stadium rallies. Our opportunities are those of the information age, global connectedness and the postmodern search for community, authentic spirituality and social justice.

The rising tide does not lift all boats. Those at the bottom and at the margin are considered undeserving; they are today's equivalent of scripture's widows, orphans, and immigrants.

a country where we seldom understand that we must be prepared to fight for issues bigger than an umpire's decision at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

In the same decades that saw the rise of mass incarceration, the number of beds available in state mental hospitals across the country dropped from 339 beds per 100,000 people in 1955 to under 20 beds per 100,000 people by 2015. There are now ten times as many mentally ill people in our prisons and jails as there are in state mental institutions.

In any decent civilization, healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

We exercised our democratic right to protest, and they ignored us.

Trayvon Martin's killing touches on something universal. His death ought to make us look at ourselves and be honest: we need to realize that no one in America is safe until everyone is safe, that no one in America is a success until everyone is a success, that there is no more central a self-interest than the interests of all.

The way I see it, we're all either Trayvon Martin or we're George Zimmerman. The choice is ours. There's no in-between.

If only a few years remain until the Year of Jubilee, he is to calculate and pay his redemption according to his remaining years.

If a fellow Hebrew, a man or a woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you must set him free.

his father and mother are to lay hold of him and bring him to the elders of his city, to the gate of his hometown,

They are also to fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young womanís father, because this man has given a virgin of Israel a bad name. And she shall remain his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.

you must take both of them out to the gate of that city and stone them to death—the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he has violated his neighborís wife. So you must purge the evil from among you.

and after serious thought I rebuked the nobles and officials, saying, “You are exacting usury from your own brothers!” So I called a large assembly against them

and said, “We have done our best to buy back our Jewish brothers who were sold to foreigners, but now you are selling your own brothers, that they may be sold back to us!” But they remained silent, for they could find nothing to say.

Do not rob a poor man because he is poor, and do not crush the afflicted at the gate,

The righteous consider the cause of the poor, but the wicked have no regard for such concerns.

Your rulers are rebels, friends of thieves. They all love bribes and chasing after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, and the plea of the widow never comes before them.

Why do you crush My people and grind the faces of the poor?” declares the Lord GOD of Hosts.

They have grown fat and sleek, and have excelled in the deeds of the wicked. They have not taken up the cause of the fatherless, that they might prosper; nor have they defended the rights of the needy.

if you no longer oppress the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow, and if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods to your own harm,

“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,

Father and mother are treated with contempt. Within your walls the foreign resident is exploited, the fatherless and the widow are oppressed.

In you they have uncovered the nakedness of their fathers; in you they violate women during their menstrual impurity.