• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 683 0

home, or the pillaging of all that you have worked so hard to build. The question for survivors is never their anger at injustice, but rather how to express that anger in a healthy way that can lead to building rather than destruction, to reconciliation rather than hate, to a profound perspective that marries both the beauty and the ugliness of life. A survivor’s need for action is understood and in many ways expected, even though at times that action can be destructive both for the self and the other.

That’s the predicament of the survivor. Then there are the questions with which the rest of the world must wrestle: What if one has the privilege of not directly experiencing or even witnessing firsthand injustice in front of one’s eyes? What if one never has to know what it feels like to be lynched, whipped, raped, chained, mutilated, enslaved; or know the pain of witnessing a loved one be killed without being able to do anything about it? What if one doesn’t know what it feels like to lose a home because a bomb fell on it, or because it was invaded by soldiers or rebels in the middle of the night while you were sleeping in your own bed; or be forced to walk days and weeks in the middle of the forest without any food just to save your life and that of your loved one? What then? Is that carte blanche to ignore, to pretend, to do nothing?

For much of the world it is. Much of the world is content to stand by and do nothing while the war rages on in Congo, while people die by the millions, and while women are raped by the hundreds of thousands. But, thankfully, it is not so for everyone. There are activists worldwide who do what they can on behalf of others who are oppressed, though they may not share that plight. These are the people who realize that their own privilege—the privilege of not witnessing atrocities, the privilege of being heard, or having the resources to survive—is a responsibility to humanity, a responsibility to be shared with others, and a responsibility to this world. That story, the story of a few individuals acting upon injustice even though they have not witnessed it firsthand has always existed, and that is the story that adds to the hope survivors share when they triumph over the evil they have witnessed.

With every story of injustice, there were always those who refused to stand silent, who made a conscious choice to act, regardless of the consequences, the price, and the impact on one’s life. It was a few individuals who had never been part of the slave trade who decided to act in the late eighteenth century in London, England, leading eventually to the global abolitionist movement. It was three white civil rights workers who were slain making a stand for equality in Mississippi in 1964. Like the abolitionists before them, they were making a political statement that slavery and segregation were not “black problems,” they were everyone’s problem and responsibility to solve.

Similarly, individual white South African activists made the point that Apartheid was a moral responsibility for all to end.

We see that in every story of injustice there is a movement for the good, one in which there are always survivors who decided to dedicate their lives to ending it, as well as those who have not been victims but know of their moral responsibility to stand up and fight. Lisa Shannon is one of those individuals who has decided to take a stand against an evil that does not oppress her directly but offends her with its very existence. She runs for Congo women. Lisa Shannon is a woman no different than those who stood up against slavery and apartheid before her, who decided to act, watch, hear, and even go into the heart of horrors as she did to witness the atrocities and listen to those who have seen evil. For survivors, their perseverance is a triumph over evil, the sheer force of will to survive and to stand tall. For Lisa, hers is a heroine’s journey of a woman who did not shy away from the ongoing horrors in the world. She is a woman who was not afraid to confront conflict in the Congo, who did not worry