August 2018
Access to adequate housing, food, healthcare and education. Is this a subject of justice? It may well depend on how one views the concept of justice.
Conceptually, justice leans on ethics, moral and fairness in administering an action or reaction to an action. This means that justice should first take into consideration what is considered fairness and what is not. With that said, justice cannot render itself without a deeper analysis. It must examine why something may have been done, or is happening before applying a right and “just” remedy, repercussion or punishment.
When decent jobs, schools, food and shelter access are ill proportionately allocated, inequality of resource access indeed becomes a justice issue.
Justice issues cannot be addressed by themselves. It takes people being aware and involved in the policy making process and the only way for that to happen is through the democratic vote. There is no other way that the average person can be heard and empower policy making decisions.
Since the number of individual voters adds up to form a single unit of political power, there really is no such thing as a single vote and therefore, the vote is the only way to achieve justice through policies and mandates that changes and impacts the inequality in distribution of all the above mentioned.
Justice is aligned with the fair distribution of access.
People should not need to go to college to get this very simple and important dynamic of justice and access but ignorance of the connection between justice and individual access results in millions of voters that could change things for better, not voting.
It is time for the education system to include emphasis in social studies lessons to children, the power of the vote and its impact on justice and access so that eventually there will be a more democratically involved voter educated society, who understands the implication of their vote, or their no vote, as it relates to policies and statutes that affects their individual life. It’s time.
