World Social Justice day

It was a busy weekend on the United Nation’s calendar, with World Social Justice Day on Saturday the 20th of Feb followed by International Mother Language Day on Sunday. I was away at the beach this weekend making the most of the sun and catching up with family so I’m catching up with posts about these days now.

Social Justice means the fair distribution of wealth, and equal opportunities and privileges for ALL people in a society. The United Nations marks World Social Justice Day each year on the 20th of February in order to promote poverty eradication, advance employment in decent work, and remove barriers that many people face due to their gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality etc.

I spent World Social Justice Day at the beach with my family, so life was feeling pretty just to me on Saturday, However, I did have a few political discussions/debates with my family regarding social justice and the economy. Our discussions were largely focused on refugees and wealth distribution. Especially how the once egalitarian NZ has been moving further away from the ideals of Social Justice with an ever widening gap between the rich and poor and access to tertiary education becoming increasingly out of reach for anyone but the wealthy. I hope that World Social Justice Day has served as a reminder to our government that we once were a leader in Social Justice for our citizens and should strive to achieve this again.

This year the theme of Social Justice day is the economy. As the population increases on a planet that has finite resources we need to shift our thinking regarding the economy and sustainability in order to create a system that is just to everybody and able to create prosperity that is sustainable. A really great film and book about the way we think about the relationship between the economy and environment is This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, I highly recommend it.

I hope you all had great weekends full of social justice, I will be posting later tonight about Mother Language Day so hasta pronto!