So What Is Social Justice Really? • The Questioning Podcast

First of all, thank you for talking with me on short notice. This is one of those, oh, these are very interesting people and I love to ask them questions. So why not do it on camera a moment? So thank you for being open for that. So you are one of the organizers of Festival Y. This is like, I'll probably just later film and just show it, which is a lovely name. I love it. It says youth engagement, human rights, intersectionality, which is still a word I do not know. And I will ask about art, climate justice, gender and sexuality. I really like that subject. Social and climate justice festival for people from Baltics and Poland. But I presume people who come from outside of those places won't be excluded. They won't be excluded, no. But of course, the current situation may show differently. That's actually a good question. That's a question I'll want to actually ask later. So like the whole Corona situation and how you still managed to actually organize this. So we'll come to that. So I know I give you a heads up, which usually I don't, I try not to do to make it all organic, but I think that will still create the situation where you'll have to think about it. So the very first question before we head to the festival itself, one of the keywords here is social justice. Now it's definitely a phrase, a term, which is out there. I see it in articles. I hear people, someone talking about it. But personally, if somebody would ask me to define it, I wouldn't be able to. I expect you will be able to define it. So how would you define the term social justice? Would you like to answer that question? As you have mentioned before, it was such a short notice. And there's many ways to define it, I guess. And from our perspective, I would say that it's about the, oh, it's just so difficult to start. I don't know. I have the picture in my head. I don't know just where to start, because we could talk about the opportunity structure, about the system, about how system enables some of us to be more active and use those opportunities, which are there, for example, as we are privileged in many ways, and we should be aware of that and use these privileges wisely. But a lot of people are not in that position for many reasons, which relates to many other topics as well. I love that answer. It just opens up so many questions as well. But before I get there, I guess, what if I would ask like that? So let's say you're, I don't know how inclined and knowledgeable your grandmother is. Usually, we sometimes in Lithuania have grandmothers who don't know that much, although at the same time, my grandmother was like a yogi. And so it depends. But let's say a typical grandmother, the typical, like we imagine it, would ask you, so what is social justice? How would you explain to her? Is that okay? Social justice is a personal thing for everyone as well. And for me, in simple words, it's just an equal access to opportunities. But understanding that not everyone starts from the same footing. So you need to provide something in between this, like where different people start, to make sure that everyone has equal access to the same opportunities. And to the regards to the question of how to explain it to your grandma, it also depends, you can explain it to your grandma, to your cousin, to your uncle. And to continue on everybody has a different understanding because of their social standing. So for example, our grandparents, at least mine, they had to suffer through exile and Soviet Union injustice. And then I would say, well, grandma, if you think that you could not have done a lot of things which I can do now, and why do you think so? And I think she would understand. And I think then you can go to every person and say, why do you think you are not able to do this? Or why do you think you are able to be active and to pursue your dreams, but I can't do the same, for example, or my friend can't do. And then we can go throughout the discussions, which systematic failures are stopping people from achieving their best potential. Because we all have potential, but not everybody is able to exercise that and to go further. Is that clear? Oh, yeah. Again, I guess I'm well known for not being afraid to make a fool out of myself. So I'll just continue asking questions. Maybe somebody completely got the picture, but I'm like, still not entirely sure. So we mentioned, so far, the picture I'm getting as kind of creating a space environment where everybody has equal rights. Would that be one way to look at it? I think you like that question a lot, no? Equal rights and how it's not a correct term. Yeah. But I'm so super theoretical on this. So there's the, you know, the two different words, the equality or the equal rights or whatever, equality and the equity and the true social justice should be built on equity. So what is it? So this is what I was talking about, that people are starting from different parts. So imagine if you have a picture of three men who are in different heights, right? And they're trying to see through the wall, they're trying to see a game on the other side, right? But they have different heights. If we say we just need to provide like, you know, we need to provide equal rights. So basically we're just giving policies in this term, like we're giving different policies to like enhance women's rights and things like that. What happens is that we just, for these three men that are now trying to watch this game, we'll just put the equal footing under them. And the highest men will be able to see the game, but the other ones, they have already, they had like, how do you say, well, in this case it's a trait, but yeah, that already doesn't allow them even with some help, it still doesn't allow them. So that's equality. And the equity is when you actually know what is needed so that everyone is able to watch the game or yeah, do something. So this is like self-picture representation of it. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Because sometimes I, when I look at certain projects or initiations, especially like, and maybe that's a bad impression I got, but some government finance projects or even like some other global organization, finance is something I usually see in an attempt to do something which doesn't really feel honest at times. It feels like, you know, people are doing things which seem nice and sound nice, but there's not really a full attempt to make things happen where it really has a realistic change and everybody's a complete winner versus it's, you know, ends up getting like the finances go to somewhere where they are not necessarily most necessary. Like I had a talk with a friend of mine from, originally from Kenya, and he worked, he lives in Switzerland, he worked in an NGO which was working with poverty in Kenya, but he noticed that they're doing the wrong things. You know, they're providing the communities, the local communities, things which they don't really need or they're not the game changers and that's why he went on to create his own organization where he really pinpointed like what's the game changer for those people and he made sure that whatever they get is what they really need and instead of just, oh, let's like, I think his example was, you know, let's buy like a lot of food for them. What's the difference? You know, they will, I mean, it's better than nothing, but they will eat that food and that's it. Their lives didn't really change and he's like helping create like agriculture and building schools and this and that and that feels like, okay, that's changing the game and so I don't know if that's like, would you say like that? It just needs to be tailored to the needs. That's it, right? So there's, of course, with the project writing and fundraising experience that I have, I understand that sometimes it's so hard to know, like, you know, if you write a project in Lithuania to know what all the people in Lithuania need, right? So the most, what you see is the most effective projects are the ones that are targeting one particular group in some way marginalized with a lot of research on what is the thing that will help this specific group. So there needs to be, to have a true social justice, there needs to be a lot of research and a lot of knowledge on, yeah, what's the difference between the different groups or individuals or communities and what they need. So would you say that true social justice is kind of much more complex than just go hold a poster, you know, save this or save that? Would that be like a good statement or? It depends who you're saving. But no, of course, like, I mean, holding a poster is a, I wouldn't say that, holding a poster is a tool. Sure. It's not a social justice, not a climate justice, it's just a tool. So you could, you know, if your poster is very good, you could be raising awareness about a particular social justice issue. And maybe at that point, it was effective in the place where you were, but it's just a tool. So I can't really judge whether. Yeah. But it is very complex. Like in the, in the festival that we were talking, that we are talking about, we are, we will be having like a day or half a day to talk about the systemic change needed. Because, yeah, that's what Rita was saying, like, it's so complex that we need to think about changing, not just particularly like human rights issues, but how democracy works, maybe even, you know, like how economy works, things like that. Yeah, because you're, as we mentioned before, you have to understand that not everybody starts with an equal footing. For example, if you build, let's say, an abortion center in a city, and you say, okay, we solved abortion clinic, we solved the problem now, but it's still only accessible for women who live in the area, who live in the city, who are already privileged in many ways in that count. But for example, if you live in a rural area, then you have to count, and then you have to travel there, then all those things, you know, and that's exactly it, to account for those things, to account for those differences, to make sure, like, for example, if you give me $500, that's gonna save me for, I don't know, forever. If you give that for Beyonce, I don't know, she'll go back. It's nothing for her. And that's a very extreme example, but it's, but that's basically what it is, that one thing can mean very different help for different people, and that should be accounted for in policy, for sure. I love that. There's actually, I don't want to be a broken record about this, but again, that same project with Kenya that I mentioned, there's a system that person created, which was mind-blowing for me, that you donate 30 euros for a child, and he gets education for a month, and food, like, lunch every day for that month, and like, first aid expenses are covered for 30 euros, and he told me that, I was like, wait, did I hear that right? And it turns out, it's like, that, I'm like, crazy, that for us, like, 30 euros, it's like, well, you know, I can live a few days, but that can be a game changer, so I guess it's kind of a little like kind of taking that into account, right? Yeah, I think you're getting the point. We'll get there. I still, I still like to, it's such a, you know, I guess it's impossible to just get it in one discussion, in one talk, but I'm kind of starting to see the landscape, which is already very enjoyable. To make sure I cover a few different subjects that I'm interested in, the other word was intersectionality. So, forgive my lack of education, but let's, let's fix that. So, what is it? What is intersectionality? We already actually talked about it, we just never named it. Yeah, because it's very related to the social justice concept as well. It's like, if you look at the problem, you have to, it's never one thing which caused it, and it's usually systematic. For example, if you're talking about racism, let's say, how it works differently in different countries and among different groups, how it affects different black men and black women and black kids, and how it's systematically entrenched with the education, poverty, and all those. It's very related to the... I can paint another picture. Just a bit, this is a bit actually of history, how the word came about. So, it was coined by Kimberly Crenshaw, who is a famous American academic. And basically, there was, how it started, it was because there was a woman in the US who, a black woman who was trying to get a job in a factory, right? What year was that? I cannot remember the year, but yeah. More or less, or let's just skip that part. I'm sure we don't want to. Yeah, I don't want to presume, but yeah. So, there was a black woman, but I think maybe if the word came about 20 years ago, then that's... That's very recent. Okay, so it's not like... Yeah, it's a recent word, and yeah. So, this black woman is trying to get the job in a factory, right? And goes through an interview and things like that, and then gets refused on the basis... She just gets refused because she didn't have the right qualifications, that's what they said. But the woman is not really happy, right? So, she actually goes into maybe lawyers to actually check that out. I don't think it went to the court, but it was already legal checking about this. And so, she comes to the lawyers and she's like, you know, I wasn't hired and I think they actually discriminate me, right? On the basis of some sort of discrimination. But this factory that didn't hire her won on the case because they hire black men and they hire white women. So, they can't discriminate because they don't discriminate black people and they don't discriminate women. But she wasn't hired because she's a black woman. Right, okay. And then this is where Kimberlé Crenshaw started looking into it and coined this thing that, you know, you can be hiring black men and white women, but then there's people who still fall through the cracks. Okay, so it's kind of trying to prevent that aspect of... That there's still almost like a binary thinking in terms of black, white, but we forget that there's also levels in between there. Yeah, basically. And that's just one example. And it means that if you're looking at the issue, you can't just look at... It doesn't mean that feminism would be safer because white women were already able to get that job. And it's not a particular racist issue because black men were able. So, it's a black feminist issue. And drawing on the same example, black feminists find themselves in that situation often where it's either of those, but now those issues and this... But of course, this term was coined. Finally, we're reaching the point where we can talk about those together, but it's still very, very, very early stages. So, it's very important to talk about it. Could you give like... I think I got the picture, but at least like a beginning one, but is there some other additional example or some of the core topics that are discussed in intersectionality? What would come in your mind? What's explored? I'm thinking about Lithuanian example. I'm not sure if we'll be able to put this on camera because there's a particular organization, but let's see. So, in Lithuania, you have a big... Well, considerably for a country quite advanced like LGBT movement in comparison to like maybe Latvia or Estonia. But that's been pushed through with an organization which is the Gay League of Lithuania, which is basically like not a monopoly, but it's like a big organization that is pushing what they say for LGBT plus rights. But the thing is that there is smaller groups organizing that actually don't have funding and most of those groups like non-binary people groups and things like that or trans people because this big organization that gets all the funding to work on LGBT rights doesn't work on trans people's rights or doesn't work on non-binary people's rights. It's very on gay and lesbian. And then you can see that some people would be like are falling through those cracks. So, that's a Lithuanian example of it. So, because I was thinking like my guessing examples and I was wondering whether that could be one of those cases where there's we're looking at gay people's rights and some people just kind of like they don't distinguish that there's also trans people for example and it's just like they put it all into one big pot and think it's all the same, but it's not really. It's not the same and this and yeah and as I mentioned there's like kind of big issues with it because in all the three countries for example this Pride is organized which is a very commercialized celebration. So, every three years you get it in each country and it's very commercialized and they celebrate that there is an advancement in LGBTQI plus rights in these countries. It's a celebration and then recently like two weeks ago I was attending a more a much smaller like free Pride Vilnius Pride which was saying there's nothing to celebrate trans people like they cannot get you know they cannot get medical help in Lithuania. They cannot transition like there's nothing to celebrate while you know the big organizations are just pushing for lesbian and gay rights already like yes you know we want that's fine. So, it's in the needs are very different. It's very different right like in terms of medication in terms of employment as well like how many you know and I don't know the numbers but in comparison how many gay people can be employed and how many trans people can be employed. My guess would be that it's way less and yeah so yeah that's that is yeah it needs to be also distinguished and there needs to be a trans justice then not just LGBTQ justice but also trans justice and non-binary justice and yeah all of that. Maybe will also be a good disclaimer to say like neither me or Vita are trans or queer people so we will like it's good to say that in the camera so it's this is what we're learning theoretically and not our own experiences that we're talking about. Which is also great because it shows or at least again that's just my my thinking that it's not you're not like biased in the sense of the other sense where you're like oh I'm a part of that community and that's why I care but you care because it just makes sense. It's kind of just almost like a social conscious so this whatever you yeah. Yeah and that's exactly the point because we are privileged in many ways I mean as women we are unprivileged in some ways still but as being white and being educated or having jobs and having this access to many platforms we are very privileged and I feel that this is a part of our responsibility to use that in order to bring all those issues and many more which we haven't mentioned yet together. So you actually mentioned that the word privileged a few times and that's where another question was coming to my mind again to just kind of figure out the landscape so from what I understand and it's kind of comes to my kind of alliance with once some of the reflections I had in the past as well like if somebody is having like do you know the how's that in English the pyramid of needs uh Maslow's pyramid have you ever bumped into it like you know first you have to take care of like shelter and food and if you take care of that then you can look at like family and then you can look at the next level and only then you have like spiritual or or something profound and his idea was that you know you have to take care of the basics and I noticed like if somebody even then it's not like necessarily a statement that it's impossible but I think if somebody is struggling to to survive on a very basic level like like food and shelter it's probably wouldn't be fair for to expect us for them to go out and search for justice for others but as I think I guess it's similar to what you're pointing that we have so many privileges like life is to a big degree so easy for us like you know those videos first world problems like you know there's third world problems and we're like oh my fridge is too full oh no you know why my bags are too heavy like those problems are like they're nothing so I guess that there's the great idea that we have the space and capacity to look at issues that are bigger than just our daily issues which are non-essential so is that kind of more or less what you mean by it doesn't it doesn't mean that you have to feel bad for being privileged yeah I mean you just have to use that you don't have to be it would be great if you could use that privilege and all do it yeah I'm repeating myself no just on the societal level that makes a lot of sense because if I've read this recently I've read this book about how the Baltics the Baltics are transitioning how the society is transitioning from the what you call the like the basic human needs so like individualism that's the first it's not the first step of the site but this is where like Europe is going from the individualism to value-based society so individualism only ends when everyone feels that their basic needs are met right right in terms of like learning yeah education but in income housing food and family like stability so there is like this theory that as soon as you yeah the as soon as you have the basic needs met in the society the society slowly starts transitioning into value-based society where people start caring about beyond themselves which makes sense right because I mean there's a law I agree on that of course but individualism also doesn't come out of the blue and there's a lot of societies who work together this but there are certain political and economical narratives which are which are pushing us to think just for ourselves because we we feel but it's more to where I would think that we should go towards more active citizenship where you're an active within your society and and you're just not waiting to be served with something and individualism relates to that a lot but it's not that we just decide that it for sure so would you say that part of your vision for creating the festival and which were about it'll be a good time to introduce that in a moment but would you say part of that vision is kind of I don't know if the word educating is like kind of doesn't go off my tongue but like like kind of level elevating that consciousness of people to realize that we do have the capacity to make a difference and there are the fact that our lives are to a great degree they're very good whether people recognize it or not some people complain about everything but but that to bring their recognition that actually there are things that we can change that there are people who need things more than we do is would you say part of your vision is to kind of elevate that communal consciousness of people or is it more focused on people who are already more focused on social yeah um I think well in terms of what would be good is that of course you want to get out of the bubble and also raise awareness basically of all these issues and educate people and things like that what will probably happen and it's also a very good vision and I'm like I'm personally really happy about this that it's first year and I feel like we'll get people who are already in different groups so they are socially active in one or another way whether they're feminists or lgbtqi plus rights activists or climate activists or whatever um and then the vision if if we presume that then the vision that becomes that all of these groups can meet together and like because the movements are breaking and or the movements are not they um have this word anyways they're small they're small groups they're small it's fragmented there's not one movement you know there it's not that um if let's say tomorrow the third and parliament said that abortion is illegal in the thing is not that all the climate activists would run you know I mean it's slowly starting to happen that people are aware that you need to like support other issues as well uh but it's not that yet so I think the ideal outcome of this festival will will be that just to strengthen the movement within and of course some awareness raising maybe so many people will come and that's great and they're really really welcome uh but yeah mostly that and we will actually be having some days where we will have facilitated planning together of how we can build more internal solidarity with each other like whether there needs to be some like whether we need to demand for some change in a current system that would allow for example for easier active participation in the political decision making or something like that that you know something like that would help all the groups so yeah this is the the the salvation but I mean I can also tell you how it started which is like sure um just quick add up on that there's a lot of group there are a lot of groups already in the region but they might be small and just knowing that there are other groups that you can work with it increases your outreach and you're more able to pursue pursue the goal that you're going for maybe on your own you're not able to do that but as a group yeah it's more possible sorry the story how it started was last year july yeah I think it was last year july and I was in Brussels working in climate justice NGO um and basically well you know the thing in the government is green peasants party that's the majority in the group yeah so you know I kind of was following what they're doing because it's quite new party in comparison to others um and they are called green which is like whoa maybe that's gonna be something progressive um and I think by I think by july it was also clear that some of the party members were openly against lgbtq um uh plus issues um I think that became clear with the European Parliament elections so I'm also I was following the European Parliament elections because when you're in Brussels you do those things um it became clear because um like this party still managed to join the green coalition of of Europe but not fully because the this green big party of the European Union said we you can't be you can't become full members because you're against lgbtq plus issues right so July I see this and I'm getting constantly frustrated because they're using the green name which which they take it as like an environmental thing like you know we're gonna plan I don't know what they're gonna do but like we're gonna plant that many trees and we're clean that many rivers and this is great we're green right and that's that's the problem that's the that's where I get very frustrated because that's not how you need to be green party or green activist or whatever so Latvia has a very similar situation they don't have a green party but they also have this sort of center uh party that you know are very good on like environmental issues uh because environment is becoming very popular you know like environmental issues and like being sustainable and that is becoming popular slowly um but then they also like the current president in Latvia is openly against lgbtq plus issues so like marriage between two people of the same gender and things like that but also you know they present themselves as progressive and things like that so I basically message my two friends in Latvia and I'm like look this is like what's happening in Latvia it's really annoying and also I don't know if many people like really know that you know that shouldn't be happening like that you can't be green and like that's it that's the only issue and Latvians are like yes like let's do something about it um and then we're like yeah let's make like a festival um and try to bring all those groups to talk about it and that's yeah that's the whole story since then things are rolling off yeah yeah well if so for the viewers to have a clear picture how would you define your I mean define maybe it's a strict word but how would you explain uh what your festival is like just a regular person so they would know because can people like any can anyone come like and jump in so so how do they know what they would be joining since we were talking about social justice and intersectionality before we wanted to ensure that everybody is able to come so it's a free festival which is amazing and also of course if you are from Poland Lithuania or Latvia it costs money to get there so that's also not an issue that's so you just have to press a few buttons online and you can come and we will and we will be so happy to see everyone because it is about people meeting together sharing the ideas and actually working on plans because there's also a lot of events which is just like yay we have all those ideas and it's great but then it's also important to work on specific steps on what should be done and what we will be doing and it's a continuous event it's not that it's the impact of the impact of it is not gonna end as the festival ends but it's gonna be a continuing event it's also a networking event for all those organizations and individuals you don't have to belong to an organization to come and there will be also fun times yes yeah yeah it's not all politics yeah there's also music arts theater there's a lot of opportunities for yeah it's still a festival and it's everybody needs some rest of course and we're not saying that only those issues are important as well culture is very important and culture is a very strong strong medium in order to portray the message yeah and to connect people as well one more thing we brought up but we didn't talk about is organizing an event during COVID I mentioned that how honest do we need to be so this weekend we had our first meeting face to face but before that the rest of the year it was zoom calls between the Latvians Lithuanians and Estonians all the time every week there's also of course been many concerns of organizing a festival in the end of August and yeah and we're still not sure whether it will happen because these times you don't know what will happen and we do want to make sure that the participants are at this like as safe as possible so like if the situation changes in August we are still on this like okay we won't do it just to make sure that everyone is going to be fine but yeah there's been considerations also of cancelling moving into next year it's really really hard to actually know but then in the end we said you know let's now we allow to go ahead with the regulations let's just go ahead and then with planning and then the last minute if we can't do it we cannot do it we will do it next year sort of thing yeah but we're still taking some extra steps like there's gonna be masks provided not all the sleeping spaces are gonna be fulfilled so people have enough space and yeah we still think it's important to have the pandemic in mind and you didn't have to the original date stayed uh for the organizing oh okay yeah first festival was supposed to happen oh now i don't remember but the first week of july but of course we moved it to as much as possible further to the end of summer yeah and for the very end i like to ask this kind of a trick question at the end yes no pressure no it's just the why i say the trick question is um if i would ask you for a summary of the whole conversation how would you what would be your summary or just one actually whatever you prefer like what's what were like the main thoughts that i obviously know i was the inquirer i was asked questions but like what's what's or like what's what are the most core of the points you made or the points you shared today which you feel like are worth mentioning again or what stands out for you social justice equity and intersectionality are very important things to look at when any sort of decisions are made it's very important to understand that just not you that you are a part of a bigger whole as a society and you have to be responsible and if you are privileged use your privilege festival why is happening on 21st and 24th of august in south of estonia everyone welcome to come and and it's been a pleasure organizing with my best friend and the team from the region and to actually be doing things it's possible even during the pandemic not going i i want to have as well like it's really wonderful you're creating such an event it's sounds like a very meaningful and timely event and it's just again it's one of those we haven't spoken that much about it you mentioned the backstory a little bit but but kind of that narrative of i always admire when people take something and they do it from nothing and obviously nothing is never nothing their connections their previous knowledge experiences but but still like nobody i i imagine nobody asked you to do or nobody said well you should do this festival and that's your you know that's your now thing to do and you just decided to take it on yourself and and do it and that's that's wonderful i think that's a great example for people that things like that can happen if you have so many things if you're frustrated about some if you're frustrated about something and you you know just don't want to keep that frustration and you actually want to do something with it yeah then go and make a festival yeah if you have an opportunity you know you can if you can be active i mean and it's important to understand when you can be active and yeah yeah nice very cool so hopefully whoever's watching this will come and meet you i mean obviously not from the states i'm sorry to americans but people from europe and around if they manage to come i mean why not