At the Boston University School of Law commencement in 2018, Bryan Stephenson of The Equal Justice Initiative named several integral elements to justice work, notably Hope and Proximity.
He said that there are two groups of people in the world, “…those with hope and those working against those with hope.”
He also spoke of being proximate to those who have the specific problems which concern anyone looking out into the world and seeing all the problems and struggling with how to solve them.
Experiments in Civic Hope
An Experiment in Civic Hope was created in response to the recent pandemic, which shut down theatre in New York City and marked a seminal moment for seeing cultural, regional and communal divides across The United States.
The first experiment was a collaboration between The Living Theatre, The South Bend Civic Theatre and two centers at The University of Notre Dame: The Eck Institute for Global Health and The Center for Social Concerns.
Other Experiments in Civic Hope have happened and are on going in
South Bend, IA - Scranton, PA - White Plains, NY -
New York City, NY -South Florida - New England
