a feeling of justice

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer..." 

Robert F. Kennedy

I am having trouble putting words together this week, and it is not just because I have been spending all my waking moments in front of my computer, working on a final production draft for Somewhere Safer, crafting the last few pieces of the play’s puzzle.

It is because this week and the week before that have been, in my personal political sphere, explosive weeks.  I have learned a lot about the practical aspects of the American judicial system and the inner workings of state legislatures. I have burned up with anger and felt the bottom of my stomach drop with sadness, and through it all I have endeavored to stay focused on the work at hand, the work of making a play, because it was something I could do, and keep doing, and it was a way to put humanity back into the world, back into an exploration of an unjust system.

One of the questions at the core of Somewhere Safer that I have been thinking a lot about this week: at what point do we give up our humanity? At what point are we so attached to ideology, to being right about what we believe, that we fail to see that at the center of every system and every principle is a lonely human struggle?

At the core of these struggles this week, in Texas, in Florida, in Ohio, in North Carolina, I found hope in the human mess that came out in response, swinging their hearts in their hands, opening their mouths, exercising their rights as American citizens to take up space in their own government.  When we stand, shoulder to shoulder, with other humans, we locate  our own struggle, our own lives, our own hearts, in a larger, bigger fight. We become a  body made up of bodies, thinking, feeling, bodies, fragile and sad and joyful, holding up history with our own two hands.

Somewhere Safer opens August 11th at the NYC International Fringe Festival. You can contribute to the play here and read a preview with Lauren here.