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Centered Leaders Confront Injustice

As a leader, are you often confronted with injustice? Do you witness actions and events that are simply unfair?

Anyone who lives long enough will be frequently faced with injustice -- whether it's felt personally or witnessed effecting other people. Many people ignore and walk away from injustice. It's too hard of a battle, it's not my fight, it's not the right time...any number of rationalizations can stop us from doing what in our hearts we know we should do: confront evil.

Did I say evil?

Yes, injustice is a kind of evil. It may not even be intentional, but it must not be permitted to stand, because it gains strength and credibility the longer that it does. When we have come to permit and then accept injustice it becomes an institutionalized part of our lives.

After thousands of years of injustice, it's easy to think that it's already too late, that we're all really institutionalized to injustice until it is practically an invisible part of our value system. But as late as it is, as long as it's been, it does not have to be that way.

Every day that the opportunity arises to voice out against injustice is an opportunity that we must make. Nonviolently but persistently. Compassionately but with insistence. Harming, exploiting, and oppressing other people is wrong.

Centered leaders confront injustice.

The time to confront injustice is immediate and with unending persistence.

Are you ready to speak out against what is unfair?

-- Douglas Brent Smith



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