by Hillary Strobel | Featured Contributor
Whatever side of the aisle you sit on, where you live, what you do for a living, who you care about, what fuels your dreams, the time for social justice is now.
We’ve seen so much anger and foment in the past week. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised by this. When one group pulls ahead in the race, the other groups begin to panic. This is it for us! The end for our dreams! We will never succeed while others are succeeding!
I think we know much, much better than that. I’m convinced of it. We know better.
Where do we begin?
This work begins with education, and lots of it. Find out what “the other side” in your battle thinks and feels about the world, as hard as that may be to swallow. We will not succeed if we don’t know what we’re up against. And I mean that we need- desperately bad- to get very far out of our comfort zone to find out what we need to do.
I’ve spent the week reading articles written by the Men’s Rights Movement- which are harsh, to be sure- but it’s crucial to know what they think and feel about the Women’s Rights Movement. This is the key to any counteroffensive.
Pick your “cause” and put yourself to sleep at night getting to know it inside out. This is crucial.
What comes next?
When you know what you’re up against, you’ll be able to see where to start. It could be something as simple as this: read the articles by the Men’s Rights Movement, and reach out to the authors. Start dialogues. Do not engage in the Shock and Awe approach. You’re there to make a friend, and that’s how this has to go in order to work. This is where we infiltrate.
Then, take those conversations to your friends, coworkers, family. This is where you devise your strategy, your long game. This is something that we need to frame ourselves in for years to come, because it will take that. No quick fixes, ladies.
What do you want to accomplish?
Part of making your strategy for getting ahead, for empowering all of us, is visualizing the future. Is it a woman president? Good. Is it your daughter’s ultimate success? Right on. Is it getting that promotion you’ve wanted for three years? Power, sister.
The most necessary part of this, no matter what else matters, is that we all come up together. We are women, good people, and highly motivated to make sure that the success matters for others. When we run that race, we shouldn’t be thinking to ourselves that another’s success stunts our own. Success for any one of us benefits all of us, because that’s the reality we live in.
I am that social justice warrior.
Here’s where I want to get up in your faces about that communal success. It has to spread across demographics. It simply has to. All of this effort means nothing if one group steps on another during the long climb up. It means everything if one group lends a hand to the other.
If you are in a box about that, get out of it. Challenge yourselves, challenge me, challenge others to do better and be more. There is a world of sisters outside of that box who will be more than happy to see you there. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the path to social justice, and the path to changing the world.
Now, right now, GO. DO. THIS.
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Hillary Strobel is a single mother, fierce learner and teacher, ardent lover of life, and the ass-kickin’ President and CEO of The Flyways, Inc. We publish story projects that are interactive and highly creative, and 25% of profits are donated to support social justice causes: from business incubators serving vulnerable women, to agencies working to reduce recidivism rates.
Hillary also runs a consultancy for businesses and organizations seeking to meaningfully build social impact programs from the ground up. The three pillars that support this mission are: designing outcomes and developing goals, measuring impact and creating a universal metric, and quantifying results to the public.
After a long and varied career in just about every kind of Liberal Arts field imaginable, and in every type of job — volunteer, employee, entrepreneur, non-profit worker, and freelancer — Hillary has decided to marry her two deepest passions: storytelling and social justice. The results have surpassed her wildest expectations.
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Hillary Strobel is a single mother, fierce learner and teacher, ardent lover of life, and the ass-kickin’ President and CEO of The Flyways, Inc. We publish story projects that are interactive and highly creative, and 25% of profits are donated to support social justice causes: from business incubators serving vulnerable women, to agencies working to reduce recidivism rates.
Hillary also runs a consultancy for businesses and organizations seeking to meaningfully build social impact programs from the ground up. The three pillars that support this mission are: designing outcomes and developing goals, measuring impact and creating a universal metric, and quantifying results to the public.
After a long and varied career in just about every kind of Liberal Arts field imaginable, and in every type of job — volunteer, employee, entrepreneur, non-profit worker, and freelancer — Hillary has decided to marry her two deepest passions: storytelling and social justice. The results have surpassed her wildest expectations.
