“HERE WE ARE, AMAZINGLY ALIVE”: HOLDING OURSELVES TOGETHER WITH AN ETHIC OF SOCIAL JUSTICE IN COMMUNITY WORK

Abstract

In this paper, the authors describe their orientation to social justice based community work. The tenets of this work include: an ethical orientation towards staying alive in the work, descriptions of social justice, engaging with a hopeful skepticism, responding to privatized pain with justice-doing, and contesting the individualism of “burnout”. This is followed by reflections on the role of solidarity, the sacred, revolutionary love, resistance, and an ethic of belonging in the commitments to staying fully alive in community work. The authors discuss the importance of forging communities of care with other practitioners through shared and collectively held ethics.