ABSTRACT
Program planning based upon the concepts of social justice is all too often missing where the focus is generally on short-term change. Politicians, once elected, are focused on the short-term goal of reelection; corporate leaders are focused on the next income report. Government funding focuses more on efficiency than effectiveness, and private philanthropies issue grants in single-year or short multi-year horizons, once again based upon showing short-term results. At the same time, planners in the human services, whether focused on the individual, community or geographic levels, specific population groups or agency services, are planning with and for people. Because we are working with people, the results we seek are often long-term. We must name the change and engage in the time-consuming effort to educate about social inequity to ensure that people understand the basis for change and how that will improve the lives of people and communities. Activist and founder of Critical Resistance, Rose Braz, underscored the importance of this in a 2008 interview, “A prerequisite to seeking any social change is in the naming of it. In other words, even though the goal we seek may be far away, unless we name it and fight for it today, it will never come” (Bennett, 2008).
