There is no community practice that is neutral with respect to justice: A call for activist community praxis

Our community research and action either contributes to social justice or it serves to maintain the prevailing power structure. In the ongoing fight for racial justice, our practice either contributes to racial equity or sustains racial inequity. There is no community practice that is apolitical or neutral with respect to justice. Too often, our knowledge of deep social inequities and their contribution to human suffering “fails to translate into a lived praxis that adequately contests the multiplicity of ways racism, capitalism, homophobia, privilege, and sexism are made manifest.” The varied manifestations of community psychology practice are both pragmatic and utopian. We seek to engage in community research and action that responds to the immediate needs of communities and minimizes suffering even as we imagine a more just world. But our predominant theories, perspectives, and practices are inadequate for meeting the critical issues that we face. To respond to the intersecting crises of our times we need to move beyond approaches tied to the political and social philosophy of liberalism and employ radical imagination. We must envision radically different systems and deploy “visionary pragmatism” to help in the development of a more politically engaged praxis