Today is Good Friday, when we remember what terrible injustice occurs when no one among us cries out to stop it. Yesterday in Dallas, a prominent business leader challenged a country club audience to take action to right entrenched injustice against the poor and oppressed. Rudolph Bush of the Dallas Morning News reports:
In a wide-ranging — and sometimes discomforting — speech at the Dallas Country Club, esteemed developer J. McDonald Williams sharply criticized the way the city’s rich and powerful have treated Dallas’ southern half.
“America is the land of opportunity, right?” said Williams, the former head of Trammell Crow Co.
“It’s not the land of opportunity and equality for all,” he said. “And I believe that is a threat to all of us.” …
And despite what he called the myths passed around “at the bar of the Dallas Country Club,” the poor are not simply their own victims.
“The class you are born in, that’s probably where you are going to be,” he said. “The American dream is fading for so many of our fellow citizens in Dallas.”
Williams went on to compare the slums of Dallas to the slums of Mumbai, and said it is up to the business community “to have a public conversation about how resources get prioritized.” Read full story here. The conditions that exist in Dallas exist in cities all over the country. On this Good Friday, let us all consider and pray about we can and will do to right injustice in the world all around us. (Thanks, Fr. Torey Lightcap, for highlighting this story.)