Manifesto Of The Civically Just

A Manifesto of the Civically Just by Evangeline Booth
From a very young age, I felt not only compelled by my inner self, but also encouraged by the initiative displayed by my mother and father to stand strongly behind the causes I knew in my heart to be just. However, from years of focusing my efforts on accomplishing this, I slowly came to the realization that it was no longer sufficient to merely stand behind my passive, yet well-intentioned words. One is now required to take willful action to change a situation in favor of the morally correct. I have chosen to believe that acting on empathetic intuition over factual reasoning, demonstrating feats that surpass the constricting definition of civil disobedience as part of our civic responsibilities, …show more content…
At a very young age, I was shown the great rewards one could receive by demonstrating acts of love, kindness, and compassion for others. I knew that I was very fortunate in who my parents were, and recognized that I had excellent role models to inherit these qualities from and observe them being put into practice. My father was a preacher, and these same qualities of love and empathy could be found at the core of his every sermon (Riggs). As I grew older, I realized that other men, who had been put into positions that boasted a similar power, abused it and instead decided to preach their own selfish messages to whatever gullible ears they fell upon. I was blessed, though, with a father who never focused on throwing words of shame and guilt at others. He knew that preaching favorable messages, and giving others the genuine hope of one day receiving unparalleled love and salvation, was the most effective way of gaining their attention. He believed that speaking the words in his heart was more important than saying whatever made him out to sound sophisticated or looked neat on paper (Riggs). As soon as I was old enough to truly appreciate this way of communicating with others, I adopted it as my own. As I have said in the past, “doing what is right and not what is popular” is one of the bravest things that one can do (Booth). And not only did my father preach words of commendable kindness, he practiced it in his daily life. All throughout my childhood, missionaries were invited to stay at my home, where my father would offer them food and a place to rest (Troutt). I learned many things from these missionaries as well, as I was homeschooled and was rarely away from my house and the wealth of positive influences that dwelled in it. Just as I enjoyed observing the behaviors of my father and the missionaries, I also had a strong passion for