“In your opinion, what is the most glaring justice issue facing the world today? How can corporations help confront it?
The most glaring justice issue is inequality. As the gap has grown, it has dehumanised people and allowed many of those with wealth to live in bubbles of comfort, cut off from the burning issues in the world and in their own backyard. In a wealthy country like the United States, over 38 million people are food insecure, yet we spend millions to hold the notorious position as the country that incarcerates the highest number of its citizens. We also spend millions to continue the outdated, barbaric, ineffectual death penalty.
Corporations can level the playing field. They can start by ensuring they have fair pay and generous benefits for their teams to give people the chance to live a life of dignity. They can also change the systems that perpetuate the growing gap and ensure everyone a fair go.
Nelson Mandela used to say that you can judge a nation by how they treat people in their prisons. With this metric, the US would not be judged very kindly. We can do something to change this. The justice system is one we can course correct by working with government and not-for-profits to reduce incarceration levels, to give people who are coming out of prison a meaningful job, to stop broken systems like bail, and to end the death penalty. Ultimately we need to treat each other like human beings rather than statistics.”
