It's Not About Fairness... Justice is About Healing

"... fairness is not a firm enough foundation for the struggle for
justice. It can even be an obstacle. For example it would be fair to
say, 'Since you have killed, abducted, and traumatized our children we
get to do it to yours.' That would certainly be even-handed, which is
what fairness is about. But it won't bring us closer to a just world.
In fact it would make it harder to achieve. A just world requires
broader thinking. During treaty negotiations in 1876, Tatanka Yotanka
(known in English as Sitting Bull) proposed a more appropriate
framework. 'Let us put our minds together,' he is quoted as telling
his opponents. 'And see what kind of future we can build for our
children.'
 ...
We don't know how things will turn out. We don't know what conditions
and challenges the future will hold. But we hope to make it a better
one than the one offered by the CEOs and generals. We hope that rather
than demanding concessions from a system that doesn't care about our
peoples, we will be bringing to life a world more in line with what
our hearts know is possible. A shift from demanding to creating. From
fighting to planting. It will no doubt be complicated. Liberation
isn't easy, just necessary.

And I don't believe it will be fair. Fairness is about accounting.
Justice is about healing. Accounting involves deducting our claims of
harm from the oppressors' balance sheet. Healing is about asking what
we most deeply need ... and offering it to each other. The 'bigger
question'—the one that can ground us and tease solidarity from the
divisive legacy and charred ruins of the age of greed—is the one
Tatanka Yotanka set forth fifteen decades ago: the question is 'what
kind of future we can build for children.' It's the only one large
enough to hold all our wounded hearts."

It's Not About Fairness from The Land Knows the Way by Ricardo Levins Morales
img from his website