Previous Years
2022
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This Good Friday of 2022 we find ourselves battered and weary from yet another year of struggling against the challenges of disease, injustice, war and destruction that we face at every turn. This is a very frightening time for many.
Yet facing that fear together is what gives us hope, especially on Good Friday. This day marks the failure of the powers of evil to put an end to the revolutionary message that love is stronger than hate.
We call this day GOOD because we have seen and lived the truth of that radical love. We see it in our people as we continue to march, speak, vote, create, sacrifice, and care for one another, even when we are weary and worn. In all these ways, we bring Light into our beautiful world.
As poet Amanda Gorman illuminated for us:
Even as we’ve grieved, we’ve grown; even fatigued, we’ve found that this hill we climb is one we must mount together…. The truth is, hope isn’t a promise we give. It’s a promise we live. There is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.
–Amanda Gorman, If You’re Alive, You’re Afraid, New York Times, January 23, 2022, and The Hill We Climb, January 20, 2020 inaugural poem.
YOU are invited to join us for the 2022 Good Friday Walk for Justice as we celebrate all the ways in which we are accompanying one another in the work of creating a more peaceful, loving and just world. Though we cannot gather in person this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we encourage you to pray this modern-day Way-of-the-Cross in the safety of your homes with members of your household. A video recording of the Station Prayers will be available if you want to pray along with a group.
Kryss Chupp, Dan Dale, Kathleen Desautels, Kayla Jackson, Nancy Jones, Claudia Lucero, Amber Naylor, and Martha Pierce, Luke Sullivan
2021
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Our collective community remembers that we belong to each other. We believe we have the power to rise up together and lean into the strength of our foundational bonds of justice for all.
We have the power to roll away stones of white supremacy, greed, and state violence. As we roll the stones away, we commit to co-create systems in which resources are shared, allowing our imaginations to generate radically new ways of living and thriving in a more just society.
We believe that the stone of injustice will be rolled away in our rejection of the status quo. As Easter people we recommit ourselves to choose actions of transformation. Together we pledge our efforts to bring about greater justice for all peoples and Earth itself.
Kryss Chupp, Dan Dale, Kathleen Desautels, Sharon Hunter-Smith, Nancy Jones, Rachel Lyons, Amber Naylor, and Martha Pierce
2020 (40th Anniversary)
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During this extended period of physical distancing + social solidarity, the need for “Hope Rising in Courageous Community” is more important than ever. Please share this resource widely and take heart in the words of author and poet, Alice Walker, who reminds us that “Human sunrises are happening all over the earth,” and that the work to “bring peace, light, compassion” to this world shines on.
–Kryss Chupp, Kathleen Desautels, Sharon Hunter Smith, Kayla Jackson, Nancy Jones, Rachel Lyons, Amber Naylor, Martha Pierce, Alicia Rynkowska
2019
We live in a post-truth culture, where “alternative facts” replace actual facts and polarizing judgments have more weight than straightforward evidence. In our post-truth world, it is not that the truth, science and facts have ceased to exist but that they are so easily dismissed.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. once proclaimed, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Please join us to boldly proclaim the truth and call out the lies and to be a people that live the truth so that we can create a world of justice and peace. We are grateful to be joined in the Good Friday Walk for Justice by groups and organizations that are living the truth in action and awakening.
Found in the Archives
The Good Friday Walk for Justice brings participants together for an annual walk on the streets of Chicago to commemorate the story of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and to remember the suffering of people in need in the community and around the world. This video shares photographs and documents from the collection of the 8th Day Center for Justice, the organization that founded the event in 1980. Follow the history of the Good Friday Walk and its over 40 years of raising awareness and bringing people together around social justice and human rights issues.
Project planning and research for this video by Loyola University Chicago students Jose De Leon, Sam Lilly, Jordan Pollitt, Kevin Sikera, Kaleb Thomas, and Erin Tien.