“If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time…But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

–Lilla Watson

Last Monday, legendary social justice lawyer Bill Quigley spoke at Columbia Law School. It’s rare to meet such a warm and approachable Elder of social justice lawyering, and we were delighted to have him.

Quigley began by quoting Watson, above, and one of his main points was that social justice lawyering can’t just be about what you “give” – it’s also about what you get.

“We can get joy and inspiration in this work – we have to be actively involved with the people,” Quigley said, encouraging us to shrink the professional distance between clients and ourselves. These relationships, he said, can be “the most invigorating, life-getting experiences.”

That’s very appealing. I want the life-getting stuff. There’s a misery to my detached immersion in human rights deprivations, my distanced entanglement with recalcitrant problems at home and abroad. And in my too-few experiences with people in affected communities, I have regretted my shyness, my clumsy smiles.

Yet, to be anything but awkward seemed presumptuous, sometimes.

What makes me good enough to be a friend, what entitles me to something beyond a professional relationship?

In Waston’s (questionable) parlance, why do I get to have my own liberation, just because I’m working with you on yours?

Over the tea you so warmly share with me, the biscuits you’ve just bought for my visit, I needn’t even bring up our clashing identities, our class and culture differences, how my privilege cuts down your life, how it must, and how I’m unlikely to ever really give it up, even as I try and act against all of this.

Tea time far away... or in an imperial version of liberation? Attribution: Carlos Zembrano

Maybe Quigley isn’t saying that I should get to have new friends, but that I should give in to the emotional impact these experiences may have on me. I shouldn’t feign an impossible detachment. Maybe I should claim my secondary trauma, and even transform it.

But as one of my colleagues noted, this approach unhappily recalls oblivious student essays: how studying abroad made Joey Smith, formerly of Idaho, realize that people in India are poor, but still happy. And beautiful, so beautiful in their misery, wearing pretty colors. Happier and wiser than us, with our depraved wealth. And maybe Joey will try yoga. There’s a new studio nearby his first Brooklyn apartment.

About this contributor:  Naureen Shah is a writer, researcher and legal advocate focusing on international human rights issues. Read more from this contributor