Courts ALONE Will Not Save Us
Sigh. I love my movement partners, I really do. But the lack of coordination and respect for what each of us brings to the table is SHOWING.
I have been seeing and hearing from people I respect an increasing cry that “the courts will not save us.” I am here to tell you that this messaging is overly simplistic, short-sighted, and dangerous.
The message I can get behind—the HONEST message—is “the courts ALONE will not save us.” To act as though any means of reform and revolution will be enough without also contemplating our judicial system is the folly that got us here in the first place.
Progressives constantly ignored the power of the judiciary, didn’t fight controversial appointments, didn’t fight FOR jurists who would protect our liberties and democracy, didn’t invest in building a pipeline that had a shared understanding of legal interpretation, didn’t talk about the importance of the courts in the same breath as they advocated for their policy reforms or candidacy (I can go on); and Conservatives capitalized on this weakness. They now reap the benefits of our apathy. They will continue to do so if we maintain this disdain for the legal system. We must fight for the vision of the legal system we need in order to protect the advances we make organizing for the world we want to see.
As long as the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land we live in, we MUST include our legal system in our growing list of things to dismantle and reform. And there are many of us out here, myself included, trying to do that work. Don’t let the success of the Roberts Court fool you into thinking there isn’t a counter effort afoot. As we fight for a legal system that will affirm rights, not take them away; that will open our democracy, not destroy it; that will work for the individual, not the powerful, there is no need to discount our work to lift up the important and necessary work YOU are doing outside of the the legal system.
Our country is on fire. We need solutions from all sectors working together. The courts alone might not save us, but we’re not saving ourselves without them.
