Yesterday, on
March 24, I had the honor of serving as keynote speaker for the Women's Diversity Conference (note: my bio info isn't updated) at Adrian College. This conference is a rarity in a
conservative, rural Michigan town, spearheaded by a few courageous female
staff and faculty members whose roles at the institution and community are to
inform, enlighten, and challenge. There was a subversive quality to this
conference--it was cool to be connected to it. Enjoy!
Part 2 – Engaging Law &
Politics
So, what
is it like to be a young, queer, Black, southern female lawyer working in
Virginia on felon disenfranchisement (which I’ll explain more about shortly)?
Well, it’s slow-moving, stressful, and humbling. It requires me to constantly
adapt to my environment, navigate internal and external politics, and take
well-calculated risks. Most of all, it forces me to deal with broader questions
like whether and how engaging with power helps the people with whom I work, and
systems which we need to collectively dismantle and re-build?
I want
to address this fundamental question about strategically approaching powerful
institutions in two parts to provide context to my current work. The first part
is dissecting a myth prevalent in social justice circles. Often, it is posed
this way—is it better to work on the “inside” or “outside” the system. I don’t
think that this framing is complete. The
reality is that each of us exists within powerful institutions—we buy food
within a capitalist economy, we make consumer decisions manipulated by the
advertisement industry, we receive news generated by corporate media sources,
and most important, we know and love people who not only wholeheartedly embrace
these institutions, but we are closely connected to other humans who are
integral to the perpetuation of these institutions—whom I call decision-makers
and power-brokers.
Many of
us are influenced, and exist within, powerful institutions even if we are
actively resisting their forces. Some of us are re-shaping our relationships to
these institutions by making intentionally
choices that tip the balance of power. Therefore, the real issues that we
encounter are not whether to work “within” or “outside” the “system.” Instead,
the real issues are how we should we
exist “inside” powerful institutions. To which degree should these institutions
affect us? In my view, the existential problem for those who want to strive
toward the heart of justice is how to engage with powerful institutions without
being crushed.
The
second part is how we can positively build alternative institutions, commonly
described as “working outside the system.” Often this part is posed this way,
lodged as a grenade against those seeking justice—“if you don’t like the
current system and don’t have ideas about how to change it, shut up.” First,
this rationale is nothing more than a silencing tactic that is designed to stifle
critique and is no more productive in addressing problems that we face. Second,
I want to defend speaking out, because expressing rage, sadness, grief, and
excitement is important in itself, as serving as a mirror into the institutions
that we create, and being healing to those who are airing their reactions.
It is,
nonetheless, critical that we work to build alternative institutions that more
responsibly deal with power. And we have to remember that these alternatives are
inspired by, and informed by existing institutions of power. Here, is where the
most creative, fun, imaginative, and powerful work lives. We see people in the
US doing this work all of the time—the Highlander Folk School that taught
literacy and provided civil disobedience training during the popular Civil
Rights Movement; the South Central Farm of the late 1990s, which was at a time
the largest community garden and urban farm in the country, promoting greater
and better food access; the explosion of Ithaca Hours and other local
currencies in the last twenty years created to encourage neighborhood economies;
and even the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which put democratic consensus governance, an alternative to majority-rule
governance, on the national map. This form of resistance is the site of many
interesting cultural, social, economic and political experiments, equal in
importance to resisting powerful institutions.
One of
my favorite radical thinkers, Robin D.G. Kelley, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, writes extensively about transformative possibility. In a 2010 interview, his interviewer asked why he has so much optimism about the future.
Robin says, "It doesn't come from any abstract sense of hope. Nor does it come from any sense of denial about the political realities that confront us and the extent of power and how it works. It comes out of being a historian. There are so many historical examples of seemingly impossible circumstances in which we had these revolutionary transformations."
Without vivid imagination, no positive future would ever exist.
I
outline these frameworks because, like many other people, I try to work on both
levels—intentionally engaging with powerful institutions, and affirmatively
building alternative institutions that maintain healthier relationships with
power. Likewise, my fellowship project tries to engage and build on these
levels, creating possibilities beyond the law and electoral politics.
Virginia is one of four states that forever strips citizens’ civil rights,
including their right to vote, upon a felony conviction. This type of law is
commonly referred to as “felon disenfranchisement.”In 2004, at least 377,000
people were estimated to be disenfranchised, or in other words, alienated from
their natural civic and political rights borne from their status as US
citizens. Most notably, disenfranchisement permanently carves out a fraction of
the electorate, which is disproportionately people of color, working-class and
poor, disabled, and likely queer/transgender-identified. For example, about 55% of disenfranchised
citizens in Virginia are African-American, which make up less than 20% of the
state population.
In
Virginia, the only way for disenfranchised citizens to restore their civil
rights is through individual Governor petition. Only 1,000 people each year
restore their rights, on average. There are ten eligibility criteria that
eliminate or discourage many people from accessing the system. In the end, after
jumping every hoop and climbing every ladder, the Governor may deny an
application for any reason and no reason at all, with no appeal process.
Some
criticize the system as being fundamentally broken, unfair, and inhumane.
Others, like brilliant legal scholar, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the
Age of Colorblindness, argue that systems such as these are relics of
bygone eras that expressly intended to deny full Black citizenship. I go even
further to say that Virginia’s disenfranchisement system remains because
powerful interests (cut across race and class lines) cannot maintain their
democratic stranglehold if it is changed. I think that it is designed to
silently kill the democratic dream.
My Equal
Justice Works fellowship, the Virginia Rights Restoration Project, which I’ll
call VRRP, is an initiative aimed at building long-term infrastructure to
dismantle the existing system. VRRP’s specific goal is to engineer new,
creative strategies toward the alternative of automatic restoration upon
sentence completion, which was necessary after two hard-fought but lost
campaigns to pressure previous Governors into changing the law.
The overarching
strategy of the project is to “open the system up.” The prediction is the more
it is forced to function the way it is purported to work, the harder it is to
sustain, because as the system must accommodate to provide greater access, and
more people can access it, the sooner its insidious discriminatory purpose
becomes clear. It will transform—the uncertainty is merely when and how.
Specifically,
VRRP has a three “micro-strategies” designed to add pressure to the system.
They consist of direct service and direct-action strategies, disabling
strategies, and dismantling strategies, though, in actuality, it is only the
accumulation of these approaches that can lead to change. At nearly the
six-month mark, community members and I have distributed over a 1000 rights
restoration guides, setup rights restoration clinics and clinic programs across
the state including at five colleges, begun
building a grassroots strategy with state organizers, forced the state
government to surrender data revealing the law’s significant impact, facilitated
greater access through document translation, and challenged long-standing
beliefs through legal research that the only avenues to change is by Governor
executive order or constitutional amendment. There is much more to do,
particularly as we are in the midst of forming a litigation strategy to better
position grassroots forces. Nevertheless, VRRP’s intention is to form a praxis,
on which to aggressively engage the law and politics in our favor.
In a
more concrete sense these strategies mean that I receive a lot of phone calls
from people who need help, which I happily answer. I end up in various law
libraries throughout the Commonwealth, digging through microfiche, which is
fascinating. I find myself facilitating
webinar trainings on Saturdays, which I gladly do. And I come up with a dozen
ideas about things to try each week, of which one might be worth looking into.
Sometimes
I find myself doing unexpected things. For example, I’ve been assisting a
person named Tony Suggs with a pardon application for several months. A pardon
is a request to the Governor to officially “forgive” a person for a crime or
criminal history. Tony had his rights restored in 2006, and helped my
organization during our previous campaign. Now he hopes to work in the local
school system as a coach to fulfill his passion to mentor young people headed
toward the criminal system. Though a pardon far from guarantees that he can
overcome the school system’s rigid rules about hiring people with felony
convictions, it will greatly increase his chances.
Tony’s
story is unique and the kind that receive “official forgiveness” from the
state. He suffered from severe physical and sexual abuse as a young child. At
age 10, his parents abandoned him and his younger brother in the family home,
forcing them to go hungry. His father eventually put him to work packaging his
dope, and soon he founded himself in the street life. But rather than being an
anonymous addict, he evidently was a boxing prodigy. He became the top ranked
boxer in the world (in his weight class) and favored to win Gold at the 1988
Seoul Olympics.
Throughout
his ascent, he struggled to fight his addiction, and lost control upon losing
his first child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). He was a qualifying
match away when he was re-arrested for probation violation, after he failed the
mandatory drug test. In Tony’s mind, he lost everything. He voluntarily entered
rehab after his jail stint, got clean, addressed his emotional pain with
support groups and therapy, and lives very differently. For over twenty years
he has been a devoted father of Little Anthony, surrogate father to his
brother’s six children, an active church member, and community mentor. It has
been important for me to learn Tony’s story, and work with him on his petition.
Although I never intended to complete pardon petitions through VRRP, its
personal meaning to Tony is a radically political act.
But
let’s take a step back for a moment to examine law as a powerful institution.
Can the law really help disenfranchised citizens? [Why?] An underlying
assumption of my fellowship project is that it can, yet it is an assumption
that I question every day. Ultimately I believe, as many radical lawyers do,
that the law can only play a limited role in its own self-correction.
Law, as
an institution, is a difficult place to engage with power for numerous reasons.
As legal scholar and activist, Dean Spade, Assistant Professor at Seattle
University School of Law, explains how social movements are affected by their
over-reliance on legal institutions, his essay, “For Those Considering LawSchool”:
“Most
legal work maintains systems of maldistribution, it does not transform
them…Very
often, legal change that emerges in these moments heavily compromises the
demands of grassroots movements in ways that end up providing symbolic victory
and possibly a small amount of material change to the least vulnerable of the group
who the demands were about, but leave most people the same or worse off. US law
is fundamentally structured to establish and uphold settler colonialism, white
supremacy and capitalism---the legal system will not dismantle these things. The
idea that people who want to make change will make the biggest impact by
becoming lawyers and bringing precedent-setting lawsuits needs to be released
in the face of what movement history reveals.
Once you let go of that idea, you can start to think about what role lawyers
should or could have in social movements and evaluate whether you see yourself
in those roles.”
Dean
Spade is largely responding to decades of landmark civil right victories for
LGBT people. For example, even as laws like the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd
Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 are enacted, LGBT and queer violence
continues to be as ruthless as ever, particularly for queer/trans,
working-class and poor people of color who are already systemic targets of
institutional abuse by police, courts, and prisons. Law doesn’t solve these
problems but can bolster the positions of broad-based movements that, as Dean
Spade believes is historically effective, of making demands that exceed the law. His advice to understand
our roles as people engaging with law-making institutions extends not only to
prospective law students but to any person wishing to enter electoral politics.
Within
the institution of law lies perhaps the most controversial institution at the
moment: electoral politics. The optics
of electoral politics may seem counterintuitive to justice-seekers because it
is about maintaining power with, and over others, without full acknowledgement
that it is the very purpose of electoral politics. It can also be among the
more challenging institutions to engage with as a person committed to
collective justice because it is about individual, self-preservation of that
power. It can prove difficult to align collective values with a desire to
maintain a powerful position, from which a person can wield influence on the
local, state, or national levels. I admire women and anyone else carefully
trying to achieve this balance.
These
tensions come up in VRRP. This year, for the first time, a white Republican
lawmaker introduced an automatic rights restoration bill. I was excited because
his interest in the issue changed the politics around a proposal that
historically starts each year dead in the water. This lawmaker introduced a
narrow proposal that would automatically restore voting rights for so-called
non-violent offenders because, based on his calculations, it was the most
politically palpable. Before I learned
about his bill I had “shopped” around the idea to other lawmakers about
separating the two civil rights stripped by state law into separate bills. My
rationale is if voting rights in the hot-button issue that stalled proposals
year after year, then, why not sever the issues disenfranchised people could at
least restore some of their rights, if passed. Sound reasonable? This was
apparently an exceptionally bad idea. I was told that separating the issues
would exhaust the limited political capital that existed for lawmakers to
consider this issue. In other words, lawmakers would grow tired of making laws.
The worst part was it was good advice, even though the bill died in
subcommittee.
As a
long-time legislative observer and one-time state lobbyist, I’ve seen legislators
wishing to maintain a delicate balance between their self-preservation to maintain
power and forceful advocacy to represent their beliefs. The entrenched political
challenge of our time may be this: how do you peacefully and effectively govern
diverse communities, states, and nations with others who hold fundamentally
different values?
On one
hand, there is the Barack Obama philosophy, which consists of forging consensus
by finding common ground. On the other hand, there is Tea Party philosophy,
which consists of abandoning all sense of self-preservation to govern according
to rigid but sincerely-held principles. These philosophies are not left versus
right—they are not even purely are purely ideological. I think that neither
philosophy reflects the true nature of the problem because it is distorted by
choices within a “winner-take-all” two-party system.
I
believe that the main source of our present-day political tensions is between
those who want to invest and nurture public institutions and those who want to
demolish and undermine them. Developing a political agenda around protecting
public institutions and organizing electoral support around this guiding
principle has the potential to disrupt the prevailing status quo.
My only
other insight comes from popular education teacher and theorist, Paulo Freire,
explained in his leftist classic, Pedagogy
of the Oppressed, that the cure to oppression is our own humanity. The
heart of justice resides within our institutions: people. If we humanize our
politics, we have hope for better government. Let me be clear. Humanizing politics
is more than civil discourse. We see, after all, how collegial lawmakers respectfully
cooperate to pass devastating laws that hurt other people and our natural
environment, often in the name of economic prosperity. These politics are a
false choice. The choice to humanize politics, in my mind, means measuring your
actions against your values to sustain our collective well-being. These are
moral struggles, which are entirely burdensome to take on for public scrutiny,
but are utmost essential.
People who
not only engage with, but enter into, electoral politics must be vigilant in
noticing to the degree which they are being changed by the politics and
politics are changing them. What are my values? Do these values promote
collective well-being? Do I feel as if I have some control? Is this the most
meaningful contribution to the world that I can make? These are questions that
I ordinarily ask as a lawyer and political player, working in one of the most
conservative states in the country. I think any person intentionally engaging
in law and politics must worry about the direction in which she is
moving—toward her heart of justice, or more distant.
