Harvard Law School, thirty-five years out

My apologies for a long period of silence in this space. 2020 has been a year we will all remember, with the Covid-19 pandemic, adjustments to our work lives and family patterns, and of course the incessant distractions of the Trump Presidency. I should also admit to the reality that, like a true gaslighting victim, I simply could not keep up. There is an other-worldly quality to this presidency: can it really be this mad? Are there really 40 percent of the American population who think this chaos and cruelty is worth repeating? When I hear well-educated people say that Democrats (all of them, presumably) are a greater threat to democracy and public health than is Trump, I entertain thoughts of insanity, a version of what the right sometimes calls “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” We cannot possibly be starting with the same set of facts. Or is tribalism this deep?

There’s a long list of things I’d love to have written about recently: the contorted display of hypocrisy of the United States Senate in rushing through the nomination of Amy Comey Barrett two weeks before a general election and during a pandemic, after refusing Merrick Garland a hearing nine months before an election; the ever-widening influence of the Electoral College’s distorting impact on our elections and its ties to the country’s history of slavery, and the hypothetical scenarios of what might happen if the country has yet another disputed election and/or an incumbent who refuses to concede defeat, to name a few.

But today I’ll simply share some thoughts I posted on my Harvard Law School reunion page, where we were asked to reflect on the current state of the world. My words reflect both my anxiety about what we seem to be losing, and — I hope — my resolve to stay in the fight for a better world.

“I confess to experiencing no small amount of heartbreak as I write this in late October, 2020.  I care about democracy; I care about fairness and justice for all; I care about the integrity of the law; I care about the health of the planet.  I see all under threat to a degree that is unprecedented in my lifetime. 

Somewhere in my youth, I developed the notion that we are entitled to progress as an inexorable, inevitable, process —  essentially a right.  I was setting myself up for disappointment I now see.  One person’s progress is another person’s threat, it turns out, so there is nothing inevitable about any of this. 

The distinction between hope and optimism is one I find helpful.  There are reasons to be hopeful, despite all the evidence that makes optimism seem like fanciful denial.  I try to remain hopeful, and add “my spoonful” where I can — writing blogs and letters to the editor, making targeted contributions, speaking up when I have a chance, and trying to model what I think responsible citizenship looks like. 

Before I was a lawyer, I was briefly a history teacher.  United States history is a passion. I am struck by the degree to which the tensions we are currently experiencing are echoes of past tensions unresolved and past wounds unhealed.  Our classmate Bryan Stevenson has so eloquently spoken of America’s twin sins of genocide and slavery, and how our refusal to confront what lies at the core of those original sins is, if we are honest enough to admit it, at the core of our current troubles.  We don’t want to face the dark side of our past and what it has brought to our present.  So if these days seem like what you imagined the 1850’s to be like, you may not be wrong!  See https://bit.ly/3jo3GZ3 (the “Know Nothing” Party).

Let me end with some hope:  I hope to see Citizens United overturned and the Supreme Court admit that they got it wrong:  money is not speech.  I hope to see an end to the death penalty.  I hope see an end to the Electoral College. I hope to see every person’s vote count equally some day.  I hope to see the U.S. Congress become a functional organization.  I hope to see the Pentagon have to fight for funding as hard as schools do.  I hope to be around when there are no more videos of unarmed people being killed in encounters with police.  I hope to see health care accepted as a basic human right.  I hope to see an end to voter suppression.  I hope to see an end to gerrymandering. I hope that the pursuit of truth will make a comeback.   I hope to see the day when people realize that with eight billion of us sharing a fragile place, we need to do better.”

Hope is a start. But moving things forward takes more than prayer (though some might disagree.) Contributing “one’s spoonful” requires action. It requires getting in the arena and risking rejection and injury. It requires the understanding that only by collective action do things change, and collective action means you and me getting out of our chairs and our fingers off the keyboard and joining hands with others in the fight for a better world. So forgive me for pausing here, I need to go make some phone-banking calls.