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As I woke on the day after Donald Trump's election back to the White House, I realized a painful truth—The country I love doesn't love me back. I sought a vision of a better country that cares for all, and instead it sent me a leader whose only concern is the destruction of anyone who disagrees with him.
During these moments of despair, whether after an election, or a Supreme Court case, or senseless political violence, I think of the courage it took for those who came before us to build a world they had never seen. I think of Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley, Charles Hamilton Houston, Pauli Murray—all those men and women who loved this country and pushed the nation to face its unfulfilled promises. They knew, as we know now, that a democracy cannot thrive under the weight of apartheid, hypocrisy, and segregation. They laid the foundation of justice, believing fiercely in what democracy could be, even as they lived in a land that denied them its promise.
And here we are, in a moment where the slide from democracy toward white supremacy and fascism has already begun. This is not a new story. We've seen it before—in Reconstruction's promise cut short, and now in the unraveling of rights—reproductive freedom, voting, affirmative action, LGBTQ, and the protections of immigrants. This is not democracy's true face; this is the hatred we fight to overcome.
Yes, democracy has long been imperiled. Yet it remains our charge to protect it—for ourselves, for everyone who believes in its dignity and freedom.
We live in an echo of the civil rights movement. The passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act outlawed de jure segregation in public schools, employment, and public accommodations, and protected the right to vote for Black Americans. Gen X and millennials have experienced greater freedoms than their parents and grandparents. Yet they now face a nation in peril that seeks to roll back the fundamental freedoms of the civil rights movement.
Civil rights activist Diane Nash once spoke about the civil rights movement as powered by agape—a love for humanity that drives us to justice. Now, that same spirit calls us forward. If you've ever wondered what you would have done in the civil rights movement of the past, look at what you're doing now. This is our generation's fight. This is our Selma, our march.
We have been taught to rely on a legal system that is centered around ideas of control and the maintenance of power. This understanding of the "rule of law" has created a society plagued by division and fear rather than connection and joy. The solutions to our greatest challenges—civil rights, democracy, the prison industrial complex, gun violence, and much more—are not working because they react to the command-and-control nature of our laws rather than transcend them. Landmark cases like Shelley v. Kraemer, which barred restrictive covenants, and Loving v. Virginia, which struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage, grounded the civil rights movement of the '60s around tangible legal achievements. Similarly, the next phase of the civil rights movement needs to have its own legal framework to protect and expand the rights of an ever growing, increasingly diverse population. But to create lasting change, we need to shift the way we think about the law itself.
If we espouse freedom and liberty for all, we must also codify compassion and love into our lawmaking. Those making or enforcing laws must first seek to understand those who will be affected by their decisions. This sense of respect for the dignity and humanity of others is missing from our current legal framework, and this is what has created the fractured and splintered nation we see today.
Like those who came before us, who refused to let the hatred articulated in Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson define their struggle, we know this is not the end. Sixty years after those brutal betrayals of justice, the Supreme Court overturned school segregation in Brown v. Board, paving the way for the justice we continue to fight for today.
Now is the time to stand together, with power and with love, and push our country toward the future it deserves. Let us move forward with courage, purpose, and a love that recognizes our interconnectedness. Black suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper famously said, "We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity." One hundred years later, Dr. Martin Luther King echoed this truth, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
It is in our shared humanity that we find our power. It is love that will carry us forward. We won't give up on each other or the promise of freedom for ourselves and our children.
Alanah Odoms is the executive director of ACLU of Louisiana.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
