It’s Time To Organize (part 1: foundations)

Before I applied to law school, I spent time catching up on some of the books that my Texas public education had failed to expose me to, one of which was the autobiography of Assata Shakur, a book that I was surprised to hear reference to in a video we watched within the first weeks of the class for which I write this blog. Within the first few chapters of the book, I remember penning in an asterisk on the page when Assata first referenced her legal team who not only represented her, but stood by and supported her as she was being unjustly persecuted for fearlessly speaking out against the US government’s implementation and perpetuation of structural violence against Black people. 

Shortly after starting the book which my friend had graciously given me their copy of, one of my aunties gifted me a special edition of TIME magazine all about Thurgood Marshall. It could have been coincidence, but I started to see a common thread that I tenuously started to follow. When it comes to pursuits of social justice, of which I had always been deeply involved, the law and/or being knowledgeable in exercising it, might come in handy, I thought. It took a few more months until I had woven this musing into purpose and intention, but, if you had a chance to read my previous post, you can see what happened there (because here I am). 

The summer of 2020 before law school, I was ready to engage in this justice-oriented lineage I had started to read about– the one that vehemently defended freedom fighters, that brazenly battled racist/ableist/misogynist institutions, that was in pursuit of the justice that I was hearing echoed all around me in a summer of uprisings for racial justice and reckoning. Years since the movement’s inception, I was surrounded by chants of “Black Lives Matter!” on the streets of my hometown, and was asked to give a speech at a protest we organized after the murder of George Floyd by the police. Just a few months later, with the support of my community and ideals, I was ready to go to Martin Luther King Junior Hall. Here, I was sure, with the name and legacy of Dr. King, was a place where his dreams were actively being lived, implemented, and acted upon in pursuit of our elusive collective sense of liberation or at the very least, justice.

In the midst of a global pandemic that forced us all to further reckon with our collective safety, I could witness that freedom dreaming was also coming into conversation with what disability justice advocates had said for decades, that care is paramount to our collective wellbeing. Both with the gravity of the moment and with a hope of what we could shape together, many of my incoming class and I moved across the country to newly rented apartments in a new town to live with strangers and start our graduate school careers. 

Two weeks before starting this scholastic endeavor, we were informed that we would not be meeting each other face-to-face soon as anticipated, but rather would be conducting our first year of graduate school online via Zoom. I was lucky for my beautiful apartment, my incredibly wonderful roommate, and my having worked online for the whole previous year, because I was in a place of relative comfort and privilege while starting my law school journey that allowed me some distance from it feeling like a dire place. Many in my incoming class were not in such a privileged condition, and knew that they (and we) would have to contend with the challenges of structural barriers that both deserved and demanded institutional resources and support in the coming year(s). 

My incoming class was the first at King Hall (according to Dean Johnson’s speech at the 2023 graduation) to write and send a petition to the administration prior to the start of the school year. Although I was only a supportive observer of the process at the time, the subsequent year was one of collective consciousness building and struggle, finding moments of joy together when possible, and mostly, organizing (to my eager delight) under the auspices of justice, care, and liberation that I had originally sought to uphold while simply turning the pages of biographies.