Vigil
-- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg
September
20, 2020
We are here
tonight to pay our respects to a righteous woman who led the way for all of us.
Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsberg’s dedication to her vision of an America where we are all truly
equal --- where our policies and our laws do equity --- left us in a profoundly
better place than she found us. It is
not an overstatement to say that, as Thurgood Marshall was the leading legal
mind of the civil rights movement, Ruth Bader Ginsberg was the leading legal
mind of the women’s rights movement.
At the ACLU,
in Virginia and nationally, we are grieving Justice Ginsberg’s death as the
death of a member of our family. She was
the first director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project – a project founded
only because of her unrelenting advocacy.
She assumed that position in 1972 and by 1974 the ACLU nationally had
brought 300 cases challenging gender discrimination. Her strategy was an
inclusive one … helping the mostly male judges understand that men and women
(and non-binary people and transgender people) all are adversely affected by
sex discrimination … by the limiting stereotypes that undergird traditional
views of gender and sex.
For me
personally, I know that I have experienced opportunities that I would not have
had but for Justice Ginsburg’s advocacy. I am also grateful that opportunities
that I was denied because I am a woman (like being able to attend UVA or any
Ivy League school as an undergraduate or being able to get credit in my own
name when I was a new law graduate) are now open to other women because of
Justice Ginsberg’s legal leadership.
For all of
us, Justice Ginsberg’s death has us asking with trepidation … what does the
future hold? Who will light the way forward?
For those
who are tempted to see Justice Ginsberg’s death as the extinguishing of a
light, I ask you to see it as the passing of the latern. Reach out and hold the
light high so others can follow.
For those
who are tempted to see Justice Ginsberg’s death as the end of a race, I ask you
to see it as the completion of the lead off leg in an important relay. Reach
out and accept the passing of the baton so that you can carry it forward and
pass it to the next runner.
For all of
us tempted to give in to hopelessness, I encourage you to remember Bryan
Stevenson’s advice that hopelessness is the enemy of justice. We must remain optimistic to do the work
ahead. We must be resilient.
I recently
read an article in the NY Times by Eilene Zimmerman that asked why some people
are more resilient than others. Zimmerman wrote that the “most resilient among
us are people who generally don’t dwell on the negative, who look for
opportunities that might exist even in the darkest of times.” “Dedication to a worthy cause or a belief in
something greater than oneself” also enhances resilience. Zimmerman advised focusing energy on what can
be changed and looking for meaningful opportunities in any difficult situation.
And, she pointed out that resilient people don’t “go it alone.” Resilient
people find or develop a support system.
So, let’s
leave here tonight drawing resilience from our shared commitment to our worthy
causes, promising to look for opportunities even in this dark time, and finding
support from those here with us and our allies in the fight for reproductive
justice and gender and racial equity.
Let’s leave
here committed to pursuing our cause at the polls in November and in Congress …
Let’s leave
here committed to working harder in the Virginia legislature to make Virginia
laws more equitable and to ensuring that, whatever happens in Washington,
· our Commonwealth will continue to
move away from its racially unjust history,
· our Commonwealth will continue the
work to assure racial justice at the ballot box and in our criminal legal
system,
· our Commonwealth will not go back on
our “first in the south” protection of LGBTQ people from discrimination,
and
· our Commonwealth will not reinstitute
burdensome laws limiting women’s access to abortion and basic reproductive
health care.
May Justice
Ginsberg’s memory be for a blessing and may her memory be for a revolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment