By Christina Entrekin Coad and Michele Storms
Tsedale M. Melaku, a sociologist and author of You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism, views allyship as a strategic mechanism used by individuals who become collaborators, accomplices, and coconspirators to fight injustice and promote equity. Melaku suggests we accomplish this through supportive personal relationships and public acts of sponsorship and advocacy. To that end, you will find From the Executive Director’s Desk to be a shared and collaborative space over the next several issues. I am intentionally asking folx from legal and other advocacy organizations in King County to provide wisdom, insight, and calls for action in the promotion of equity and the mitigation and reconciliation of injustice.
December 15 marks the anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791 and celebrations and acknowledgements are happening throughout December. My first exercise in collaboration and centering the voice of the experts in my column is sharing space with the ACLU of Washington’s Executive Director, Michele Storms.
For many attorneys, the process of going to court or engaging with the law is everyday and commonplace. But for others, significant barriers exist. For many ACLU-WA clients — often people struggling to get access to health care, people who are unhoused, and people who are incarcerated — courts and the law are at best intimidating, distant forces. Yet those forces are frequently necessary to assure everyone can live freely and exercise their rights.
Too often, the distance between the ideals of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and our personal experience is palpable. Those who have experienced discrimination because of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexuality, for example, might be intimately aware of the barriers which hinder the full exercise of civil liberties and the risks a person may face to live freely. In our practice at the ACLU-WA, we regularly engage with people living with these barriers.
One significant example is our work defending the rights of people incarcerated in the King County Correctional Center through actions to enforce the Hammer settlement agreement. These individuals are among the most vulnerable in our society. They rely on government actors for their safety and well-being, and the government is currently failing to provide them access to healthcare and even transportation to mandatory court dates. These governmentally-raised barriers to physical well-being and access to justice can be invisible because they are hidden behind the walls of the county jail — yet they are no less real in denying our country’s promises of justice for all.
This is an extreme example, but other, more subtle ones exist and permeate our society. A Black family with a child with disabilities may not have the resources to fight to ensure their child has an appropriate and inclusive education. A parent working multiple jobs might not have the ability to defend their child’s right to free speech in school. Within our profession, a young attorney navigating the difficult path toward a long and successful legal career may also be struggling to express their gender identity or sexual orientation at work. Those of us who have the privilege to move through society and exercise our rights with less friction may not notice these struggles.
If we allow our privilege to blind us to the differing experiences people have when trying to exercise their rights, we risk leaving people behind and failing our nation’s promise of liberty and justice for all. One example particularly relevant to our profession: the de jure promise of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel did not become a de facto right until courts also recognized the right to an appointed public defender for indigent people.
We also risk the erosion of those rights themselves. If we are not vigilant and if we do not actively defend rights and liberties for all people, they may erode for everyone. Both outcomes are frightening possibilities.
There is also the potential to miss an opportunity to use the knowledge and access to power we as legal professionals possess to support others in the exercise of their rights and to defend freedom. Our training, skills, and access to courts comprise an incredible gift we can share with others to ensure everyone can exercise their rights and those rights will continue to exist for future generations.
We as lawyers are called to awareness, understanding, and allyship. It is a concept which lies at the heart of our oath: “I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed, or delay unjustly the cause of any person.” We must open ourselves up to service on behalf of those who have been marginalized by our systems of law and government and assure the promises of the Constitution are tangible in everyone’s daily life.
Allyship starts with awareness. By examining how our varying levels of access to privilege change how we experience our Constitutional rights, we open ourselves to a greater understanding of the needs of others. Awareness opens us to building relationships. It opens us to our potential to make the Bill of Rights real for everyone in their lived experience. Allyship also requires action.
KCBA members can look for opportunities to open doors for others who have historically experienced challenges entering or moving forward in the legal profession. Mentoring is one significant example; so too are creating and sharing opportunities. Moreover, in our practice, we can use our skills through participation in pro bono work, to help protect civil rights and liberties and to make sure everyone, regardless of who they are, can benefit from the promises of the Bill of Rights.
However you create allyship, whether through active engagement in advocacy or by sharing the privilege your legal experience creates, this Bill of Rights Day, Michele and I invite you to reflect on how you experience civil rights and civil liberties — and how others’ experiences may differ.
