Joy In Justice

how yesterday helps us understand today Hey, friend. Last week I left you mid-story regarding the Sleepy Lagoon case. I didn’t know about that case until this summer when I was looking into what had actually led to the “Zoot Suit Riots.”1 Joy In Justice is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A through line from that story to today is this: the targeting comes first, and the criminalization follows.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can get along better, not just for the sake of neighborliness, but because we need each other if we’re going to win any of our fights for justice. Like we used to say at the Oakland Peace Center, we need us. A source of historic encouragement I came across recently has been the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee.

There is a through-line from the Buck v. Bell decision in 1927 — which authorized forced sterilization and has never been formally overturned — to the current proposals to eliminate Home and Community Based Services funding and build “wellness farms” for disabled people.

Hey, friend. So much has been said about the 25th anniversary of 9/11 I don’t have anything to add other than, yesterday I attended an event on 25 years of solidarity among Arab, Muslim, South Asian and other activists that emerged in the wake of the surge in hate crimes and also surveillance, detentions and anti-Brown and Black policies that many people were unaware of at the time.

Hey! Writing from the Philadelphia airport, since the east coast storms have delayed my arrival to Chicago for this incredible conference I promise to fill you in on later. Something I’ve spent my career learning is that the thing that survives is the thing communities carry together. Sometimes it goes underground, but when people, together, keep it alive, it re-emerges. That doesn’t mean there isn’t horrific damage. But it does mean the damage doesn’t have the final say.

So back in 2020, the Oakland Peace Center did a series of book groups called “Beloved Book Community” as a way of staying connected during the pandemic. One of the books that resonated the most for me was Our History is the Future by Nick Estes. The title alone is a reminder that the most persistent and damaging myth about Indigenous peoples in the United States is that they are history — a past tense, a tragedy that already happened, a culture that was lost.

Hey, friend. So a heads up—this week’s socials (and newsletter) have featured some of my personal favorite historic stories and also one of the most heartbreaking current moments. That said, it’s a reminder to me that people who came before fought and won in pretty awful contexts. I think you’ve heard me say this before, but here’s the thing about constitutional rights: they are not self-executing. Someone has to go to court. Someone has to refuse to close their laundry.

Hey, friend. You might not call this week’s subject “violence.” But the rewriting of someone’s words, the deletion of their records, the erasure of their contributions from the history books carry lasting bruises across our history and in our communities. It’s been happening to women, to Black Americans, to Indigenous people, to disabled people, to LGBTQ+ people for as long as those communities have been making history… which is always. It happens for a reason.

I am clearly running a little behind on newsletters, because I finally got a running start at my dissertation! I’ve got drafts of newsletters, and I’ll get back to the regular content next week. But for now, asking for a little help. :) Here’s the fancy official dissertation question in dissertation-speak: Joy In Justice is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Hey, friend. Last week’s content on facebook, instagram, linkedin, bluesky, and tiktoktalked about who gets erased…in real time, and also in hindsight. (If you already know about Bayard Rustin, you probably know what I’m talking about — or the LGBTQ+ activists in 1930s Germany1). As I read the news these days, I’m struck over and over by the reality that erasure and liberation have always traveled in tandem.