A Neck Less Burdened

I was in the car Friday evening, half listening to NPR, when the top of the hour headline reported that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away.  I immediately pulled over to catch my breath and confirm the news.  With no confirmation at the New York Times website or even at NPR, I drove home trying to convince myself that I had misheard the headline.   The immediate silence of my phone let me briefly believe it.  But as I pulled into town my phone blew up with texts.  The overwhelmingly sad news was confirmed by each of those dings.

My son.

Then my sister.

And my mother.

Three friends.

It was true.

To say that we’ve lost an icon is to underestimate the value of RBG in the world, but especially in the world of women my age.  I am 52 and though I am well-familiar with sexism, I came of age with opportunities that Justice Ginsburg never had and that her work provided for women like me.  Because of her efforts, I came of age with a neck less burdened by the feet of powerful men.  It was the thing she sought when she appeared before the Super Court as a litigant in 1970s, working tirelessly to give women access to the equal protection of the law promised us all by the 14th amendment.  

It was a goal she continued to work toward when she joined the Supreme Court in 1993, only the second female justice on the Court.

I am grateful to Justice Ginsburg for a lifetime of work on behalf of true equality under the law.  It’s clear that she hoped to serve long enough to be replaced by a Democratic president.  She’s gone and we cannot give her that wish.  But we can honor her lifetime of service and her final wish by fighting harder than ever for a nation of justice for all.  She gave us our chance and the least we can do is work harder than ever to secure it for the next generation.  

Thank you, Justice Ginsburg.  Rest in power.

June Book Report: The Warmth of Other Suns

This month, I re-read Isabel Wilkerson’s splendid The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.  I first read the book when it was published in 2010 and the stories and history Wilkerson wove quickly inserted themselves into both my understanding of our national history and my teaching of it.  I never forgot the descriptions of the journeys that Wilkerson describes and when I began to plan the Civics and Citizenship class I will teach 8th graders in the coming school year, I knew that Wilkerson’s book would be a part of it.

At over 500 pages, it’s rather more than the 8th grade is ready for all at once.  But earlier this month I commenced a re-read to choose sections from the book to serve as the foundation for the summer reading I will assign the class.  In any setting, the book is worth reading.  In this moment of historical time, as the growing Black Lives Matter has absorbed our national interest to a greater degree than it ever has before, it was a particularly powerful re-read.

Wilkerson writes like a journalist but thinks like an historian and the combination ensures that the reader flies through the pages.  When I did put the book down, my mind was consumed with the arc of the story she was telling.

My Civics and Citizenship class will start with the second founding of the United States, the one accompanied by the Reconstruction amendments.  Though the Great Migration doesn’t “officially” start until the second decade of the 1900s, the seeds of it were planted by those amendments and our subsequent national failure at the task of rebuilding a national union with liberty and justice for all.  My class will take itself to the 1970s and the close of the Great Migration.  At every stop along the way, Wilkerson’s book will accompany the story we will learn.

Parts of the book will be required reading for my 8th graders.  I do this in the explicit hope that as they grow into their citizenship, they will read the rest of the book on their own.  

A System of Checks and Balances

It’s no secret that I never liked - or respected - Donald Trump.  Aware that he won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote by 3 million, I felt that he was a barely legitimate president, one whose term in office should be governed by a sense of the fragility of his hold on the White House. 

But from the outset of his term in office, Trump seemed utterly unwilling to acknowledge this reality, let alone govern as if it was important.  The national divide that was present on Election Day 2016 would only grow larger.  At this writing it seems a chasm we may never bridge.

I didn’t call for impeachment the day Trump took office and for some months afterward.  Though I was increasingly horrified by his Administration, and confident that he had earned impeachment through the emolument clause at minimum, I didn’t think impeachment was the answer.  I thought that checks and balances would work.  I found a partial answer in the Congressional elections of 2018, when Democrats and Nancy Pelosi took control of the House of Representatives.  I felt better, as if there might be some credible check on an increasingly incompetent and self-serving president. But I still withheld my support for impeachment.

It’s only been in the past few months, as Trump’s incompetencies have grown greater and more dangerous; as our national divide has followed, that I supported an impeachment investigation.  In my case, it’s been less about the emoluments clause or the obvious high crimes and misdemeanors than it has been Trump’s absolute unwillingness to acknowledge the limits on his power.  He’s a tyrant with authoritarian aspirations and no sense that there is a boundary to his authority.

And then came the Ukrainian phone call revelations.  None of it was surprising, though I’ll confess some shock at the GOP’s continued willingness to support this president and their party-above-national interest-position.  I understand that the House impeachment inquiry poses the risk of being political; that it’s unlikely to end with a Senate conviction.  At this juncture, that’s not the point.  Impeachment is political.  But so is our current crisis.

The point is that we have a Constitution that organizes, demands, and can only function effectively with checks and balances in practice.  The last three years has me fearful that the check and balance tradition has been smashed beyond repair.  A House investigation and impeachment inquiry are the only chance we have to restore the balance; too once again have a Constitutional government.  So I support the House impeachment inquiry in the strong belief that such an inquiry is the only way we can preserve the American system.

If that sounds dramatic, it is.  As a nation, we are at the crossroads.  If we wish to be a nation with Constitutional checks and balances, we must take action.  The option on the table is impeachment.  I support it.