The last time I found myself in a group of new people engaging with a heavy topic was in 2017, when I spent a semester in Kigali, Rwanda. Twenty-three other American college students and I enrolled in a semester-long experiential learning program called “Post-Conflict Restoration and Peacebuilding,” through which we learned about the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the ways communities tried to rebuild following major social upheaval. While living in Kigali, we learned directly from Rwandans who had lived through the genocide, whether victims, perpetrators, or somewhere in between. Throughout the semester, we would find ourselves in awe of how–despite the atrocities that were committed–people were able to reconcile with one another in order to heal. People who once were thought to be beyond redemption were, in fact, redeemable, and became invaluable members of their communities. This was made possible because the peacebuilding efforts realized the importance of acknowledging the humanity of every person who survived and remained.
Almost five years have passed since I lived in Kigali, yet I constantly think about the stories I heard and the hope that I felt listening to them. Although international nonprofit organizations scrambled to provide humanitarian aid immediately following the genocide, it was ultimately the Rwandans themselves who knew best how they would move forward from crisis towards a renewed sense of stability. This concept of directly affected people knowing best how to address their problems is reflected in the movement lawyering framework, and it is elaborated upon in the article “Movement Lawyering as Rebellious Lawyering: Advocating with Humility, Love, and Courage” by Betty Hung. In her article, Hung explains that “A fundamental premise of this intersectional, holistic framework is embracing and respecting the inherent humanity and dignity of the whole person and whole communities, recognizing the complexities and fluidity of both” (666). I saw glimpses of this in Rwanda through the peacebuilding work of Rwandan communities, but from my limited exposure to our Law Office project so far, this is not what I am seeing in the US and its criminal “justice” system.
An essential part of “embracing the inherent humanity of the whole person” is the recognition that every person has the capacity for growth and change. No matter what they might have done in their life, a person can redeem themselves and become a beloved member of a community. This is even more true when it comes to children, who have barely begun to live their lives and who are more susceptible to negative societal influences. Whereas movement lawyering practitioners support this argument, the current legal order does not, as was evident in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Jones v Mississippi. Furthermore, while perpetuating systems of oppression and subjecting entire communities to a predetermined fate (in the case of our project, the cradle to prison pipeline), the legal order also ignores its own principles. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes an incendiary critique of the majority opinion in Jones, rightfully pointing out that by allowing juvenile life without parole sentencing, the Court is not only ignoring but disrespecting the principle of stare decisis. This is frustrating, because if the highest legal authority in the country is blatantly disregarding such a tenet of the legal system, then what hope is there?
I recently had a conversation with a friend studying at Harvard Law School. Last year, one of his professors organized a Zoom call with a “special guest.” That guest ended up being Chief Justice John Roberts. On that Zoom call, somebody asked the Judge, “Do you ever think about the real-life consequences of your decisions?” His reply stunned me: “No. It’s too draining.”
Well, I may have been stunned, but I wasn’t surprised. Judges, sentencers, and the grand majority of those who practice the law are so far removed from communities and the real people whose lives they impact. This is the approach that movement lawyers are trying to move away from. Rather than consider ourselves “above” our clients and the people who are impacted by our work, we must trust others’ lived experiences while also acknowledging that we have our own contributions to make. A legal education does not automatically make us reliable experts on all our clients’ problems; instead, lawyering is a skill we contribute to the collaborative resolution of societal problems.
A phrase that captures this approach is “solidarity, not charity.” We are not here to be saviors swooping in to make our clients’ lives better with no input from clients themselves. Rather, we are each here to bring our individual skills and contributions to a shared cause. Showing solidarity is acknowledging that, although we may be different, our struggles are intertwined. We cannot break free from oppression without bringing our skills to the table and acting in solidarity with one another as a collective, and the only way to do so is by abolishing the elitist hierarchy between legal professionals and clients.
This does not only apply to the relationship between us as an LO and our partners and clients, but to the relationship between ourselves in the group as well, which is a lesson I learned the hard way in Rwanda. Towards the end of our semester in Kigali, some of the interpersonal relationships between the students in my group had soured to the point where people who were formerly close friends were no longer speaking with one another. A lot of these tensions were racially driven, coming from a place of misunderstandings and hurt feelings that were not addressed until it was too late. The previously cohesive group dynamic had ruptured so much that our Academic Director sat us down and aptly pointed out, “It’s ironic that you have all spent so much time studying genocide and the ways people can turn on each other, because that is exactly what you ended up doing.”
While I don’t anticipate anything as drastic happening during our project, I firmly believe that to function well as a group, we must realize that we are not separate from the issues at hand; rather, we are connected to them, and also to each other. We should not silo ourselves into a vacuum isolated from our partners and clients, because doing so removes us from the social context we are all living in. We may be from different backgrounds and have a multitude of lived experiences, but we all have an inherent humanity in each of us as individuals that we must acknowledge when tensions rise, and even when everything is going well. And so far, things are going well, despite the bumps of uncertainty we hit when trying to plan the partner call and the questions. For the most part, we were able to troubleshoot effectively as a group, and it seems like we will be able to learn from our hiccups and apply these lessons to the rest of our project. As the course moves along, I am certain that our own individual skills will make themselves evident, and our final deliverable will be a wonderful masterpiece that not any one of us as individuals could have produced on our own. We all need each other, and I know we will help each other grow as we collaborate with our partners. What a great introduction we have into the world of movement lawyering!
At this moment, it is hard for me to imagine what is next in our project, much less our research guide. By keeping the goals of our partner organizations and the community they serve at the heart of everything we do, however, I am sure that we as driven first-year law students will be able to make ourselves and the community proud with what we will accomplish.
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