jonetta rose barras: Backyard bullies

It’s not just that the U.S. Supreme Court, like the rest of the federal enclave, is the District of Columbia’s backyard, and every time it makes some crappy decision we smell the stink. The 700,000 residents who call the nation’s capital home have particular reason to be concerned whenever a justice is appointed, dies or retires. The lives of local, tax-paying citizens are directly affected by what happens at 1 First St. NE.

“Decisions made by the Supreme Court — whether on gun laws, women’s health, immigration or good government — impact every single resident of the District of Columbia,” said Ward 6 DC Council member Charles Allen, echoing my sentiments exactly.

The departure from the bench of Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy has come at a tumultuous time, when the majority of citizens were already traumatized by the shattered and chaotic state of the country. We have a growing and tragic opioid crisis, an epidemic of suicides, a deconfiguration of health care, an assault on safety-net programs, threats to Social Security, tariffs against allies and their reciprocal reaction, dangerous deregulation of environmental protections, privatization of national parks and pristine waterways, and inhumane immigration policies at the southern border that have resulted in terrorized children sleeping in cages under blankets that look like large pieces of aluminum foil.

Did Kennedy really need to retire now? Didn’t he know President Donald J. Trump and some of Trump’s closest friends and aides have been under criminal investigation for months? Didn’t Kennedy watch, before his announcement, any segment of Chris Cuomo on CNN or Chris Hayes on MSNBC or even Sean Hannity on Fox News? Didn’t Kennedy understand the United States may be on the eve of destruction?

“Justice Kennedy’s retirement means a greater threat to our civil rights,” DC Attorney General Karl Racine said when I asked for his reaction. “A far-right-wing court could undermine decades of progress made on values important to our residents, such as protecting women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ equality, workers’ rights to collective bargaining, common-sense gun laws, and fairness in the criminal justice system.”

While others may have chosen to sing the praise of a retiring justice, celebrating him as a critical swing vote, I have decided not to join them. Call me an ingrate. Maybe I should be more thankful that only occasionally did Kennedy wear his conservativism on his sleeves. However, the rulings that were part of his good-bye package offered a truer glimpse of his legal legacy: Consider that he agreed with the majority to uphold the president’s travel ban, which hits hardest against those coming from predominantly Muslim countries. That decision makes a mockery of the freedom of religion, a cornerstone of America’s democracy.

While I have no laurels, Kennedy’s retirement came as a blow. It felt as if someone had taken a two-by-four to my head, sending me reeling and fretting even more about the future of this country, which I had begun to do on a weekly basis since January 2017.  Can someone put on Bob Dylan’s “Eve of Destruction” and turn up the volume?

“Don’t you understand what I’m trying to say? / Can’t you feel the fears that I’m feeling today?”

The solution, I kept thinking after Kennedy abruptly hung out a gone-fishing sign, was for me to move to another state where I could bullet vote and become a visible, indisputable part of that “blue wave” in the November general election. Maybe I could change my legal residence to my home state of Louisiana or move just across the line to Montgomery County, I thought.

Hasn’t the need to do something tangible and measurable to stop the “red assault” sometimes consumed you?

DC’s lone recognized representative in the U.S. House has no vote. District residents have no voting representation in the Senate. There is no one who could help block Trump’s next appointment to the Supreme Court as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his posse did the confirmation of Judge Merrick Garland in 2016.

“We find ourselves yet again with an important decision facing our country, and more than 700,000 residents locked out of having their voice heard. It’s nothing short of a disgrace for our democracy,” said Allen, who chairs the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety.

Stop right now. This is a scream-worthy moment!

The need to soothe my frustrations and the desire to be part of positive change sent me in boiling summer heat to the recent March for Families. I was surrounded by a sea of people — black, white, Hispanic, Asian, multi-ethnic, multiracial, young and old, in carriages and still in the womb. I listened as Lin-Manuel Miranda sang “Dear Theodosia” from the musical Hamilton (“We will bleed and fight for you, we’ll make it right for you…”). I was inspired by the awesome speech presented by the Rev. Traci Blackmon of the United Church of Christ, who asserted the Supreme Court was wrong on the travel ban decision. “This court has been wrong before,” she said, citing the Dred Scott case and others that followed. “Just as those other wrong, racist decisions have been overturned, this one will be as well.”

Yes, I told myself, as I left that rally and march, that is what democracy looks like.

District residents may not have a vote in Congress. We may be feeling the ugly attack and onslaught from the right. We cannot afford to surrender, I have whispered to myself in those moments when my confidence was shaken. We have an obligation, as Karl Racine has said, to “fight for what is fair and just and to uphold our District values of compassion, human rights and common decency.”

Can we all say “Amen”?

jonetta rose barras is a DC-based author and freelance writer. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.