06/05/2020
Dear Suffolk QLA members,
I hope you and your families are all safe and healthy. As we begin Pride Month, I am writing to you all to introduce myself as the President of the Suffolk QLA. I also wish to express my solidarity with the Black Americans both throughout the nation as well as those here at Suffolk Law.
As some of you may know, the first pride was a protest led by a Black, trans woman and it catalyzed a national movement. As members of the LGBTQ+ community, we are not unfamiliar with injustice. Though we may not be the direct focus of the current protests, to be silent at this time would be to disregard our own history and be complicit to this violence that has been present throughout this nation’s history. Police brutality has unnecessarily killed many Black Americans and it is impossible to deny the systematic racism that is behind the use of excessive force.
James Baldwin’s once wrote, “If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges... [go] to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most! —and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person—ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
This message is simply meant to remind us all of our own histories, as well as the fact that it is not enough for us to simply not be racist. We must actively strive to be anti-racist. Many members of our community have intersecting identities. The risks that we all face, our Black siblings often face at exponentially higher rates. I urge us all to recognize and react to the on-going struggles of Black Americans and fight for their right to life and liberty.
Please continue to educate yourselves and others, click the links, make the donations, and do not stop the fight when the social media trends end. And remember, there will never be peace without justice and none of us are free until all of us are free.
Hopefully yours,
Shushrusha Lamsal
President
Q***r Law Alliance
Suffolk University Law School
