The Harvard Women’s Law Association (WLA) is dedicated to working in solidarity with the Black community in the fight against systemic racism, anti-Blackness, and police brutality. The WLA mourns the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Dion Johnson, and countless other victims of racialized violence.
The WLA is comprised of members who represent a variety of racial, ethnic, socio-economic, religious, and national backgrounds. In addition, our membership includes those who are new to conversations of racial injustice and members who thrive and persevere despite the racism and prejudice they experience daily. As a student-led organization, we are committed to participating in meaningful action against racism, promoting allyship and restoration, and dismantling systems of oppression for the benefit of us all. Our plans to host healing spaces, allyship trainings, discussions on practicing anti-racism, “Know Your Rights” workshops, and direct action training are just a few, but by no means all, of the next steps we are committing to taking.
We pledge our solidarity to protesters across the nation who are fighting with resilience and tenacity to change a system that has denied justice to Black people and communities for far too long. Engaging in protest is more than a constitutional right. Protests, as the means through which people demand to be heard, have been the driving forces behind some of the most meaningful social, political, and economic change witnessed in this country.
We strive to uplift and empower the work of Black women who have constituted the backbone of the movement for racial justice, as well as efforts to combat systemic misogyny. The WLA recognizes that the fight against anti-Blackness and the fight for gender equity are inextricably linked. As we mourn the lives of Rekia Boyd, Yvette Smith, Tanisha Anderson, Sandra Bland, Korryn Gaines, Atatiana Jefferson, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black women who have been dually victimized by white supremacy and the patriarchy, we encourage all our members and the broader community to recognize and learn more about the ways in which police brutality and systematic anti-Blackness have impacted Black women.
We celebrate the work of the Black women who have pushed this country to correct its legacy of racial oppression, which has pervaded every aspect of American life. We are the beneficiaries of the tireless work of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Chisholm, Angela Davis, and so many others. These brave women passed the torch to Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, Patrice Cullors, Bree Newsome, Tarana Burke, Janet Mock, and Johnetta Elzie, among others, to whom we are also indebted for their current activism. The contributions of these feminist icons are often rendered invisible in traditional systems of education, history textbooks, and other forms of normative learning.
With this in mind, WLA pledges to use its platform and resources to expand our efforts to be present in this fight, particularly at Harvard Law School. Our school was built on the uncompensated or underpaid labor of Black workers, students, and educators. We are called on as an organization to show up for our Harvard community in support of our Black professors, neighbors, and fellow students who have organized and pushed for equitable changes at the law school and in the legal profession. We are witnesses to the work being done to reimagine policing, divest from prisons, officially recognize Belinda Hall, and create a robust critical race theory curriculum. We will continue to engage in these efforts with the support of the WLA Board and WLA members.
We enthusiastically endorse and commit ourselves to advancing the following reforms introduced by the Harvard Black Law Students Association:
● Establish an office of diversity and inclusion.
● Defund the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD).
● Match donations given by students, faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and staff to the
Massachusetts Bail Fund, Violence in Boston, Black Lives Matter Boston, and the
National Black Justice Coalition.
● Refrain from penalizing student protesters.
● Implement mandatory annual implicit bias training for all Harvard University Health
Services (HUHS) providers.
● Implement a critical race theory curriculum.
● Hire and retain more Black faculty and faculty of color.
● Divest from the prison industrial complex.
We pledge to continue learning, listening, and showing up as an organization and community. We encourage everyone to read the statement written by the Harvard Black Law Students Association to educate yourself on the work and progress made by Black organizers, and to donate to the organizations listed in the statement.
In Solidarity,
Harvard Law Women’s Law Association
All human beings are interconnected.