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Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat on the Supreme Court for 27yrs - the length of Breonna Taylor’s lifespan. On Wednesday, the markedly different ways the US marked the end of these 2 women’s lives forced us to ask: which women's lives matter? https://feministgiant.substack.com/p/whose-lives-matter?r=50le&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter
In D.C., Justice Ginsburg was brought to lie in state at the Supreme Court. In a moving tribute to her legacy, the people who clerked for her lined the steps to honour her. Only one of Ginsburg’s 120 clerks during her SCOTUS tenure was Black. One Black, male clerk during 27yrs.
Same day same US that turned itself inside out w/grief at the loss of a justice celebrated as a champion of gender equality but whose hagiography left little room to adequately address her record on racial equality, Louisville reminded us: a Black woman’s life is unimportant.
A grand jury in Kentucky did not charge any of the police officers who murdered Breonna Taylor in March. Instead, it indicted a single police officer for shooting into neighboring apartments - not at the Black woman who was sleeping in her bed in her home.
Breonna Taylor was an emergency medical technician, a hero if there were any during these days of pandemic when the criminal-bordering-on-genocidal neglect of the Trump regime led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people.
She was a medical worker, on the frontlines at a time when people applaud from behind the safety of their windows to thank those on the frontlines of this #COVID19 “war.”
Everything in America is a war and nothing about that war is fought on a level playing field, including those whose lives are most affected by that “war,” whether it is against drugs, graffiti, or terrorism.
I honestly don’t care what Breonna Taylor did or did not do during her shockingly short time on earth. Breonna Taylor was murdered as she slept in her bed in her home. And none of the police officers who barged into her apartment and murdered her are being held accountable.
She too was a hero in her own fairy tale. But it was still not enough to save her from white supremacist violence nor bring justice against the extreme indifference to her murder. Nothing is.
Again: white girls are fed fairly tales of sleeping beauties woken by a white prince who breaks the spell that sent them into slumber. What are Black girls being taught by the death forced on Breonna Taylor as she slept? #SayHerName
I refuse to submit to a hagiographic rendering of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Supreme Court on which she sat. To do so would mean surrendering a necessary fight with white supremacist power and the injustice it serves to too many of us.
To surrender to hagiography would mean ignoring the injustice served to Breonna Taylor and so many Black people in the United States.
The Supreme Court is a branch of power with which as an anarchist feminist I will always wrestle.
The Supreme Court is a branch of power with which as an anarchist feminist I will always wrestle.
I launched FEMINISM GIANT Newsletter so that I can publish columns and essays that insist on a difficult and necessary feminist analysis of events.
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The pandemic is disproportionately affecting women & girls around the world. When I say feminism I mean something bigger and more complicated than something I take out of a closet whenever a man has been a shit to me. I mean: the destruction of patriarchy! https://feministgiant.substack.com/p/welcome-to-feminist-giant-newslettr
