It Is All Connected –SCOTUS Rulings Call for Solidarity

“Fostering safe, healthy and sustainable environments is key to ensuring that all people, especially the ones who have been historically under-resourced, can live and grow to their full potential. Protecting and uplifting reproductive rights and justice incorporate protecting and uplifting the environments in which people are raised. Here, we find a central connection between the movement for RJ and the movement for climate justice.”
- Dion Mensah, Equity Forward

Reproductive justice, environmental justice, intermingling of church and state, discrimination based on sexual orientation, Miranda rights, tribal sovereignty, economic justice.  All issues upon which the Supreme Court of the United States has made recent life-crushing, justice-eradicating decisions.   

  • Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

  • Carson v. Makin

  • Vaga v. Tokoh

  • Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta

  • West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency

Loss of freedom and justice kills.

It kills abruptly in the case of a botched abortion; an abuser pulling a trigger; catastrophic storms and heat waves.  It kills slowly through hunger brought on by limited economic opportunity; through soul-crushing exclusion and harassment; through unjust imprisonment; through increased asthma, cancer, and other diseases caused by pollution. 

These issues are not isolated. They do not exist in silos. All are rooted in and intertwined throughout the history and culture of the United States and the machinations of a capitalist financial system run amok. All reduce choice about how, when, if, under what circumstances, and with what degree of safety a person births and raises a child.  And across all, data shows that Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; women; and those of low wealth are most susceptible to the impacts.

Undoubtedly each of us has felt the SCOTUS decisions in unique ways. 

Once again, we stand back up, take a deep breath, and continue the long work.  For this is long work.  These court decisions did not happen overnight.  Deep – and successful – strategy and organizing laid the groundwork over decades. 

The ground has shifted.  And it will shift again.  With the ability to recognize and act within the intersections of justice movements lies power and potential.  Together, working across issues, uplifting one another, and putting our skills, efforts, and voices together we move closer to justice.  Closer to freedom. It is a long road. Together, with laser focus and deepened commitment to freedom, justice, and equity, and by uplifting the inherent connections across issues and communities (be they human, animal, or environment) - a new world is possible.  

As a funder, this means we:

  • Support grassroots efforts across issues of justice. We support them for the long term, so they have capacity needed for organizing, telling their stories, increasing voter turnout, and influencing and working with grasstops organizations, elected officials, and other decisionmakers in their communities.

  • Support grasstops policy and advocacy organizations researching and developing policy strategies connected directly to community needs, to lead with equity and justice, to partner with national efforts to connect and strengthen change and freedom efforts at all levels.

  • Encourage our funding partners to support advocacy and policy efforts, to support grassroots organizing, and to support Get Out the Vote efforts.

  • Use our voice and our power in the service of intersectional justice – especially in ways that raise up and support community-based and grassroots efforts.

  • Use our voice and work to further illustrate the interconnection of the realms of justice. As Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Collaborative defines it, reproductive justice is the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.  Reproductive justice is environmental justice. Reproductive justice is racial justice.  Reproductive justice is economic justice.  Reproductive justice is gender justice. It is all connected and always has been.

We are grateful to so many in Maine who are leading efforts in reproductive justice and those who recognize the intersections with their work and stand ready as allies.  It is through recognizing the intersections and bringing our voices together – for the long haul – that freedom and community well-being will triumph. Together with partners and leaders across Maine, the United States, and beyond; we will bend the arc toward justice.  

Further readings and resources:

Laura Dover