They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So, let my words be a colorful brushstroke that
paints canvasses across a clear calm night.
I
can see her gripping her legs tightly as she sways back and forth in the corner. Her hair violently blows as the wind slowly
creeps through the tattered broken windows and envelops her.
All
she can do is bob back and forth and back and forth to try to keep her body
warm. She’s trying, but failing….She’s all alone in this old wooden home, and
just like no one can hear its creaks, its rustles, its shuffles as the old
curtains clash against one another, and its drips as water drops from the hole
in the ceiling and overflows from the bucket below, no one can hear her
sniffles, no one can hear her cries reverberating around the old home, and no
one can see that she’s black like you and I.
The
only difference is, like Toni Morrison, she had the bluest of eyes. Her blue tears flow like a raging tsunami
after an earthquake, like an avalanche on steep mountainous cliff, soon she’ll
drown and the only thing left of her will be her young fingers extending. Reaching
for something it doesn’t know. Reaching for something it isn’t certain of.
Reaching for us to set her free.
Cause
that poor little girl on the floor by the door, who needed more, was a
metaphor. A metaphor for underfunded
school s with bars over their cracked windows reading from history books made
before 9-11….but it don’t matter to 911 cause they love crack, life is a like a
baseball game, 3 strikes and you’re out, and more black men are out in prison today
than were slaves in 1850.
But,
here we are as black lawyers and leaders today.
The cream of the crop, on a mountain top so high that not even Pegasus
can reach us. Sitting above the clouds,
we watch the rain as it falls on the potholed streets in Compton, slides down
the graffitied walls in Inglewood, and washes away on the Watts blocks.
They
say life is like a box of chocolate. Well, I want chocolate to get out of the
box.
But
we’re in a box somewhere far in the docks bolted with 3 locks under a bunch of
rocks; stagnant through all these talks.
Luckily,
I have the key to set us free, we need to build a stronger community.
So,
when I hear someone say they’re bored(board) with law, I say they forgot two
words: Brown and Education.
When
I hear someone says transformative law fails in civil society, I say be uncivil
and follow martial (Marshall) law…Thurgood.
Cause
there can be good when we put our minds to it, there are 24 hours in a day, 60
minutes in an hour but it does not even take a second to decide to make a
change.
And
even though this is the Black Law Student Association Solidarity Dinner, change
does not have to be black or white, cause the man who wrote “Black or white” also wrote "We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let's start giving" and we give when we don't bury our talents, but instead use our talents to build a better world.
So,
let’s not go through the motions when we write motions, write motions with
emotion, so that our motions can be poetry in motion, with the motion to move this
community and this world forward.
Going
backwards is a con, the pro is bono. Pro bono work that can change lives of
mothers, fathers, children, of all colors and creeds, from calorific California
to rocky Colorado, from cold complex Connecticut
to calm coniferous Kentucky, from every star-crossed state capital to every encapsulated corner of the once 13 colonies
now known as the United States of America.
And
please, let’s continue to be a source of force, a recourse of resource, in
other words, a workhorse, for future lawyers so that 1L, 2L, 3L, and maybe for
some of y’all 4L does not have to rhyme or be synonymous at all with hell.
And
lets strive to be positive because even
though Newton’s 3rd law of physic says what goes up must come down,
if we don’t get down on ourselves, but instead remain positive individually and
collectively, our positivity will never
come down, and we can take our legal profession and legal field to heights that
it can only dream of.
We
are at the mountain top! And the dream of a preacher still lives on. It’s
beautiful dream. It’s a special dream.
It’s an American dream. It’s a dream
that requires all of you and me, to set our people free by please please please
building a stronger community.
