CUNY Law Review would like to join our fellow student groups in expressing our solidarity with all those rising up to defend Black lives and to resist racism and state violence across the world. We’d also like to share with you all our solidarity reading list, which features a sampling of articles from previous issues that focus on the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-Black racism, and the law, police violence, and structural inequality.
June 4, 2020
The CUNY Law Review Editorial Board is in solidarity with all those rising up to defend Black lives and to resist racism and state violence across the world. We condemn the racist police killings and honor the lives of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubery, George Floyd, Tony McDade, David McAtee, Nina Pop, James Scurlock, and every victim of anti-Black violence. We recognize that racism is deeply embedded in the history and laws of this nation and that the law is a tool of racial oppression. As a law review and as future lawyers, our work is to dismantle the legal structures that enable white supremacy, racism, and police brutality.
We lift up the message from our BLSA colleagues that now is the time to recommit ourselves to social and racial justice. We are committed to a vision of collective liberation that involves not only challenging an unjust legal system that perpetuates anti-Black racism, but also inequity within our own organizations and networks. As a law review, we are working within an institution that is ripe with anti-Black racism and white supremacy, and we are committed to challenging the ways these show up in our own space.
If you haven’t already, we encourage you to read CUNY BLSA’s statement of solidarity, and CUNY LALSA’s list of resources for taking action, donating, and educating ourselves. We also encourage you to follow Black-owned media sources, donate to Black organizations to support bailout funds and protest efforts, and help get New York’s police secrecy law 50(a) repealed. We’re also in awe of our fellow CUNY Law classmate’s national resource compilation, including legal support services, action items, and funds to support.
As a social justice law journal, we will keep doing what we strive to do: amplify wisdom. Especially the wisdom of folks on the front lines of our struggles for collective liberation, and those who are most directly impacted by racism and oppression. Here’s a small sampling of past articles that we found from our archives that focus on the Black Lives Matter movement, race, and the law, police violence, and structural inequality. Since our founding, we’ve turned to our authors for guidance on engaging in critical examinations of the law and our profession. We invite you to do the same.
In solidarity,
CUNY Law Review Editorial Board, 2020-2021