May 19
GUEST: Rachel Meeropol, Senior Staff Attorney and Associate Director of Legal Training and Education at the Center for Constitutional Rights, talks about winning justice for the indigenous Lenape people.
Lenape Nation and the Center for Constitutional RightsIt must be so rewarding to win justice for indigenous peoples. And this case involved the most privileged of white groups, the Ramapo Hunt & Polo Club homeowners. They wanted to end centuries of Lenape religious gatherings because they needed a spot play polo. How that reeks of monied entitlement.
Lawyers don't always win, of course. There are so many injustices involved in the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, that most will never be identified, much less remedied. But for many people working for justice and human rights, resistance is both a civic and a personal duty. And sometimes the odds are staggering. Take the decades of support for Israel in the US, that comes from Jewish and right wing Christian groups as well as neoliberal billionaires in high places. Most activists don't fight because victory is around the corner.
Recently, I helped organize a Zoom panel featuring Mazin Qumsiyeh, Director of the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity, and Sleydo, First Nation spokesperson for a resistance encampment of the Wet’suwet’en people in British Columbia. Despite their efforts being foiled by short term roadblocks, their long term goals are still there. As Mazin put it, resistance is what peoples do when being pushed out of their homelands.
So whether we are learning about Rachel Meeropol, or listening to Mazin and Sleydo, the eventual goals are enough for now. And as Mazin reminds us, some peoples eventually do gain their freedom.
Why don't you listen to their words?
