My point is: you have to sweat the small stuff—because sometimes it turns out that the small stuff is actually the big stuff. I read a story once about a principal at a St. Louis elementary school who wanted to take on rampant truancy in her school. When she talked to parents, she realized that many of the kids didn’t have clean clothes. Either they didn’t have access to washing machines or their families couldn’t afford detergent or the power had been shut off. Students were embarrassed to show up at school in dirty clothes. “I think people don’t talk about not having clean clothes because it makes you want to cry or go home or run away or something,” a student explained. “It doesn’t feel good.”
So the principal had a washer and dryer installed at her school, and she invited students who had missed more than ten days of class to do their laundry on campus. According to CityLab, in the first year of the initiative, more than 90 percent of the students they tracked boosted their attendance.
WORDS MATTER
Words have the ability to empower and to deceive, the power to soothe and to hurt. They can spread important ideas and wrongheaded ones. They can spur people to action, for good or ill. Words are incredibly powerful, and people in power, whose words can carry furthest and fastest, have an obligation—a duty—to speak them with precision and wisdom. Scripture tells us, “The one who has knowledge uses words with restraint, and whoever has understanding is even-tempered.”
I am keenly aware of the potential power that lives in my words—as someone who represents nearly forty million people, who seeks to give voice to the voiceless. And so when I speak, I do so with the knowledge that the words I choose matter.
First, what we call things, and how we define them, shapes how people think about them. Too often, words are used to degrade our impressions of issues, or of one another. It’s why I insisted on better terminology in my work with sexually exploited youth. It was not right to refer to these individuals as “teen prostitutes.” They were young people who were being exploited and preyed upon by adults.
When I was attorney general, I prosecuted a case against a man who had started a website called UGotPosted.com, which invited people to upload sexually explicit content featuring their former sexual partners. The man who ran the website would then demand payment from those who had been exploited in exchange for removing the images. In the press, and in common parlance, the act of posting the images was described as “revenge porn.” In my office, people shorthanded the case as the “revenge porn” case.
I wasn’t having any of that. Revenge is something you inflict on someone who has wronged you. These people hadn’t wronged their perpetrators. It wasn’t revenge. Nor was it pornography. The victims had never intended for the images to be publicly displayed. It was internet-based extortion, plain and simple, so we referred to it as cyber exploitation. I directed my team that we were not to use the term “revenge porn.” I encouraged the media not to use the term, either. And I did so for one fundamental reason: words matter.
Second, I choose to speak truth. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when it leaves people feeling uneasy. When you speak truth, people won’t always walk away feeling good—and sometimes you won’t feel so great about the reaction you receive. But at least all parties will walk away knowing it was an honest conversation.
That is not to say that all truth is uncomfortable, or that the intention is to cause discomfort. Many truths are incredibly hopeful. I am simply saying that the job of an elected official is not to sing a lullaby and soothe the country into a sense of complacency. The job is to speak truth, even in a moment that does not welcome or invite its utterance.
SHOW THE MATH
Many of us remember taking math tests in grade school, where it wasn’t enough to simply answer a question. You had to show your work. That way, your teacher could see how your logic unfolded, step by step. If you got the solution right, the teacher would know that you hadn’t just made a lucky guess. And if you got it wrong, she could see exactly where and why—and help you correct your mistake.
“Showing the math” is an approach that I’ve embraced throughout my career. In part, it’s a methodology that helps me and my team test the logic of our own proposals and solutions. When we force ourselves to lay out our assumptions, we often find that there are certain parts of our arguments that assume things they shouldn’t. So we go back and revisit them, we revise them, we dive deeper so that when we are ready to put forth a proposal, we can be confident in its soundness.
At the same time, I think leaders who are asking for the public’s trust have a responsibility to show the math, too. We can’t make other people’s decisions for them, but we have to be able to show how we reached ours.
That’s why, when I taught young lawyers how to put together a closing argument, I would remind them that it wasn’t enough to get up in front of the jury and just tell them, “You must find eight.” Their job was to get up there and show the jury that two plus two plus two plus two leads, categorically, to eight. I’d tell them to break down every element. Explain the logic of their argument. Show the jury how they reached their conclusion.
When you show people the math, you give them the tools to decide whether they agree with the solution. And even if they don’t agree with everything, they may find that they agree with you most of the way—a kind of policy-making “partial credit” that can form the basis for constructive collaboration.
NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO FIGHT ALONE
In the spring of 1966, Cesar Chavez led a 340-mile march of Latinx and Filipino farmworkers from California’s Central Valley to its state capital in an effort to spur action and direct the country’s eyes at the unconscionable ways that farmworkers were being treated. That summer, the United Farm Workers was formed, and under Chavez’s leadership, it would become one of the most important civil rights and labor rights organizations in the country.
At the same time, two thousand miles away, Martin Luther King Jr. was leading the Chicago Freedom Movement. Through speeches and rallies and marches and meetings, he demanded everything from the end of housing discrimination to the need for high-quality education for all.
In September 1966, King sent Chavez a telegram. He wrote about the many fronts on which the battle for equality must be fought—“in the urban slums, in the sweat shops of the factories and fields. Our separate struggles are really one—a struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity.”
That is the sentiment I believe we all must embrace. There are so many ongoing struggles in this country—against racism and sexism, against discrimination based on religion, national origin, and sexual orientation. Each of these struggles is unique. Each deserves its own attention and effort. And it would be wrong to suggest that the differences don’t matter, or that one solution or one fight will alone solve them all. But at the same time, we should embrace the point that King made to Chavez—that what these struggles have in common is the pursuit of freedom, of basic human dignity. Black Lives Matter can’t just be a rallying call for black people, but a banner under which all decent people will stand. The #MeToo movement cannot make lasting structural changes for women in the workplace unless the effort is joined by men. Victories by one group can lead to victories for others, in the courts and in society as a whole. None of us—none of us—should have to fight alone.
And if we are lucky enough to be in a position of power, if our voice and our actions can mobilize change, don’t we have a special obligation? Being an ally can’t just be about nodding when someone says something we agree with—important as that is. It must also be about action. It’s our job to stand up for those who are not at the table where life-altering decisions are made. Not just those people who look like us. Not just those who need what we need. Not just those who have gained an audience with us. Our duty is to improve the human condition—in every way we can, for everyone who needs it.
IF IT’S WORTH FIGHTING FOR, IT’S A FIGHT WOR
TH HAVING
“On Monday, I stood in front of your office,” a protester named Ana Maria Archila exclaimed to Republican senator Jeff Flake, of Arizona, as he got into an elevator. “I told the story of my sexual assault. I told it because I recognized in Dr. Ford’s story that she is telling the truth. What you are doing is allowing someone who actually violated a woman to sit on the Supreme Court! This is not tolerable!”
As she spoke, Senator Flake nodded his head but didn’t make eye contact. Then another survivor, Maria Gallagher, spoke up: “I was sexually assaulted and nobody believed me. I didn’t tell anyone, and you’re telling all women that they don’t matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them you are going to ignore them. That’s what happened to me, and that’s what you are telling all women in America, that they don’t matter.”
Senator Flake continued to avoid the woman’s gaze. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” she said, her voice breaking. “You are telling me that my assault doesn’t matter, that what happened to me doesn’t matter, and that you’re going to let people who do these things into power. That’s what you’re telling me when you vote for him. Don’t look away from me!” The elevators closed, and Senator Flake made his way to the room where the Judiciary Committee was holding a vote on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.
I had been appointed to the Judiciary Committee ten months earlier and had expected, at some point, to be part of a Supreme Court confirmation process. But when Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement on June 27, 2018, I counted myself among the millions of people who were stunned and dismayed, especially when we learned that Judge Kavanaugh had been chosen to replace him.
Before we ever knew the name Christine Blasey Ford, we knew from Judge Kavanaugh’s public statements, his writings, and his judicial record that he was hostile to civil rights and voting rights and reproductive rights. We knew he would be a reliable vote against unions, against the environment, against corporate regulation.
We knew before his first set of confirmation hearings that there was something in his past that Judge Kavanaugh and the White House were trying to hide. We knew it because 90 percent of Judge Kavanaugh’s record was withheld from members of the Judiciary Committee.
We knew after those first hearings that Brett Kavanaugh had misled the Senate under oath: about his involvement with stolen documents, about his work with controversial judicial nominees, about his role in Bush-era warrantless wiretapping.
We knew all of this first. And then we learned her name. And then we learned her story.
We learned that when she was in high school, Christine Blasey Ford had gone to a gathering at a house with several people, where Brett Kavanaugh had forced himself on top of her, had grinded against her, and had groped her while trying to take off her clothes. We learned that when she tried to scream, he had put his hand over her mouth, that she believed he was going to rape her, that she feared he might inadvertently kill her.
“I was able to get up and run out of the room,” Dr. Ford explained as she testified under oath in front of the Judiciary Committee about the attack. “Directly across from the bedroom was a small bathroom. I ran inside the bathroom and locked the door. I heard Brett and Mark leave the bedroom laughing and loudly walk down the narrow stairs, pinballing off the walls on the way down.
“I waited, and when I did not hear them come back up the stairs, I left the bathroom, ran down the stairs, through the living room, and left the house,” she continued. “I remember being on the street and feeling an enormous sense of relief that I had escaped from the house and that Brett and Mark were not coming after me.”
I watched her in such awe as she told her story. In front of Dr. Ford sat all twenty-one members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, looking down from a raised dais. Behind her sat an audience of many strangers. To her left was Rachel Mitchell, an Arizona prosecutor who would question Dr. Ford instead of the Republican committee members—all men—who apparently doubted their own ability to question her. There were bodyguards in the room, too, whose protection Dr. Ford now needed. And, of course, there were the cameras, broadcasting every moment, every movement, every word spoken and tear shed in front of a national audience. This was no place for a person to have to talk about the worst day of her life.
And yet there she was in front of us and the world—even after death threats, even after having to leave her home, even after countless vile attacks hurled at her online. Christine Blasey Ford came to Washington out of a sense of what she called her civic duty and testified in one of the most extraordinary displays of courage I have seen in my lifetime.
Then Judge Kavanaugh responded.
“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” Kavanaugh railed at the committee, “fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons, and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups!” Fuming, he declared that “the behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at the hearing a few weeks ago was an embarrassment.” He went on for forty-five minutes. And that was just his opening statement.
“I like beer. I like beer,” Kavanaugh said in response to a question from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island. “I don’t know if you do. Do you like beer, Senator, or not? What do you like to drink? Senator, what do you like to drink?”
Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, also a Democrat, asked, “So you’re saying there’s never been a case where you drank so much that you didn’t remember what happened the night before, or part of what happened?”
“It’s—you’re asking about, you know, blackout,” he said, with visible frustration. “I don’t know. Have you?”
“Could you answer the question, Judge? I just—so you—that’s not happened. Is that your answer?”
“Yeah,” he said smugly. “And I’m curious if you have.”
“I have no drinking problem, Judge,” she said, not moments after having described how alcoholism had deeply affected her father.
“Yeah, nor do I,” he retorted. It was, if anything, a revealing moment from a man who had sworn up and down that he always treats women with respect.
Near the end of the hearing, it was my turn to question the witness. As everyone was aware, Dr. Ford had taken and passed a polygraph examination. She had called for outside witnesses and expert witnesses to testify. And, most important, she had called for an FBI investigation. I asked Kavanaugh if he would do the same. He repeatedly evaded answering—just as he had done on many questions from my colleagues up to that point. The contrast between Dr. Ford’s sincerity and Judge Kavanaugh’s caginess was striking.
As was his willingness to mislead the committee. He gave patently false statements about the meanings of certain terms he’d written in his high school yearbook. He downplayed key aspects of his drinking. He was dishonest about the kinds of gatherings he attended in high school.
And that temper. Judge Kavanaugh’s flagrant behavior was so outside the norms of judicial standards that in the days after the hearing, the American Bar Association reopened its evaluation of him, and more than 2,400 academics signed an open letter to the Senate saying they were “united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that he did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land.”
And yet from the moment the hearing was over, it seemed the Republican caucus was ready and eager to move on, and that, despite Kavanaugh’s performance and despite Dr. Ford’s testimony, the committee would push forward with a vote. Shortly after Judge Kavanaugh finished testifying on Thursday night, Republican leaders scheduled a committee vote on his nomination for Friday morning.
There are many reasons why survivors of sexual
assault don’t report, and one is the fear—or assumption—that they will not be believed. “I was calculating daily the risk/benefit for me of coming forward, and wondering if I would just be jumping in front of a train that was going where it was going anyway,” Dr. Ford had testified that morning, “and that I would just be personally annihilated.”
As Republican senators pressed ahead, that fear seemed all too justified. Those senators were choosing not to believe Christine Blasey Ford, even though she had risked everything to warn them about what she knew, even though she had reached out before Judge Kavanaugh had even been nominated, even though she had no reason to lie.
They chose not to believe Dr. Ford even as they refused to do a real investigation, even though she had corroborating information that backed up her claims, even though Judge Kavanaugh had more than one accuser. For Judge Kavanaugh’s defenders, the cost of believing her—the cost of the truth itself—was simply too high.
“This has been about raw power,” I said the next morning after leading a walkout of the committee hearing. “You’re seeing that on display in the hearing this morning; you’re seeing that in the process from the beginning. . . . This is a failure of this body to do what it has always said it is about, which is to be deliberative.”
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