Aarti Kohli - "Fearless in the Fight"
I struggled with what I wanted to say to you tonight. I got a lot of advice. My parents said: "You should talk about the elections." My husband said, "You have to link Wong Kim Ark, the Thind case, and Korematsu. Here, I'll write it for you." My sister said, ”just recycle your last speech, it was pretty good!” And my Development Director begged me to stop taking notes from other people, especially my husband.
The overwhelm came because what is happening to this country right now is not normal and I didn't want to come here and pretend like it is.
There is a terrible war happening in the Middle East that this administration started without Congressional approval. That is on all of our minds tonight. But I want to talk about the war being waged here, inside this country, against the people who built it.
So let me just say it plainly: we are watching a deliberate attempt to dismantle a multiracial, multicultural democracy. It is happening through immigration enforcement, through voter suppression, through the dismantling of civil rights infrastructure, one targeted community at a time, in the calculated belief that if they pick us off separately, we won't recognize it as a unified project until it's too late.
That is what I want to talk about tonight. And specifically, what it is going to take from us.
Last week I was at the Supreme Court.
I arrived early with ALC colleagues and we made our way through security, no phones, no bags, pen and paper only. Court staff moved us along in single file lines, it felt like a field trip.
If you've never been inside that courtroom: thirty-foot marble columns, gold gates, red curtains blocking out the light. A room designed to make you feel the weight of what is at stake. And sitting there, I felt it.
I ran into Christine Sun on the way in. Some of you know Christine, she served on our board, and she's the one who talked me into this job in 2016 right after Trump was elected. She's also one of Cecillia Wang's closest friends. Cecilia, Bay Area born and raised, former ALC board member, now the ACLU’s national legal director, was about to argue the case for all of us. Sitting next to Christine I noticed her knees were shaking and she was taking deep breaths. She turned to me and said: "I'm so nervous for Cecillia."
Christine is normally the most unflappable person I know.
Cecillia stood up. Calm. Focused. Unshaken. The moment Cecillia opened her mouth, Christine could breathe again.
I know Cecillia felt that fear too. How could she not? There was so much at stake.
We all have self-doubt. That voice that says: who are you to be doing this? Can you actually make a difference? I know that voice. I have heard it on hard days this past year. I suspect everyone in this room has heard it too at some point.
But something happens when the fight stops being about you. When it's about the people who came before you, and the people coming after, the fear doesn't disappear. It just stops being the loudest thing in the room.
That is fearlessness in the fight.
And this fearlessness is inherited, borne out of a constant struggle in this country. After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was created to give formerly enslaved African Americans full citizenship, and to say to every family that came after: come here, build something, stay….your children are home. It is not just a legal doctrine. It is the founding promise of a multiracial democracy.
There is a photograph in my father-in-law's study. My mother-in-law, standing in the snow in Albany, holding my husband as a baby, wearing a sari with a jacket thrown over her. Smiling this enormous, joyful smile. Like so many of our families, they put their heads down, worked hard, dealt with the slurs and the sideways looks because of what this country promised their children.
What we’re seeing now is not immigration policy. It is a project. The same administration blocking the children of Black and brown immigrants from citizenship is opening the door to white South African asylum seekers and encouraging white Christian nationalist women to have more babies. I want us to be clear-eyed about what we are looking at. This is an attempt to change who this country belongs to. And the reason they are starting with immigrants is because they believe we are the most vulnerable, that we are isolated, that we won't be defended, that the coalition won't hold.
This room, Black, Brown, Asian, white, immigrant, citizen, all of us, is their nightmare. We are here. We have always been here. And we are not going anywhere.
At ALC, I get to witness fearlessness every single day through the families we serve. A father who coaches his daughter's soccer team, arrested, transferred across state lines, sleeping on a concrete bench. The goal of this enforcement is not just detention. It is to grind people down until they give up and leave. He endures it not for himself but for his family.
We fight back in habeas petitions for those unlawfully detained, in courtrooms defending Punjabi truck drivers, in FOIA requests tracking people disappeared to third countries, in challenges to the illegal sharing of immigrant tax data, in housing courts and pro bono clinics.
And people are paying attention in ways they weren’t before.There are influencers all over my Instagram, cooking, putting on makeup, walking down the street, talking about ICE and due process.
My own mother, who didn't understand what I did for most of my career, now calls to brief me. A few weeks ago she called and said: "Nanhi" that's what she calls me, it means little girl. "Nanhi, Rachel says these towns don't want detention centers. Do you know about detention centers?"
Who is this Rachel, I thought. Rachel Maddow, it turns out. With my mother, she accomplished in one segment what I failed to do for a decade.
People who were busy surviving and building and raising families like my parents, are paying very close attention now to whether this country is going to honor its promises.
And here is what I need you to know: we are not losing. 900,000 immigrants' legal status reinstated. Sanctuary laws upheld. A president told he does not own the White House. Eight million people in the streets.
That is not a movement giving up. That is a country waking up.
So here is what I am asking of you tonight, not just to be here, but to stay in this fight for the long haul. Don't go back to sleep when we win the birthright citizenship case, which I truly believe we will. They will move to the next attack. The midterms are coming. Voting rights are under assault. ICE at the polls is not a hypothetical, we are preparing for it right now.
Last week, after oral arguments, I got back home to CA at 1am. My son, twenty-two, recent college grad, who treats my house like a bed and breakfast, had stayed up to hug me and tell me he was proud of me.
Our ancestors cannot tell us that. But our children can. And sometimes, when we need it most, they do.
We show up for each other. That is the fight.
They are betting on fear.
We are betting on each other.
Thank you.
Aarti Kohli, ALC Executive Director
54th Annual Gala