Content Warning: this email discusses sexual assault.



Team,

Yesterday, I stood alongside hundreds of activists to reclaim the Supreme Court and be in community with survivors.

I wanted to take a moment to share my remarks with you: 

I happen to be a Congresswoman, but I am really here as a fellow survivor. Often times these days, I find that my heart breaks and fills at the same time, and that’s what is happening in this moment. Because my heart breaks that we have to be here. But when I look out at all of you, my heart is so full because you affirm that the squad is big y’all.

So let’s hear it for my fellow sisters in service who are gathered here today. Let’s hear it for our resisters, for our persisters, for our trans siblings, for our non-binary family. Know that I see you, I hear you, and am fighting right alongside you.

Last year, you came to Washington, many of you quite literally put your bodies on the line. Many of you disclosed for the first time to yourselves, to your family, and then to complete strangers that you were a victim of this crime. And it is a crime. Many of you did that for the very first time, you chronicled the abuse and assault you endured because you knew those stories - as painful as they are to share - changed the conversation.

Kavanaugh may have that seat, for now, but what we are fighting for is so much bigger than one insecure man blinded by his privilege. You are fighting for liberation and justice for all of us because you know that our destinies are tied. For generations we have softened our language and moderated our tone, no more.

My liberty, my humanity, my bodily autonomy is not yours to shackle. No man, no institution - no matter how revered - will come between us and our inalienable rights. Now, the man’s name on the posters we hold is a cog in the wheel of a broken system. And I’m not going to name him too often because I’m done giving more credence and power to those who try to dehumanize and devalue our lives and our lived experiences.

We gather here today to liberate survivors, to organize, to mobilize.

As a survivor of childhood rape, and later campus sexual assault, I spent years cloaked in a quiet shame that was not mine to bear; in acute pain, self-loathing. It was not until I read Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” that I knew for the first time in my life that I was not alone. Maya Angelou once said that there is no greater pain, no greater agony, than bearing an untold story.

I want to thank all of you who have disclosed painful stories in pursuit of justice for all of us.

I continue to share my story even when my voice shakes because I know the power and the liberation of a story and I feel the fierce urgency of upending a system that for generations has disproportionately subjected girls and women to not only these abuses, but the shame and stigma that comes with processing these violations.

Today I am thinking of my 11 year old step-daughter, Cora. For as long as there is breath in my body, I will make sure a world that tolerates and normalizes assault and abuse is not the world she inherits.

This complicit sexual assault culture, this broken system which devalues and dehumanizes us. It ends with us.

Employers who dismiss stories of sexual advances. HR departments who tell us to suffer in silence. It ends with us.

Elite institutions of higher education that protect the futures of perpetrators, while discarding the aspirations and dreams of survivors. It ends with us.

Overwhelmingly white, male legislators that systemically seek to dismantle access to abortion and put our lives in constant jeopardy. It ends with us.

The affluent and privileged benefitting from a shadow justice system that tips the scales in their favor. It ends with us.

Whispers of doubt and degradation when we bravely speak our truth. It ends with us.

Audre Lorde reminds us that silence will not protect us. Which is why we must continue to raise and to amplify our voices. When we share our stories, our pain, and our struggles, we liberate each other. Together we will raise our voices to mobilize our communities and to legislate our destiny. I believe in the power of us.

Our fighting didn’t end when Brett Kavanaugh put on a robe. And our fighting won’t end until there is a real investigation and justice for survivors. I still believe Anita Hill, I still believe Dr. Christine Ford, and I still believe Deborah Ramirez.

We will carry our fight from the Supreme Court to the House of Representatives to our State Houses, and when our civil rights and protections are on the line - we won’t let up. To my survivor Squad, I hear you, I see you, I believe you, and a new day begins with us. Thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to read my remarks from the protest at the Supreme Court yesterday. And thank you for being a part of this movement for justice.

In Solidarity,
Ayanna

 

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