Notices by Sheryl Weikal (theleftistlawyer@mastodon.social)

It's probably bad that every hundred years or so in this country, the government decides to pay reparations to white supremacists, but reparations to Black and Indigenous people are consistently deemed a nonstarter or too hard.

Every so often I consider quitting lawyering because it really does take a toll, but no, I am going to stay in this profession until I fucking die just so someone can say to every Black, Brown, trans, immigrant, queer, and disabled kid that they're a future lawyer too.

Fuck you, ABA.

Due process is the single most important right you have, because it's the one that protects all the others.

No one has ever had their civil rights violated, their rights to life and liberty violated, without their right to due process being violated FIRST.

It's why protecting it is so important.

Last week, the Trump administration explicitly stated its intention to "neutralize" - its word, not mine - US trans people.

Since then I can count on one hand the number of cis people who have even mentioned it. A whole bunch of cis people have talked about trans people demanding too much though.

This Mother's Day, please remember that 1 in 5 Black women will be evicted during her lifetime and 1 in 5 children born to a Black mom will be evicted during their childhood.

Mass eviction is as destructive and evil as mass incarceration. We just don't talk about it.

White Christians genuinely believe that anyone who chooses not to be Christian is oppressing them. They genuinely believe their religious liberty requires everyone to be just like them. They're like the Borg, but instead of "resistance is futile," it's "your resistance oppresses us."

Anyway it is an absolutely ahistorical, bonkers thing to put in a government document that white Christians "are the most persecuted people on earth" and put as evidence for this the fact that trans people and Muslims exist.

Cis people: normalize introducing yourself with your pronouns.

If only trans and gnc people do it, we're outing ourselves. If we don't, we accept getting misgendered. And when cis people do it, it acclimates other cis people to the practice and makes it safer for trans and gnc people.

Just from today:

"I don't believe Trump is doing that because it's illegal and that means he can't do that."

"I don't believe what Trump is doing is illegal because if it was, he couldn't do it."

"The only people who can break the law are illegals because they are already illegal." 😵💫

If we're to have any shot of getting out of this, I really need my fellow white people to get past our apparently hardwired belief that something being illegal means it's impossible.

Because I keep having the same conversation over and over again.

I need people to stop treating genocides like a hierarchy.

"We can't talk about Palestine because it hurts Democrats."
"We can't talk about trans people being genocided because Palestine."
"We can't talk about Black and Indigenous people because trans people."

LEARN TO MULTITASK. People are dying.

I guarantee you that no matter how deep seated the problems with the United States that led us here, exactly zero of them will be solved by "we should lock up more people and treat them worse."

We already have the largest incarcerated population in the world and prisons the UN considers crimes against humanity. "Too many people get away with crimes" is not a legitimate problem in the US.

WE DO NOT HAVE AN UNDERINCARCERATION PROBLEM.

Criminal Court representing protesters pro bono today.

I take venlafaxine every morning. Yes, it's an antidepressant. It is every bit as important as my HRT. I have major depressive disorder. My antidepressant is the treatment.

There is no shame in needing an antidepressant. RFK Jr. is wrong. It's just like taking an antibiotic for an infection.

Me: *THAT IS SO COOL*

Mercy: It's no big deal, like it's not that complicated.

Friends, IT IS ABSOLUTELY THAT COMPLICATED.

Mercy is currently building an ignition coil. Like, she is LITERALLY FABRICATING THE THING. I don't even know exactly what an ignition coil DOES.

Mercy is BUILDING ONE because she said it's cheaper and more environmentally conscious.

My wife is SO COOL.

I'm sorry but it's still irking me that the Illinois Bar Journal would rather publish a literal BLANK PAGE than a comment from a trans lawyer about how their article calling trans women "transgender males" might be bad.

That's also, incidentally, why trans people are so hated. Our transitions mean we change castes voluntarily. That's not supposed to be something people do or want to do. It shows the lie that is the whole caste system. It's not a law of nature, it's just a choice we made as a society. And it sucks.

Women are supposed to accept being sexualized. Indigenous people are supposed to accept being erased. And on, and on. And I think what bothers me is how many people only oppose this caste system - because that's what it is - when the violence against one group leaks out against another.