People of conscience across the country are looking ahead with uncertainty and even fear. But what gives all of us strength is looking at our history, knowing that in the most challenging of times we can band together and collectively stand up against repression and push forward for social change and civil rights. And succeed.
At no point in our history have the victories for social justice been won because people took a wait and see attitude, or because they faded or folded in the face or threat of repression.
What matters now more than ever is that we take action. At the PCJF, we stand with all those who are taking those steps forward - steps together - to face down what is coming, to protect those who are most vulnerable, and to make it clear that the people themselves are the force to be reckoned with.
So when we discovered that the Trump Presidential Inaugural Committee was already being allowed to suppress organizing and dissent for protests to Stop the Trump Agenda we mobilized. We are not waiting for Trump to take office. Action starts now.
In rapid response, the PCJF took on the Trump PIC and the National Park Service, who are barring access to key sites around Washington, D.C., for mass protests around the Inauguration. In addition to the fight in federal court over the constitutional rights of the people to assemble on public land at the Inauguration, we issued an action alert to our committed and dedicated supporters. Thousands of you responded, joining together to flood the NPS with the just demand that our federal lands in the nation's capital be made available for dissent at the Inauguration and cannot be handed over as exclusive-use property for only the favored viewpoint of Trump supporters and donors.
This fight to defend our public spaces for free speech and dissent has been covered in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters, National Public Radio, the Guardian, Elle magazine, and other newspapers, radio and television outlets across the country and internationally.
For more than 20 years we have been on the front lines defending democracy and civil rights in the courts and in the streets. With your help, we have won legal victories that have institutionalized fundamental rights to protest and restrictions on police conduct that federal judges have called "historic."
We need your help now as we take on what lies ahead.
Thank you for all that you do for social justice,
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard
Executive Director
Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
