We should abolish the Supreme Court

Jared Quigg (he/him) is a senior studying journalism and political science.

Much of America was surprised last week when the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision decided not to be total racist monsters and gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Chief Justice John Roberts, normally the chief ghoul of the Supreme Court, wrote in the majority opinion that the Republicandominated state legislature of Alabama had violated the VRA by drawing legislative maps that disadvantaged Black voters. National Public Radio — and they were far from alone in this — said the Court “unexpectedly” upheld provisions prohibiting racial gerrymandering. Unexpectedly.

thing completely radical for the time – being openly queer and being proud about it. None of them would compromise when it came to queer liberation.

Post-Stonewall activism influenced more iconic organizations of the gay rights movement, including the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). ACT UP helped bring attention to the governmental mishandling of the AIDS crisis and fought for acceptance of the people it affected. In a time where information about AIDS was limited and fear was rampant, ACT UP brought radical resistance.

Today, as our rights are under attack, we need to remember the past of our movement, both their mistakes and their successes. We cannot compromise when it comes to our liberation. We cannot sell each other out to our white supremacist society just to get a bit more acceptance. Either we all get freedom, or none of us do.

So as you head to Pride this year and beyond, celebrate who got us here. Connect with the community around you and help out your queer neighbors. We all need each other a lot more than we think. dw85@iu.edu

Leaving home isn’t the hardest part — coming home is GENTRY JUDGES

Gentry Keener (she/her) is a junior studying journalism and political science.

With a month left of my European backpacking excursion, home is on the horizon. I haven’t been home to Colorado since New Year’s Day, and I miss my family more than words can express. However, I don’t exactly know how to return home.

At the beginning of July, I will return home after having gone to six European countries and traveled thousands of miles by plane and hundreds more by train. I will have seen the Roman

Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower and the Prague Castle.

I texted my mom the other day and all it said was, “I don’t think I am ever going to stop traveling after this.”

All I have ever wanted was to travel and now that I have a taste of it, the idea of returning home seems impossible. I don’t know how to come home to America, or more specifically school in Indiana, and stare at the same view every day.

I love waking up every day having no idea what the day will hold or what my eyes will see. I love packing my bags every three days and ending up in an entirely different country. The thrill of randomly ending up at a lake and having to follow the rule of the summer: if there’s water, you get in.

I love meeting people from all walks of life and who have stories of the world to tell, whether that’s in a bar or simply the owner of a coffee shop.

Sharing a room with random strangers in a hostel might not sound appealing, but I even enjoy that. The blending of personalities, languages and cultures all in one room makes for very entertaining nights. Even when one of the roommates screams in Spanish in the middle of the night.

Everything is a story to tell later. Even if it’s not funny in the moment, I promise it will be at some point.

So, after everything, how do I go back to the cornfields of Indiana? How do I go back to the same walk to class every day and the same people in the same room?

Try as I might, you can only adventure in Indiana so much!

People always say leaving is the hardest part; but I think coming home is far harder. gekeener@iu.edu

Indiana Daily Student

That should tell you everything you need to know about the reputation of the Court, a body of which 59% of Americans disapprove. And that shouldn’t be surprising. After all, of the nine unelected justices, five were appointed by presidents who did not win the popular vote.

The American people can only take so many lies about living in a democratic society.

A 2021 survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 34% Americans would support abolishing the Supreme Court altogether. One can only hope that figure continues to grow.

When I tell most people that I don’t think the Supreme Court should exist they give me a funny look. It’s apparently a radical idea to disempower nine unelected reactionaries who leech off the American taxpayers they oppress for life.

And I cannot stress enough that the people who stripped millions of Americans of abortion rights were unelected. The people who enabled corporations to spend unlimited funds on elections were unelected. The people who gave George W. Bush — who did not win the popular vote — the presidency in 2000 were unelected.

Moreover, somewhat overlooked last week because of the “unexpected” VRA decision was an 8-1 ruling in which the Court determined Glacier Northwest Inc. could sue union workers for damages incurred during a strike. Eight unelected, bourgeois, robefetishists have once again ruled on behalf of the capitalist class against the workers, this time imperiling the right to strike.

That last decision should put to rest the liberal delusion of simply changing the make-up of the court, so to speak, by putting the “right” people in position. They rail against the conservatives on the court, and rightly so — they are, after all, nasty individuals, plagued by sexual assault allegations, religious fundamentalism, rampant homophobia, the list goes on.

But as we see with the union case, only Ket- anji Brown Jackson sided against the capitalists. The liberals of the court have often been unreliable at best when it comes to social justice. One need only look to egregious decisions like Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, or Kelo v. City of New London, in which one or more liberals sided with corporate interests that hurt everyday Americans. Opponents may come up with counter examples. Did the Court not originally legalize abortion, and the right of gay marriage?

The fact, however, is that a country committed to democracy would not allow an unelected body this much power. The Court itself is the problem. Those counterexamples were good decisions, but they too, were illegitimate because they were not democratically made.

What a backward country to leave the fates of minorities to the capricious whims of unaccountable conservatives! Other countries don’t have these pitfalls. The U.K. Supreme Court, for example, doesn’t even have the power to strike down legislation passed by Parliament.

Perhaps you’re on board with abolishing the court — it’s toxic, reactionary and undemocratic. But how would the abolishing be done? Is it even constitutionally possible?

My guess is probably not. I scoured the internet searching for answers to these questions only to find very little. Doing away with the Court is apparently outside reasonable public debate. Socialists like myself favor abolition, and I’ve seen libertarians voice support for getting rid of the Court as well, but how this would be done within the current legal framework is unclear.

If it is unconstitutional for Congress to pass a law abolishing the Court, which I suspect it is, then we are faced with another question at the very root of the problem: what if we got rid of the constitution, too?

Once again, I’m sure you think I’m not thinking about things seriously. But it’s not as if the current constitution is a good one. It was written hundreds of years ago by slave-owners, featuring numerous defects — electoral college, slaveryvia-punishment, etc. — and it’s notoriously difficult to amend.

We could write a new and better one, one that doesn’t give extraordinary power to an undemocratic Supreme Court. You might think the odds of this happening are slim but look around — it’s not as if the current system is producing a lot of positive change. Even the most tepid reforms require the moving of mountains. The current activist approach of piecemeal reformism is not working.

Let us be bold. Let us get rid of the Supreme Court. And if the constitution says we can’t, let’s get rid of that, too. jaquigg@iu.edu

Editors Da’Nasia Pruitt, Sara Molina blackvoices@idsnews.com June 15, 2023 idsnews.com

By Maria McComish mwoodmcc@iu.edu | @mccomish_maria Brownsville in Violence

Out is a group of civilians who stand over a two block stretch of the Brooklyn town several times a year for five days. All 911 calls from the area are channeled from the police to the civilians, who take the matter into their own hands.

The civilians are unable to arrest and detain. However, they have still managed to persuade people to turn in illegal guns, prevent shoplifting, keep a man from robbing a bodega and stop a pregnant woman