it's as bad as you think. let's get to work.
ft. a never-before-seen prediction from my law firm days and some pragmatic optimism.
Hi everyone, and thanks for your patience! Many of you signed up for emails months ago; I’m excited to finally be writing you.
About five months ago (a timeline that feels impossible, though I go back and forth constantly about if it feels impossibly short or impossibly long), I began organizing with other law firm associates in response to Donald Trump’s attacks on the legal profession. That’s important, that you know this is not and never has been something I did alone. We began advocating internally at a number of different law firms, demanding answers from leadership about how they planned to address Donald Trump’s authoritarian overreach. Leadership stonewalled across the board. I haven’t spoken much about my own experience with said stonewalling beyond mentioning that it happened so that people didn’t question my more public-facing methods. Recently, I was speaking to a journalist and retelling the whole narrative and went back to see if I had one of the emails I sent to a (very) trusted partner that I respected very much. I did, and it was uncanny to read back following things like the indictment of Judge Hannah Dugan and treatment of Judge Boasberg, so I’ve decided to share it. The degree of informality will confirm for you either that (a) we did have a good relationship or (b) I am insane, depending on whether you think highly of me or not going in.
Much of the organizing I did at this time, including my own resignation, felt prescient. People often reference my resignation as protesting my old employer’s eventual deal with Trump. But, much like the deal itself, my resignation was preemptive. I resigned eight days before the firm offered nine figures up to the President. That’s important not because figuring that out made me special; I was able to figure it out because many other people had the same sense in their gut that it was coming. I know many of you have the same sense in your gut right now, as the President continues down an authoritarian path whose predictability would be almost boring if it weren’t so terrifying.
When I resigned, I did so because I wanted to confirm for the people who had the sense in their gut that this was totally off that they were right to act differently. For weeks, I woke up every morning wondering why everyone was acting so normal. Didn’t they see what I was seeing? Eventually, I realized that many people did, and were waking up every morning wondering why no one was acting differently. I was very luckily situated, planning to leave the industry so imminently that I was already sending out applications to nonprofits and city government. My finances were set up to take a massive pay cut. I don’t have a partner or children, I have the credentials and racial privilege that gets stories picked up—the list goes on. Right place, right time.
Soon after I resigned, overwhelmed by the genuinely unexpected degree of attention, I called my best friend from high school, who has known me for more than half my life. She reminded me of a conversation we’d had before I even entered the industry, when I was brainstorming how to use the privilege I would hold there in order to do good, and agonizing over my decision to go into corporate work at all, even for a bit. At that time, everything I suggested was impossible, because the infrastructure wasn’t built. How could I organize people to pressure their firms to drop fossil fuel clients, or build out mentorship programs, or do meaningful pro bono (one of these things is not like the others, but I considered them all) without building networks and knowing the landscape? I couldn’t. My great takeaway from everything I know about organizing (largely taught to me by Mariame Kaba’s work, which you should read, and Farayi Chipungu and Scott Westfahl’s classes) is that you have to know the landscape. These things don’t happen overnight, even when they seem like they do. I consider that call the beginning of the organizing that allowed me to quit three years later. As my friend said on our 2025 call, “that wasn’t your moment. Now’s your moment.”
Now might not be your moment. This is going to be a really long fight. But often, when we realize a moment is not our moment, we just sit quietly and wait for the right one to come. You can’t sit and wait. If now isn’t your moment, now is the time to be building the infrastructure to meet yours when it comes.
What that looks like will be different for everyone, but the most urgent thing to do now, while you can, is to build out community with trusted people who see what’s happening for what it is, too. That might look like a book club where you push yourself to read things that are to the left of the traditional Overton window—the Mariame Kaba/Kelly Hayes book linked above is exactly where to start. It might look like reaching out to grassroots organizations in your city via social media or attendance at protests and asking how to help. It might look like donating to high-need organizations, ideally mutual aid groups in your community, which can be more immediately responsive to needs. There are roles for everyone, of all risk tolerances. But if you do not build your community out now and take advantage of this waiting period before your moment, you’re not going to be able to take advantage of it when it comes.
Stop asking yourself if what you can see is happening is actually happening just because many people aren’t there yet. People will act differently when they see you acting differently. So act differently, and let’s all get to work.
Talk soon (by which I mean probably in another month or more, writing takes me a long time but you can follow along on Instagram, TikTok or LegalAF on YouTube, where I’m much more prolific) -
Rachel