Comments & Speeches from the October 4th Stop Kavanaugh Rally & March at UC Berkeley

At noon on October 4th, 2018, over 150 members of the UC Berkeley community gathered on Sproul Plaza to protest Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court, as part of a national day of action. UC Berkeley’s Stop Kavanaugh Rally and March was sponsored by several organizations affiliated with Berkeley Law, including the National Lawyers’ Guild, the UC Berkeley Student Workers Union – UAW 2865, the Berkeley Law Survivor Advocacy Project, and Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine. Many BGLJ members were in attendance, and two members gave speeches, which are reproduced below.

The Rally took place after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but before Kavanaugh’s confirmation: a time of anger, outrage, solidarity, and tenuous hope. The unifying message of the Rally was that opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination should not be viewed as a partisan issue, but, rather, an issue of gender and power-based violence. Bringing this issue into a national conversation presented our country with a moment to reevaluate our treatment and understanding of survivors of sexual assault and harassment.

This moment offered the possibility of deconstructing myths surrounding sexual violence; the possibility of recognizing why many survivors choose not to report, the possibility of understanding the ways in which race, sexuality, immigration status, and socioeconomic status affect survivors’ experiences of violence and rates of victimization; the possibility of remembering Anita Hill’s testimony during the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas without reliving that history; the possibility of dismantling rape culture.

In this moment, we—who took to the streets and marched to Kavanaugh’s fraternity, DKE—we recognized the possibility for radical change, feminist, intersectional, legal, and cultural change.

Anika’s Speech

Thank you all so much for being here today. My name is Anika Holland and I am second year law student here at Berkeley. I am one of the leaders of Berkeley Law’s Survivor Advocacy Project, a pro bono project run by law students that helps survivors on our campus navigate the university and legal processes.

Today, I want to talk about when I was in undergrad at Ohio University, when I was sexually harassed by my classmate. He’s now a second-year law student at Antonin Scalia School of Law. After months of constant text messages asking me out, objectifying my body and bisexuality, following me home after our classes together to the dorm where we both lived, I finally reported him to the University’s Title IX office. I had told him no; to leave me alone; to stop texting me over a dozen times before I reported him. Yet I still doubted that what I had experienced was serious enough to report. I doubted that what I had experienced was sexual harassment. I blamed myself for overreacting. I was embarrassed that witnesses would have to be called.

I then had to relive that harassment in excruciating detail for the hearing panel in order to be believed. I had to listen to my harasser deny that his actions were “bad enough” to be considered harassment. It’s perverse that I consider myself lucky that my harassment was so well documented in the text messages my harasser sent me. Because of that tangible evidence, he was suspended from school for one semester. It’s perverse that I consider myself lucky for this; the fact that my harasser was actually held accountable in any way by our school, the fact that I had evidence for the hearing panel to review. Yet I also find myself wondering what the consequences really were for him; after all, he’s in law school now just like me. An accredited university decided he had the “character and fitness” to be a law student, just like me. He’ll likely be allowed to take the bar. He’ll likely become a lawyer. And it seems to me now that he could even become a judge, where he might rule on issues involving gendered violence and harassment. That feels fundamentally unjust to me.

Too many perpetrators, like my harasser and like Kavanaugh are never held accountable. Are never even investigated properly or fully. Because our system is complacent. Our system is more worried about taking away opportunities from white, cisgender men than it is about giving survivors resources to heal. Our system teaches survivors to blame themselves for what happened, to question whether it was “bad enough” to report. Our system forces survivors to compare incommensurable pain. Men like my harasser and like Kavanaugh have been taught that their transgressions have no consequences. And their ability to maintain positions of privilege and power must end.

We—as a university community, as a broader culture, and as a country—need to hold perpetrators of sexual violence and harassment accountable for their actions. We cannot have another perpetrator sitting on the supreme court. We cannot ignore the ways sexual violence is exacerbated for queer people, trans and gender nonconforming people, for women of color, for poor women, for immigrants and undocumented workers. Finally, and most importantly: stop making survivors relive their trauma in order to be believed.

Thank you. 

Kel’s Speech

My name is Kel O’Hara and I am in my final year at Berkeley Law. I am a queer nonbinary survivor of campus sexual assault and for the past 5 years I have dedicated my life and my career to supporting survivors of sexual violence and harassment.

I could stand here today and tell you about the terrible things I see in my job. I could tell you about the pain my clients experience and the systems that fail to protect them. I could tell you about the countless abusers I meet who are just like Kavanaugh, men who think they are entitled to our bodies and then refuse to take accountability for what they have done.

But today I refuse to give that speech.

For the past few weeks I have watched myself and survivors around the country defined by the harm we have experienced. I have witnessed the ways we have been asked to turn our suffering into a soundbite that everyone can listen to. Survivors have been asked to lay our trauma bare to educate our friends, the public, the Senate, and countless others who have failed to protect or support us. 

I see the ways that people have tried to define us by our assaults. And I’m here to tell anyone who feels the need to define us by violence to stop focusing on our trauma and start focusing on our resilience.  

The past few weeks are not remarkable to me because they remind me of how many of us have experienced sexual violence. They are remarkable to me because they have reminded me that survivors, all of us, are fucking powerful. 

Who has stepped up to support each other recently? Survivors.

Who has stayed standing through weeks of triggering bullshit surrounding us everywhere we’ve gone? Survivors.

Who has shown time and time again that we will keep fighting and living and loving, no matter how much fucked up shit you throw at us? Survivors.

We are not defined by our pain. We are defined by our ability to make our way through it, to be people we are proud of even as we struggle.

Six years ago, I was sexually assaulted. Four years ago, I became a rape crisis counselor in an emergency room. Two years ago, I came to law school to become a legal advocate for other survivors. Last year, I founded the Survivor Advocacy Project, the first law-school-based clinic in the country that supports survivors going through the Title IX process at their schools. And today I stand here ready to keep fighting. 

You want to define me by my assault? Define me by what I’ve made of it. Define me by the empathy and love and support I choose to move through the world with. Define me by the work I’ve done to become the person I am. 

The man who hurt me does not define me. The pain I experienced does not define me.

The power I found defines me. The things I’ve achieved with the support of fellow survivors defines me. I fucking define me.

Fellow survivors, I see you. I see those of you who are not represented in the national conversation right now: the queer and trans survivors, the male survivors, the survivors who are not “perfect,” the survivors who are not ready to speak out. I see you and I hold you where you are. Regardless of how you feel and what you’ve been through, I know you are not defined by your pain, you are defined by your power. 

I believe in a world where everyone else sees that too. I believe in a world where we don’t need to yell because we are already listened to. I believe in a world where we are not called to the Senate to talk about the harm a judicial candidate caused, but to talk about how our experiences have qualified us to be candidates ourselves. I believe in a world where I don’t need to make speeches like this in hopes those things will come true.  

More than anything right now, I believe in a world in which we are here for each other. Survivors, I am here for you. If you need help on campus, talk to me. You can get in touch with me through the Survivor Advocacy Project email, Berkeley.SAP@gmail.com. 

Believe survivors. Support survivors. Dare to imagine a world where survivors are running shit because we fucking deserve to. We’re in this fight together. I’ll see you in the streets and in the courts.