The Supreme Court & Sisyphus

To my activist friends, please take care of yourself in this never-ending battle for social justice. To me, it feels like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill.

Activists literally have a never-ending job, namely because legislation, policies, government rule, are capricious and inadequate for the modern progressive. The entire point of the state system is that states get to choose how to govern their people— except for when the Federal government decides it has ultimate authority, which is, again, capricious and inadequate.

As an advocate for all kinds of reforms and abolitions, I am tired of the frontlines policy fights because they gets us nowhere meaningful except in the short term, and only superficially.

Which brings me to an analysis on some recent news: the Supreme Court recently ruled that states can choose if and how to criminalize homelessness (2024).

This means that the Federal government is unilaterally deciding that it will not take action against any state or law enforcement agency that decides to punish individuals for having nowhere to sleep but outside, as long as that action takes place within the state’s jurisdiction. Homelessness can be (and currently is) criminalized in most places, in a variety of ways. Just like prostitution, drug use, and poverty or perceived poverty.

As a practicing Harm Reductionist, I am not surprised or moved by any decision made by the United States Judiciary (or any other branch of government, for that matter), because the government has a specific purpose and it’s pretty clear.

The tension that exists between political ideologies, particularly in the US context, stems from the structural tautology, which inherently disables liberation by virtue of the vehicle of government.

In other words, social oppression is by design!
The system is not broken, but in fact, is working as designed and intended.

Some other fun examples of social oppression rulings:

• A federal appeals court halts race-conscious grantmaking by a venture capital firm to Black Women entrepreneurs (2024).
  Fuck Black women trying to climb the social ladder.

• The Supreme Court ruled against race-conscious admission practices at Harvard (2023).
  Fuck Brown people who built our institutions under threat of violence from slave masters, including the US government.

• The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ruling that states choose if and how to criminalize abortion (2022).
  Fuck your right to bodily autonomy.

• The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution includes an exception clause that allows for slavery to take place if the person is incarcerated (1865).
  The United States government is now, and forever has been, the largest human trafficker in the world.

• The Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent (who were forcefully brought to the US) could not be citizens in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857).
  Fuck reparations.

This isn’t new!

So, what is the role of policy advocacy in liberatory practice?

I argue that advocacy and direct community care need to work in tandem to create a truly liberated people. The moral of the story of Sisyphus, as I interpret it, is that the process matters perhaps more than the outcome, because it’s the process by which we are liberated. If Sisyphus theoretically would have reached the top of the hill he had been so desperately pushing the boulder up, he would still be at the top of a hill in Hades.