Awaiting Justice: Why Community Action Matters More Than Court Decisions

Courts will not save us. Neither will a charismatic leader.

The Trump administration is unleashing unthinkable threats toward students. Each day a new harrowing accounting becomes publicly available. A Tufts student is abducted by a group of masked, plain-clothed people. Her phone ripped from her hand. She is screaming for help, confused. All we know is that she co-authored an op-ed. Another researcher, this time from Harvard, is detained at the border under the auspices of having scientific materials with her that she should have declared. Here, we learn that she protested the war against Ukraine while in Russia in 2022.

The list is growing everyday. Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and academic who mobilized against genocide, is confronted in the middle of the night by ICE agents who confusingly tell him and his pregnant wife that a student visa was revoked. He is whisked away under the shroud of darkness. Another student, who showed up to protests in order to voice her support for those most marginalized in our world and who exercised her free speech, has been threatened with deportation though she is a green-card holder and has been in the U.S. since she was 7. The arbitrariness here is a strategy, much like the infamous flood-the-zone approach. It is to spread fear so that no one acts, not knowing if they will become a target.

Consider what's happening at USAID: By the time lawsuits fully play out, many employees will have already found new jobs.

As I watch the escalating attack on the notion of free speech and higher education in the United States, federally but also on the state level, I am reminded of how fragile our democratic institutions have become. They are crumbling before us. Students exercising their basic human right to protest are being abducted in the middle of the day by masked men, threatened with deportation, surveillance, and academic punishment. States like Ohio have now enacted laws that significantly curtail what topics can be discussed within public universities. On March 28, Gov. Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 1, which bans diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at public colleges and universities without clearly defining what they are. The law also prohibits faculty strikes and requires universities to maintain neutrality regarding political and ideological expressions. This vague language opens the door to preventing conversations that unequivocally state that what the Nazis did was reprehensible or that name the evils of slavery.

University administrations around the country are being pressured by the White House to turn over names of students who have exercised their right to free speech to gather in peaceful protests. And based on Columbia's trajectory, it is terrifying to imagine how easily many universities, even those with the economic power to legally question these unconstitutional strategies, may comply with these illegal and unconstitutional requests. In this climate of paralyzing fear, students flee, professors hide, supports disappear, and a chill spreads across academic communities designed to foster critical thinking. The foundation of freedom is our ability to speak truth to power. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the Republican establishment—which now only exists to support this dangerous vision—are attacking the free press and higher education—both spaces that enable free speech to flourish, both spaces that encourage speaking truth to power.

How can those of us who care about freedom and see the threat of this moment respond effectively? Yes, we have seen promising responses from the courts. We've seen rulings reinstating fired federal workers, insisting on due process for those sent thousands of miles to violent prisons in El Salvador, and beginning to protect students targeted for their political speech. But court responses take time. Incredible harm occurs while we wait: disappeared offices, maligned families, traumatized communities, and even death as this death tracker as a result of USAID cuts devastatingly demonstrates.

And there's a more fundamental problem: Courts are at their core designed to maintain the status quo. They can be instruments of the state, and as Angelo Guillen from the Philippines explains, the legal system can be "weaponized to target perceived enemies of the state." The law's fundamental purpose in many systems is to preserve existing power structures, not transform them. Even when legal victories occur, they may not lead to fundamental changes.

National security and counterterrorism laws—intentionally vague and overly broad—allow the state to target activists and progressive organizations. Increasingly these vague laws are used to target anyone who has expressed views in opposition to those held by the White House. Domestic legal systems often lack the necessary avenues to adequately protect violated rights. Courts are not neutral entities but are influenced by political considerations. Why else would Elon Musk suddenly become so invested in Wisconsin Supreme Court judges? He poured more money into a state supreme court race than ever before.

Most critically for those of us who want to see our beloved communities experience less violence, courts are inherently reactive institutions. They do not preemptively tell the government how to operate. Before a federal court can do anything, it must wait for the government to do something illegal, wait for a plaintiff to come along who is injured, and then, if conditions are right, the court can intervene. Here we are, all of us watching in horror, as the government illegally whisks up students from universities who are not fighting to protect them. We cannot watch as this assault on free speech, a bedrock of democracy, is dismantled before our horrified eyes.

By the time the courts may successfully declare these acts as unconstitutional, permanent damage may already be done. Consider what's happening at USAID: By the time lawsuits fully play out, many employees will have already found new jobs. If the Supreme Court ultimately rules the agency must continue to function, that decision could take months or years. By then, the agency may have experienced such severe brain drain that it will be a shadow of its former self and importantly thousands of lives will be lost because of the services that were suddenly ended.

Even if the court responds resoundingly, as it did in the case of migrants who have been deported to El Salvador without due process, Trump may just simply ignore it, as he seems to be doing so now. We see this also in the case of Brown University professor Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist who was expelled in apparent defiance of a court order.

If we cannot expect the courts to save us, especially during this era when the three branches of government have been usurped by Trump who believes himself to be king, what do we do?

We need to mobilize. As we have been, in fact! According to research by Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth and colleagues, "Resistance is alive and well in the United States." Their data shows that protests against the Trump administration may not look like the mass marches of 2017, but they are "far more numerous and frequent—while also shifting to more powerful forms of resistance." In February alone, they counted over 2,085 protests compared with the 937 protests in 2017.

Keep showing up. Visible dissent matters. Trump and Musk are consuming the airwaves, are monopolizing our attention with orchestrated chaos, and we can take back our power and take back a narrative that is being spun about who we are. We can show them who we are.

This is what authoritarians like Trump fear most: not just our protest, but our solidarity, our unwavering commitment to truth and to one another.

These mass gatherings also help to put pressure on the courts. It really matters. We can show our legislators the priorities we have for protecting all of our human rights. We can make sure they hear our insistence that we won't let anyone in our community become a target for simply exercising the constitutionally protected right of free speech. We can show that we refuse to be complicit in this harm and we demand them to do the same. When we speak up in unison, we become unstoppable. We know that, because we have seen that repeatedly throughout history.

History doesn't only instruct us about the way democracies can slide toward authoritarianism—which has become essential to track as we watch that same pattern unfold here—but history also tells us how we can push back against it. How we can defeat oppressive regimes. History shows us that authoritarianism wasn't beaten by lawyers or by opposition parties. It was beaten by people rising up against systems of oppression. Consider the solidarity between factory workers and intellectuals during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Despite their different social positions, they joined forces in demanding political reforms, establishing democratic workers' councils, and resisting Soviet repression. Today's Hungary, with the authoritarian vision of Viktor Orbán, is once again creating these false divisions to disempower the collective and break down solidarities. Trump makes no secret of his admiration of Orbán's approach. But, as the 1956 revolution instructs us, we can refuse to be divided.

We see the war on academia and higher education as a way of further fracturing communities. But we are actually on the same side. We want one another to thrive. When we are placed into separate groups, it only serves to dehumanize us. By mobilizing together, we learn that we have shared struggles.

It has been frustrating to watch the Democratic Party flounder in terms of an organized response as they remain risk-averse, operating under the guise of a world where good faith still exists. Others simply say nothing can be done. James Carville suggests the party "roll over and play dead" and let Trump overreach. "No one is going to care how hard you fight in March of 2025," Carville said. "It's how you win" in 2026.

With all due respect, this is devastatingly wrong and dangerous. The quiet, the playing dead, the submission—this is allowance that enables the oppressor. Columbia is playing dead and thereby killing free speech and democracy. They didn't react by rightly taking the government to court and demonstrating how unconstitutional this interaction was. But we can. We have to react. We have to respond. We have to maintain connection. We need to do this together.

Ironically, with so much upheaval being justified as cost-cutting measures by the joke that is Musk's oligarchic takeover of the government in the form of DOGE, all the court cases fighting unconstitutional executive orders are costing taxpayers significant money. We are paying for the government to defend these unconstitutional actions. It is our taxpayers' funds that are used by Trump and Musk, billionaires, to defend their unconstitutional behavior. As of April 2, there are 162 cases challenging the administration's actions.

We need each of these court cases; according to The New York Times, as of March 25, at least 53 rulings have temporarily paused some of the administration's initiatives. But they cannot save us.

What is necessary for our survival and the survival of our democracy are opportunities to gather. Talk to your neighbors. Organize community cleanups. Engage in acts of mutual aid that refuse to dehumanize each other. Get to know each other. Show up for protests that demand the protection and respect for human rights of our most vulnerable communities.

In my classrooms, I often tell my students that when we examine social change, we must look beyond individual personalities to focus on systemic processes and policies. This broader perspective reveals historical patterns and trajectories that help us identify opportunities for solidarity across different communities. When we understand that our struggles are connected through these systems, we can build movements based not on opposition to individuals, but on a shared vision of collective liberation.

Let's apply this same approach as a community now. The policies and processes being implemented are violent and stand against our fundamental values of dignity, freedom, and justice. By focusing on these systems rather than getting caught in the cult of personality that surrounds Trump or Musk, we open pathways to solidarity with others who might seem different but who share our vulnerability to these harmful policies. This is about more than Trump and Musk, it is about building a world that allows all of us to thrive. This is not about individual actors—it's about dismantling the policies that divide and harm our communities and replacing them with systems of care and mutual support.

Since the legislative branch, like the judicial branch, has been swallowed up by Trump and Musk's authoritarian takeover, we have to return to the very first words of the Constitution: WE THE PEOPLE. We the people have to mobilize. We the people have to gather. We the people have to talk. Not to escape the harm, but to begin to mobilize against it more effectively.

Universities should be doing the same. They cannot continue to operate as though their individual responses will make the threat go away. Instead, there needs to be an orchestrated collective response. As a recent open letter in The Guardian stated: "We urge Columbia's administrators to rethink their strategy in dealing with Trump's authoritarian administration. We urge university administrators around the country to respond collectively rather than allowing themselves to be picked off one by one."

This era is one of the greatest crises facing academia in U.S. history, and also one of the greatest assaults on free speech.

Solidarity, not isolation, is our path forward.

We can't wait for the courts to save us. We can't wait for the right democratic leader to come along with the right rhetorical presence. We have to speak up ourselves. Call your lawmakers every single day. Tell them you believe free speech is essential to maintaining our democracy. If you are at less risk because you are a citizen, attend know-your-rights trainings and ensure you can protect the most vulnerable. Refuse to be complicit with your silence. Safely join gatherings, make sure judges know the side of history we stand on, and pressure them to do the same.

This is what authoritarians like Trump fear most: not just our protest, but our solidarity, our unwavering commitment to truth and to one another.

The architects of alternative facts fear one thing above all: truth told boldly and repeatedly by communities standing together. The more chaotic and overwhelming these attacks on truth become, the more essential it is that we refuse to normalize them. Speak up. It matters. It makes a difference.

History is clear on this point: When leaders wage war on truth itself, silence equals surrender. We cannot afford to surrender now. Read the books they want to ban. Refuse to obey in advance unjust, unconstitutional, and illegal executive actions. Gather with your neighbors and friends and speak the truth. The courts won't save us. Neither will charismatic leaders. We—all of us, together—are the heroes we need.