Pasternak & Fidis condemns violence fueled by racialized and gender-based bias and stoked by misinformation. Black Lives Matter and we stand in support of the movement for Black lives. We stand also in support of the Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander community around us and around the nation.
As human beings and as a law firm, we are committed to the fundamental principle and Constitutional right that all people are treated equally. As James Baldwin counseled:
If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected – those precisely who need the law’s protection most – and listens to their testimony.
The killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, and so many before them, fueled by racism, demand that we take a stand against the assumptions in our society that have enabled and perpetuated disparate treatment of African Americans. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals and communities of Asian and Pacific Islander descent have suffered a steeply rising number of racialized assaults, many of them also gender-based. We commit to fight the racism and misogyny that is embedded in our society and which deprives our neighbors and fellow citizens of their basic rights to freedom, safety, and equal opportunities, and we urge all of us to do the same.
We recognize the ever-present words of Dr. Martin Luther King:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Let this mutuality guide our actions within our community.
