In the past few months in the United States, issues of civil rights have been front and center. For years, individuals in marginalized groups have felt that their voices were not heard, their experiences were not validated, and that their safety was negligible when it came to interactions with law enforcement, the justice system, and even corporations. Throughout the history of civil rights advances in the United States is a tireless push for improvements in civil rights, and a fight for legal changes. L. Chris Stewart is the civil rights lawyer behind the fights for high-profile cases like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and others. The topic of police brutality is one of the biggest conversations of 2020, and L. Chris Stewart is right in the middle of it all.
Extended Civil Rights Don’t Happen Overnight
When you are the victim of a civil rights violation, or if you feel like your protected attributes were central to a violation that you have experienced, trying to understand how to move forward in a system that feels rigged against you can be overwhelming. All too often, individuals belonging to marginalized groups may feel like their voice isn’t loud enough, or that their story isn’t strong enough, to make a serious difference and to fight back against prejudice. They may not always seem like they are the top priority of the legal system, but recent battles driven by L. Chris Stewart and others are seeking to change these unfortunate truths and bring justice and representation to the most vulnerable and marginalized of our communities.
Stewart is currently partnering with eOne to film a docuseries that focuses on his fights for justice in the police brutality cases for Floyd, Brooks, Arbery, and others, and highlights the tireless fights taken on by passionate and aggressive civil rights attorneys like him across our country throughout history. Stewart is widely regarded as one of the most important civil rights lawyers of our generation, and the police brutality cases that he leads are tied to cases in the country that have sparked protests across the United States, and a newly charged discussion on the minority experience in America.
In the Fight For Justice, L. Chris Stewart Leads the Way
If social change happens in the streets or through intense conversations among peers, civil liberties happen in the courtroom. No matter how many people are in agreement with the fact that something needs to change, corporations, organizations, and even individuals will continue to act against these marginalized groups to serve their own narrow self-interests, and if there is no legal ramification for these actions then we will never be able to move forward as a stronger nation, protecting our marginalized groups.
We may find it preposterous to consider the fact that women were once not allowed to vote, or that there were “black” and “white” bathrooms until in many of our living memories, but the reality is that these issues and more were fought in streets, and won in the courts. If it were not for attorneys like L. Chris Stewart throughout the history of our nation, countless advances in civil protections for vulnerable groups may not have ever come to fruition, and we could still be arguing about women’s’ suffrage instead of having the national conversation about minority rights and police brutality.
Story by Michael Davis. Davis is the content director of Miami’s On the Map Marketing, Inc. When he’s not editing SEO content for On the Map, he writes his own industry-specific content for various publications.
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