No Court Can Define the Future We Are Building

June asks us to hold many truths at once.

It is the month we celebrate Pride and Juneteenth—moments that remind us freedom has never arrived because those in power simply decided to grant it. It has always been claimed, defended, and expanded by communities organizing for one another.

Juneteenth marked the day freedom finally reached enslaved people in Texas, more than two years after emancipation had been declared. It is both a celebration and a reminder that rights promised on paper are meaningless without the power to make them real. That lesson remains painfully relevant today.

This month also marks four years since the fall of Roe v. Wade. In the years since, we have witnessed exactly what reproductive justice leaders warned would happen: abortion bans, criminalization, deepening inequities in healthcare access, growing attacks on IVF and birth control, and growing efforts to control who can make decisions about their own bodies and future. The fall of Roe was never only about abortion. It was a reminder that rights are only as durable as the power communities have to defend them.

Across the country, we are witnessing renewed attacks on voting rights, immigrant communities, transgender people, reproductive freedom, and the very institutions created to protect civil rights. The erosion of equity infrastructure and the resurgence of policies that echo the logic of Jim Crow are not isolated events. They are part of a broader effort to narrow who belongs, who participates, and who has the power to shape public life.

The Supreme Court is preparing to issue decisions involving transgender youth, birthright citizenship, immigrant communities, voting rights, and democratic participation. These cases are often described as separate legal disputes. They are not.

They are all asking the same question: Who gets to belong, and who gets to decide?

The freedom to make decisions about our bodies, our families, our futures, and our participation in public life is inseparable from democracy itself. When governments can determine whose healthcare is protected, whose citizenship is recognized, whose vote counts, or whose existence can be pushed to the margins, democracy becomes narrower for everyone.

That is why we believe bodily autonomy and democracy rise and fall together.

Pride tells us something similar. Trans people are not a political trend or a talking point. They have always been here. They will always be here. And they continue to lead some of the most innovative work happening in our movements—creating mutual aid networks, protecting one another, expanding access to care, and demonstrating what communities can accomplish when they refuse to leave anyone behind.

Earlier in June, Groundswell also had the privilege of sending our CEO, Yamani Yansá Hernandez, to Nairobi as part of a delegation attending the Global Abortion and Reproductive Justice Conference. Yamani joined movement leaders from around the world confronting many of the same forces we face here at home: shrinking civic space, attacks on bodily autonomy, rising authoritarianism, and efforts to decide who belongs and who does not.

Yet what connects these movements is not only the challenges they face. It is their imagination.

From Texas to Nairobi, communities have always built freedom before institutions recognized it. They have organized, cared for one another, and created the conditions for everyone to thrive.

That is why Groundswell invests in grassroots organizations.

No court can organize a neighborhood. No ruling can build trust between communities. No opinion can extinguish the relationships, courage, and collective action that movements have spent generations creating.

The decisions issued will matter. But they will not be the final word.

The future will be written by communities that refuse to surrender their freedom, their dignity, or their belief that another world is possible—a world where everyone belongs, and everyone has the power to shape the conditions of their own lives.

That future requires solidarity.

It requires long-term investment.

And it requires all of us.