Like many Americans, I’m grieving the loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aka “RBG,” and the news of her passing yesterday hit me hard, and I feel like our nation just lost one of our most beloved champions. Her accomplishments while serving our country are numerous, and I hope that we can carry on her legacy. On the wall of her chambers at the Supreme Court was an Old Testament saying, “Justice, justice, thou shalt pursue.” Chief Justice Ginsburg epitomized this phrase, and worked her entire career to eliminate gender-based stereotyping in legislation and regulations, she fought hard for civil rights and justice. One of my favorite RBG quotes is “fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” Her death has dealt a blow to the fight for democracy in this country, and as an American, I mourn her passing, but I know that she would want us to keep fighting for justice, and that’s what we need to do.

What was so amazing about RBG is that she made her mark as a women’s rights champion, in addition to becoming the Supreme Court’s second female justice, after Sandra Day O’Connor. Not bad for a girl from Brooklyn. Born in 1933 in Flatbush, the daughter of a Jewish immigrant father from Ukraine, and a mother from New York-born to Austrian Jewish parents, she grew up and graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn. She received her bachelor’s degree in government at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, then enrolled at Harvard Law School, transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated at the top of her class. After graduating from law school, she had a hard time finding a job in the male-dominated world of law and started her career as a clerk at the United States District Court of Appeals in New York. She later taught at Rutgers University School of Law, and then at Columbia Law School, where she became the school’s first tenured female professor.

RBG was an advocate for the advancement of women’s rights and gender equality and won multiple arguments before the Supreme Court. She advocated as a volunteer attorney for the ACLU in the 1970’s and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels. In 1971, she helped write the ACLU brief in Reed vs. Reed, a case argued before the Supreme Court that involved discrimination against women in awarding the management of a child’s estate. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where she served until her 1993 appointment to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton.

RBG popularity among the youth of this country gained momentum on social media due to her strong views on justice and equal rights, and she was dubbed “The Notorious R.B.G.,” a play on words of the popular rapper Biggie Smalls, known as The Notorious B.I.G. With the passing of Justice Ginsburg, the fate of abortion rights, gender, and racial equality now are at risk. Of the nine Supreme Court justices, five are Conservative, and four are Liberal. Ginsburg’s death came just 46 days before the election, and I know that she fought hard against her illness to stay on the bench, to fight for justice and equal rights, but I also mourn the fact that her death opens a door for the Trump administration and the GOP to appoint yet another conservative judge, and this is a frightening prospect.

It was barely several hours after RBG’s death when Senate leader Mitch McConnell said he would confirm a new justice before the election, an abrupt 360 from his previous reasons not to confirm Obama’s pick Merrick Garland in 2016 because it was an election year. And Trump just announced that he’ll announce his pick for a new justice next week, and hinted it would be a woman (obviously a ploy win votes). But, it’s not a sure thing, because any new appointment by Trump must be confirmed by a straight majority vote in the Senate. McConnell is working with a narrow 53-47 majority, and several GOP senators have stated that they won’t vote for a new nominee before the election (we’ll see about that).

Ginsburg’s death is tragic, and it only took Trump and Senate Republicans seconds to exploit her passing and start a war not only for the future of the court but American life itself. McConnell and his posse are determined to replace Ginsburg with a conservative justice, and doing so could tragically change the balance of the court for many years to come. The stakes are high: Reproductive rights, protections from discrimination, voting rights, the future of criminal justice, the powers of the presidency, immigration rights, tax laws, corporate laws, campaign laws, and healthcare for millions of Americans are now on the line. We should not underestimate Trump and the GOP-dominated Senate, they have succeeded in violating every norm, and code of conduct, not to mention twisting and manipulating the Consitution, to fit their agenda. Iowa’s Joni Ernst stated that a Trump pick could be confirmed during a lame-duck session after the election, but before a newly-elected Senate is installed. As we top 200,000 dead from COVID-19, millions out of work, a president who fans the flames of racism, discord and denies the science of climate change and refuses to acknowledge Russian interference in our elections, our Democracy is in a state of crisis.

One thing for sure, and this should be a comfort to us all, RBG was tough as nails, she was a fighter. While at Harvard, she was a full-time student, a mother of a toddler, and the caregiver to her husband Marty who was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy testicular cancer. She fought gender discrimination all of her life, and in the 1970’s she filed dozens of briefs persuading the courts that the 14th Amendment applied to women as well as minorities. Throughout her career, RBG kept a grueling schedule of public appearances at home and abroad. She survived five bouts with cancer, colon cancer in 1999, pancreatic cancer in 2009, lung cancer in 2018, and then pancreatic cancer in 2019, and liver lesions in 2020. But she still went to work, and she still worked out. She endured chemotherapy, radiation, and, in the last years of her life, terrible pain from shingles that never completely disappeared. In 2009, three weeks after major cancer surgery, she surprised everyone when she showed up for the State of the Union address. Shortly after that, she was back on the bench.

RBG was a fighter, she had grit and she fought for justice. It’s up to us America, to carry on her work. In the coming weeks, we need to be tough, we need to stand firm, we need to fight for justice, and we need to make our voices heard and vote. Vote for those candidates who cherish equal rights and reproductive rights, who will defend your right to affordable healthcare, who will battle climate change, who will make Wall Street accountable, who respect those veterans and service members who have given their all for our country, and vote for those candidates who will defend the Constitution. Our nation is on the brink of plunging into an authoritarian nightmare.

“Justice, justice, thou shalt pursue.”