Making it work. Working Remotely? A View From a Vet

• Author: Tracey Mihelic
• Pages: 10-11

Long’s “bad day” can’t

compare to the devas-

tation experienced by

his victims and their

families.

Fulton County pros-

ecutors have indicated

they plan to seek hate

crime charges against

Long. But a police

spokesperson down-

playing the likelihood

of racial animus isn’t

a stretch. It reects

the reluctance of law

enforcement to paint

perpetrators with the scarlet R—racism

as a motivation for a crime—absent a

noose or a swastika or racist screeds

uncovered online. This country has

long preferred to view itself through the

rose-colored lens of a post-racial soci-

ety, even when that hue is from crosses

burning in the background. According

to FBI hate crime-tracking records, over

80% of participating jurisdictions re-

ported zero bias incidents in their cities

every year since 1996, a statistic that

strains credulity.

Bias interrupters

The truth is, there can be multiple

factors prompting an attack—mental

illness, bigotry, misogyny, rage. Motives

are not mutually exclusive. It’s also true

that hate crimes are extraordinarily dif-

cult to prosecute because they require

proving the defendant’s bias was one of

the primary reasons for committing the

criminal act. This creates an unwieldy

burden of proof.

Despite this fact, in a rare demon-

stration of bipartisanship, the U.S. Sen-

ate in April passed a hate crimes bill ad-

dressing the rise in attacks against Asian

Americans. Among other things, the bill

creates a Justice Department position

focused on the issue and improves data

collection and reporting requirements.

At press time, the House was set to vote

on the bill the week of May 17.

But not everyone wants to expand

hate crime laws and increase criminal

penalties, because they view it as anoth-

er extension of the carceral state. Some

argue that these laws would allocate

more funding and power to police—

controverting the current movement

to limit overpolicing. Most hate crime

laws enhance sentences for crimes

that already carry signicant penalties

instead of creating new offenses that

might not otherwise be prosecuted. And

they are often erratically applied, when

charges are brought at all. In addition,

a hate crime charge could make a

straightforward case more complex and

harder to win.

Some advocates say resources that

would be diverted to training and

equipping law enforcement to target

and track hate crimes could go toward

public education, prevention services

and grants to assist targeted communi-

ties in other ways.

But even if a hate crime designation

is more symbolic than anything else,

there is power in calling things what

they are. Though these laws are im-

perfect, they are a means of calling out

bias-based attacks and showing mem-

bers of a community that their concerns

are being taken seriously. Yes, there

should be a reevaluation of how hate

crime laws are constructed, the range of

offenses they target and opportunities

for alternative punishments that include

bias-elimination education and resourc-

es for community services. But hate

crime laws are important: They send a

message to targeted communities that

the justice system has their back, and

they let perpetrators know there is a

steep price to pay for bigoted attacks. Q

MAKING IT WORK

Working

Remotely?

A View

From a Vet

BY TRACEY MIHELIC

The pandemic has done what I

never thought possible, vali-

dating what I have known for

some time: When one works

from home, one is actually working. De-

spite the industry’s negative projections

during the early stages of COVID-19,

our rm had a protable year with all

of us working from home.

I began working “remotely” in 2008,

well before COVID-19 sent the rest

of America home. I was an in-house

attorney, traveling the world, with four

little kids, one with special needs, when

one day my daughter’s therapist told me

straight out that my daughter needed

me home more. Staying in my job and

being home for my daughter was not

possible. So I decided to take 12-18

months “off” and focus on my family.

We moved to Costa Rica to get away

from it all. But as former clients called

with work opportunities, I soon found a

path I normally would have considered

too risky, one where I could still prac-

tice and do it from home. What was to

be a 12-to-18-month hiatus turned into

remote working for nearly 13 years,

because even when I returned to a rm,

I continued working remotely.

Challenges and rewards

As everyone has learned, it is not easy

working at home. When I started, peo-

ple were not amenable to a crying child

or the dog barking (or in some cases,

my family chasing the cows out of our

yard) during conference calls. But the

benets of being there for my daughter

when she needed a hug or going for a

midday run with my sons outweighed

Protesters rally against Asian hate in Washington, D.C.

ABA JOURNAL | JUNE–JULY 2021

10

Inter Alia | MAKING IT WORK

Photo by Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

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