REPRESENTATIVE NICOLE COLLIER: THE LAW’S SHACKLES AND OUR UNYIELDING WILL

The tactics of oppression are tragically familiar. Whenever those in power feel threatened by voices of justice, they resort to the same devices: manipulation, slander, and the misuse of law. History has shown us that when power fears accountability, it bends rules into chains.

There is a deep and bitter irony in America’s story: those entrusted to write and interpret the law have too often wielded it not as an instrument of justice, but as a weapon of control. Today, in 2025, we still bear witness to the same tactics that are brutal in consequence. These tactics have allowed for unjust murders, chained us in fields, labeled us as less than a person, and silenced our voices in courthouses, states, towns, classrooms, workplaces, restaurants, pools, bathrooms, and even water fountains.

Representative Nicole Collier, a distinguished legislator and state representative for Fort Worth, Texas, now stands at the intersection of history’s repetition. She has been subjected to the legislative equivalent of chains: forced to remain in chambers, maneuvered by procedural rules, compelled to be physically present as a strategy to stifle her advocacy and obstruct her voice. What should be a democratic process becomes a coercive performance, echoing an old refrain: power demanding obedience through force rather than persuasion. This is a dangerous weapon used by a privileged party to “improve republican performance” and to “give republican opportunities they have not had,” legislators say.

The Constitution forbids coercion. The Supreme Court has long recognized that compelled speech, compelled presence, and compelled association run afoul of the First Amendment’s protections. In discrimination law, we know too well that power exercised through force, whether overt or cloaked in parliamentary procedure, carries the taint of illegitimacy. In tort law, the principle is even clearer: no one may be confined against their will without just cause. Whether you call it false imprisonment or abuse of process, the injury is real and has lingering effects.

Legally, one must ask: what is this but an inversion of the constitutional guarantees we claim to hold sacred?

The Thirteenth Amendment abolished involuntary servitude, yet here stands a Black woman compelled to labor under duress of legislative gamesmanship.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth demands fairness, yet here is a practice aimed not at equal debate, targeted at democrats that intended to suppress a representative whose very presence challenges the old order.

Tort law reminds us that coercion, restraint, and abuse of process are injuries no less real because they occur in marble halls instead of in streets.

Beyond the doctrines of law, there is a deeper wound. For centuries, our people were forced into rooms, fields, and factories not of their choosing—forced to sit at the back, forced to leave the ballot box, forced to be present when dignity demanded departure. This is not new. It is a repetition. It is a pattern. Every repetition carries with it the substantiality of obstructive outcomes, resulting in history’s unfinished work.

And all of this for what? For power. For domination. To dilute the voices that have always been diluted here in America, the Black and Brown communities. Republicans argue for a new redistricting map that will give the privileged party a significant number of votes in favor of the republican party for future congressional seats. This move significantly impacts the United States, where the people who hold the seats in Congress use their bias to determine what is essential to be implemented in the law. Without representation, our community will always lack attention, and our enumerated rights will continue to be threatened and disregarded. Laws will continue to be written not for us, but in loopholes that will cause more harm than healing. This is evident and irrefutable. How can you change the hearts of people who once sat with their families, ate popcorn, and cheered as they watched a person be burned to death? There is no humanity in a person like that. How can a nation grow with no humanity? It can’t. It won’t. I promise.

This is not new. It is the continuation of a long and savage history:

When enslaved Africans were told it was “lawful” to work until their bodies broke.

When Jim Crow courts declared segregation “equal” while condemning generations to subjugation.

When lynchings were legal, and the federal government would not intervene, and the police departments allowed people to be dragged out of their departments, and casual killings of blacks were seen as just.

What Nicole Collier faces is a modern mask of an ancient problem: the law bent not to uphold liberty, but to tighten the grip of control. And yet, her refusal to bow reminds us that every unjust law, every coercive rule, eventually falls when met with truth and courage.

Nicole Collier did not yield. By remaining steadfast, she transformed coercion into resistance. She reminded us that education, history, and truth are not luxuries but weapons paramount to survival. She showed that even when the machinery of power and mendacity tries to confine you, your presence cannot be ignored, and your voice and relentlessness are predominant for change.

We must learn from this moment. The lesson is not only about Nicole Collier, but about us. It is an urgent truth that history, unlearned, will always repeat itself. If we do not educate ourselves, if we do not remember, then those in power will continue to use “procedure” as a veil for oppression. Those in power will disregard the fact that they rarely follow procedure until it benefits them.

Let it be known: education is not an elective for survival; it is survival itself. Law is not an abstract for scholars; it is the battlefield for our rights. History is not a burden to carry; it is the map to freedom.

Nicole Collier’s struggle is not hers alone. It is ours. As long as America persists in repeating its sins under new names, it is our duty, by law, by history, by faith, to correct the wrongs, to speak, and to build a nation where coercion has no home and justice no longer waits.

History is watching, and so is our future.