I want to write more about the inspiring folks I know in LA doing legal aid and pro bono work...people like my brave attorney and friend Mia; people like my sister in struggle Betty; people like Matt from the Wage Justice Center...in short, folks who are living their values and using their professional skills to advance those values. I'm hoping to follow their lead someday. But, for now, I'm offering partial notes from an anthology I'm reading called Law Against The People: Essays to Demystify Law, Order, and the Courts edited by Robert Lefcourt.
That someday is also the day where I hope my work is informed by the following bullet points pulled from Kenneth Cloke's essay, Economic Basis of Law and State (1971):
- law = intimidation; order = coercion
- the mere existence of a unified system of law for two social classes which are increasingly in fundamental opposition to one another is itself oppressive
- to be color-blind in a racist environment is to ignore the problem
- there is no legal right to do more than to protest one's slavery, and that, only if a permit has been received and the protest is not violent, does not block traffic, and does not present a clear and present danger to the overthrow of slavery
- labor and debt collection laws give the appearance of fairness and justice while masking the substantive inequality which is endemic to the entire wage-labor system
- what kind of society is it that claims people exist for law rather than law for people?
- once there is real equality there is no need for law
The HuffPo has a short bio of Cloke here:
To see the technical aspect of executing pro bono and legal aid/service type work, don't forget to visit the good folks at http://techno.la --.
