This last Wednesday, en route to legal observe an action on skid row, I was lucky enough to run into Julie and check in with her for a while. For all I know, it could have been our farewell because she's been appointed to serve as the Labor Commissioner for the state. As we were catching up, she returned my copies of Rights on Trial and biographies of Paul Robeson and Medgar Evers which belonged to my son but I had lent her for her children. As we were talking, I couldn't help but feel that I was in the presence of an Arthur Kinoy...moreover someone who lives some of the words from the chapter she assigned:
"...people's lawyers must never forget their underlying purpose: to utilize their skills in order to assist people already in motion to care forward their own struggles." "..the lawyer's activity is rarely, if ever, the primary means of winning the struggle. Victory has to be achieved by the people themselves, through their own organizational strength and activity, and the legal work of the people's lawyer must be directed primarily toward helping to create an atmosphere in which the people can more readily function, organize, and move forward."
As I reflect on most of my lawyer friends, not acquaintances who happen to be lawyers, I think most of them have been through the Kinoy-Su school of law. One of my best friends, Betty, captured this practice and sentiment in her essay, "Law and Organizing from the Perspective of Organizers: Finding a Shared Theory of Social Change". http://www.lapilj.org/2008-09-hung-article.html
It's funny, Julie was one of the reasons why I decided to work for my employer and, semi-jokingly, I'd always call her the conscience of the organization. Now I'm frightened that that appellation might be true.
It's also timely that she returned that book because, as I've been reading Dancing with Dynamite by Benjamin Dangl, I've come across so many passages where I tell myself, "I'm glad a lawyer didn't get in the way of these movements." I intended to clip some of the more amazing statements from that book, but for now, I think this post should stand alone.
The Kinoy book can be found here:
Medgar Evers: http://amzn.com/087067594X
Paul Robeson: http://amzn.com/0870675524
