The only way not to be afraid is to join with other people who are also afraid.
The only thing we have is each other.
You're working not for the corporate interest, not for the government interest, not for your own self-interest. You have a higher calling.
Today, it's not the same playing field as when I first became a lawyer in 1977, where the government had been restricted by our wonderful Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren's court rulings. Now it's all going the other way, the flow is against the defendant, against anything that could really help a client. But you still fight it, you do what you can do. It's all there is.
If you make a mistake as a prosecutor, your mistakes go home, whereas if you make a mistake defending, they go to jail.
Lawyering is very individualistic. There are lawyers who are going to be that persistent birddog, they're never going to give up on the client, they're going to defend people.
I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution.
Being a lawyer, first of all, think creatively. Think, "How can we deal with this particular case in a way we haven't dealt with similar ones in the past?" Second, don't be afraid of the people who are willing to defend your client. I find too many lawyers say, "Keep that defense committee away from me!" If it weren't for my defense committee, I'd be sitting in federal prison in Texas today. And the press! You've got to learn to handle the press because god knows the government does all the time.
My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.
I'm particularly committed to the political people who needed defense. I understand that they're fighting a bigger war than just, "Let me go get some money for cocaine tonight."
Your goal is to make a better world through the work you do. It's not always possible, and you have to earn a living.
I would never take a case that had to do with abusing children. They're the true innocents. All of the rest of us, we have smears and stains, but they're helpless. I couldn't add my talent, which is prodigious, to a defense of someone even accused of hurting a child. I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens. Other than that, I represented everybody who came by.
I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens.
I took anything that came across my doorstep. I started getting a reputation.
I would never take a case that had to do with abusing children. They're the true innocents.
You make yourself available to the movement. At that point, for example, battered wives were not on the top of anybody's list. It was, "What did you do to provoke him? Why would he do that to you?" Stuff like that. I called the hotline, and I said I was available to help get orders of protection. I would help do whatever needed to be done, serve their papers. Many times, they'd go to court, get their papers, and then be afraid to serve them on the guy. So that was one source of income. But I took anything that came across my doorstep.
I couldn't add my talent, which is prodigious, to a defense of someone even accused of hurting a child.
You've got to learn to handle the press because god knows the government does all the time.
Put the strong, masculine figure in a school with tough kids and you have a certain control. It's very demeaning to the kids and very demeaning to the tough, black guy, but that's how they worked it.
How could I have been the valedictorian, the smartest, and never known Harlem existed? As a result, I began a lifelong learning experience, because I could not accept what the party line was with education - that these people want to live like this, these people don't have ambition, they don't want to work. You know, all the usual bullshit.
I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles. So I went to the school and, being a smart cookie - as they called us in those days - I had a million questions. How did this place exist? How come I didn't know about it? Why are people living like this? Do they want to live like this?
There's a lot of active radical thought today but not much action.
There are lawyers who believe in client-centered representation and who are dedicated on the same level I feel I was dedicated.
The prosecution makes all the important decisions: what's charged, how much is charged, whether you can get a decent offer. Every defendant becomes an informant today.
I spoke in front of a huge gathering in Seattle, and someone got up and said, "I'm just so afraid." I said, "The only way not to be afraid is to join with other people who are also afraid."
