Speech for the National Judicial Conduct and Disability Law Project (NJCDLP) conference held at Rice University in Houston Texas, August 11, 2007.

Getting the Public Good, Served

Some Mindsets and Strategies for Achieving a Just Government and Society
by Byron De Lear

Intro – show biz, GPS, run for Congress, etc.

Now before we get into the nitty-gritty, I’d like to start off with a lawyer joke.

Warning Signs that you Might Need a Different Lawyer
1. Your lawyer tells you that his last good case was of Budweiser.
2. When the prosecutors see your lawyer, they high-five each other.
3. Your lawyer picks the jury by playing "duck-duck-goose."
4. Your lawyer tells you that he has never told a lie.
5. A prison guard is shaving your head.

March of Cultural Progress

There have been unmistakable trends serving the public good and uplifting humanity in the last hundred years. A higher level of human dignity has been fought for and won. Equal rights for women, civil rights for all, labor laws are all areas in which concrete advances have been made and strides forward have been taken.

This is the irrepressible march of cultural progress.

A sense of humanity can be conditioned and morays can be defined -- and yet we are all here today not in some celebratory expression of all the moral battles that have been won – we are here today because there are new battles, new problems and new issues of inequality that we must face and contend with.

Progressive Worldview Factory

As tyrannies evolve with civilization’s landscape, so must we to combat them. As advocates for social justice, this evolution begins with a transformed conception of the problems that we face. Penetration into popular consciousness with a new way to look at the world around us with innovative thinking and updated framing – what we need to construct is a virtual “progressive worldview factory”. This is happening as we speak.

There has been a concerted effort to define the world in strictly corporatist terms, laden with free market evangel. The privatization of every molecule on the planet, screw the commons -- it’s so much more efficient that way, don’t you think?

Our nation, today, is drunk on free trade kool aid.

So much so, that this dogma has permeated into all forms of government moving past any prior confines of strictly economic concerns. Corruption has been institutionalized and we have seen a very real subjugation of all three branches of government to this corporatist agenda, along with what I like to call the PR arm of big business, the main stream media.

This is a system gone astray, and the problem is massive, convoluted and global.

Zena Crenshaw, founding director of NJCDLP, reveals that, “should the targeted corruption be truly systemic, at least initially its redress pits American reformers against vast segments of their own government.”

(“YEARNING FOR GREENER GRASSROOTS”: http://zena.newsvine.com/_news/2007/07/17/841858-yearning-for-greener-gr... )

This contrarian dynamic would make us political pariahs in the minds of some, but does that perspective reconcile with Jefferson’s little rebellion now and again? Of course not.

The fundamental form of American government was designed to entertain a little rebellion now and again, so, we must remind the naysayers of this.

However, for our reformist strategies to be successful, articulating the achievable gradient steps to realize our goals is absolutely necessary to fend off dismissive charges of being outsiders or political interlopers.

We must forward practical real world political perspectives to attract many more supporters to our cause from all political stripes – this means changing our rhetoric and moving past partisan rancor wielding a new political lexicon; a new vocabulary based on realpolitik generated from the bottom up and digestible from the top down.

Corporate Personhood

Although it very well may be in our sights, we won’t get anywhere coming out of the gate calling for the revocation of, say, “corporate personhood” – even if the legal construct of “corporate personhood” violates the true intention of the equal protection provided by the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment was passed into law in the wake of the Civil War for newly freed slaves, and this moral intention was perverted as lawyers representing Corporations took advantage of the Spiritually cleansing and wrenching catastrophe that had just befallen our nation, and argued that Corporations should enjoy equal protection like persons enjoy protections.

Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan best described the political equation of slavery and that of corporate personhood, they said:

Slavery was the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person.

In the real world, our conception of justice should reside in the non-fiction category, don’t you think?

But could we ever rescind Corporate Personhood through Federal legislation?

No – it’s a non-starter because all the Corporations outside of the US, including most US based multi-national conglomerates, would continue to operate by the model of maximized exploitation of the resources needed, people, the environment, etc.

So the long term goal of redefining corporate charters into a truly sustainable and more harmonious relationship to our communities, to our people, to our planet and into a more balanced relationship to our corridors of power, most likely will have to realized through a coordinated global effort. But eventually we will have our day in court.

What will get us there?

Achievable gradient political steps.

After the telling of that corporate lawyer instigated corporate personhood mutilation of the 14th Amendment, I think it’s about time for another good lawyer joke.

Chaos and Confusion

A physician, an engineer, and an attorney were discussing who among them belonged to the oldest of the three professions represented. The physician said, "Remember, on the sixth day God took a rib from Adam and fashioned Eve, making him the first surgeon. Therefore, medicine is the oldest profession."

The engineer replied, "But, before that, God created the heavens and earth from chaos and confusion, and thus he was the first engineer. Therefore, engineering is an older profession than medicine."

Then, the lawyer spoke up. "Yes," he said, "But who do you think created all of the chaos and confusion?"

_______________________________________________

We are working to alleviate some of this chaos and confusion.

Zena Crenshaw stated, “Government reform needs to be as systematic as the malfeasance and misfeasance”

What we are seeking is a Copernican shift moment for our political future and present.

So how do we set the stage for this paradigm shift?

We must simultaneously craft our own reformist lexicon comprised of catchy succinct and revealing messaging like “separation of buck and state”, while at the same time through ruductio ad absurdum tactics deconstruct and unpack the dogma that had gotten us where we are today.

Corrupting influence of big money in our political system violates the very nature of equal protection under the law.

Porky Politicians

Porky politicians pursuing prostituted policies placating the purses of the plutocratic principle peerage that make up the putative pointmen paid for painfully in plain view by us. Period.

Separation of Buck and State – Clean Money gradient step towards a new economy and a political paradigm shift.

Good government --- Yearly Kos Convention -- Lobbyist and Edwards comments defanging K Street – Senator Gravel

Impeachment Center Media Victories

FOAVC -- Bill Walker -- Joel Hirschhorn

Racial and class biases and inequities

Activist Judges -- Robber baron justices -- Corporate handled judiciary

Fiscally encumbered adjudicator

Profit based prejudices

Activist Judges à "Elitist Judges"

Dr. Leroy Gillam and the NJCDLP

Yesterday, I was picked up from the George H.W. Bush Intercontinental Airport here in Houston, TX. by one the NJCDLP leaders and presenters here at this conference, Dr. Leroy Gillam.

Now I spent nearly three hours with Dr. Gillam driving back to his home, convoying back and forth to the airport to pick up other conference attendees, eating a little breakfast – all fairly mundane.

But in the span of those three hours, Dr. Gillam must have fielded 10 urgent phones calls concerning legal cases of folks Leroy was representing that are getting the short end of the stick of justice. These were people stuck in harrowing situations in prisons in Mississippi, Texas and other states. These were people being targeted as adversaries to the prison industrial complex and in some cases being framed from the top, in an effort to take them down.

This is not the America the dreamers dreamed, is it?

These were poor folks getting hammered by a system of legal justice and of social justice that all too often operates as an unyielding mercantile molasses only running freely when given sanction from above.

These economically challenged American ‘children’ have been ‘left behind’ and they turn to Dr. Gillam and folks like yourselves as their angels of equality – these people will turn to the NJCDLP for help when they are in the most dire of circumstances.

In this, you have the highest responsibility to fulfill -- in this, you are doing God’s work.

I’m reminded of a poem by Langston Hughes, Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed, let it be that great strong land of love, where never Kings connive nor tyrants scheme or any man is pressed down from one above – Dr. Gillam and NJCDLP is making that dream a reality.

Now the reason I bring up my experience yesterday with Dr. Leroy and his industry of restorative justice, which is what the NJCDLP is all about, is to let you all know that you are to be congratulated for your patriotic and heroic efforts and that I am greatly honored to be here in your midst.

Thank you.
END

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