Judy, Lance & Ira

I started law school in the fall of 1973 – night law school – with all sorts of classmates in suits coming from day jobs in the business world.  Opening night a retired judge welcomed us to Temple, his alma mater, and ended telling us don’t forget to laugh once in a while, saying:

“There was a guard and an inmate on death row.  Year after year, appeal after appeal, they got to be good friends.   Finally, after all appeals were exhausted, he had to be the executioner too.  Walking to the electric chair, he didn’t know what to say to his good friend.  As he pulled the switch, he said ‘More power to you!’”

Everybody but me laughed.  Law school!  But it was through law school I met Judy and Ira.

Judy Chomsky was the Temple Chapter President of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), an organization founded in the 1930s when the Bar Association wouldn’t admit Blacks. I liked their motto: “Human Rights Before Property Rights.”  Judy arranged for Bill Kuntsler to speak at Temple.  Kuntsler, famous for his work on the Chicago Seven trial, was in the midst of the Wounded Knee trial back in Saint Paul, as part of the defense team.  Bill told me to read his book, The Case for Courage.

Judy, later, joined Kuntsler at the Center for Constitutional Rights as an international human rights lawyer.  Years later, back in Saint Paul, others on that Wounded Knee defense team, members of the NLG, helped steer me to becoming a Movement lawyer.  Judy is still a good friend – as evidenced by how old we look look in the photo above.  Thanks Judy and Bill for all those connections.

captions:  Top:  The 1973 Wounded Knee Occupation which resulted in criminal conspiracy charges against Minneapolis AIM Members Russell Means and Dennis Banks.  The subsequent trial defense included Saint Paul attorney Ken Tilsen, who became a mentor to me, as well as Diane Wiley and Susie MacPherson, founders of the National Jury Project (NJP), both still life-long friends.

Bottom:  Kuntsler, my hero, speaking at Temple Law School in 1973.  A year later the NLG and NJP succeeded in getting the charges dismissed.

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While in night law school, working the streets during the days and on weekends, my fellow streetworker, Lance Hoch, proposed we write a grant proposal to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to expand street work in Philadelphia to neighborhoods with kids hanging on corners, huffing glue down by the train yards instead of going to school.  After we got the money, and started in, Voyage House got a new Executive Director who thought there was a better way to spend the NIMH money.  Lance decided to resign in protest, and his being such a good friend, I did too.  Thanks, Lance, for getting me to be a cab driver!  LOL.  But it was through cab driving that I met Ira Katz.

Hard to believe that driving a cab could be viewed as part of The Movement, but yes, looking back at the Compendium, lots of stories dealt with class issues and labor organizing.  Sure enough, the Teamsters had just settled a new contract, one with lots of added benefits for retirees and very little for active drivers, due mostly to the increasing number of college kids driving a cab (like me) and the decreasing number planning on cab driving as a life-long job.  But one of the active drivers was angry about the settlement.  His dad had been a cab driver his whole life, and he was planning on a similar career.  His name was Sal, and he’s another friend who steered me in a life-changing direction whose last name I can’t recall.  Sal says to me, “Hey, you’re in law school, what do you know about labor law?”

Not enough, I thought, but I figured Judy with the NLG might have some ideas.  Judy said to call Ira Katz, an NLG member and local labor lawyer.  Sure enough, Ira schooled me in basic labor law and said, “It all comes down to organizing.  Find enough drivers who want a stronger union, and I’ll be their lawyer.”  Pretty soon Sal and I had a dozen drivers meeting regularly in a church basement on Sunday nights, usually with Ira too.  The organizing effort did not end successfully*, but Ira and I became good friends – and to this day I have to thank Ira for steering me to a most significant life-changing friend, Patricia DeCarlo – see next chapter.  (Ira, don’t know what you ended up doing with the rest of your life, but I’m sure it included being a lawyer for the people.)

*Here’s what happened to our organizing effort: Sal and I would go out for beers after the meetings.  One night we got to talking about doing acid.  Though he was solid blue collar working class, with no distinguishable counter-culture characteristics, he claimed to be an experienced acid head and asked if I knew where to get some.  This led to the last acid trip of my life.  You can read the full story titled “The Broad Street Scene” by clicking <Here> or finding it in the Archives.   [second dose of Verboten List]

Suffice for here, Sal and I ended up at midnight at the corner of Broad and Walnut, the busiest cab-stand in town, lost!  For two hours all we could do is wave at the drivers waving at us (lots of drivers knew Sal or his dad).  Every time we tried to walk away on Broad, the scene looked like Walnut.  Every time we tried walking down Walnut (to get off the corner), we thought we were on Broad, and all we could do was pull ourselves along the sides of the buildings and make it back to the corner.