--- On Wed, 9/23/09, Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
> From: Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Doris Walker and Ann Gagan Ginger
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 8:19 PM
> I was asked about Doris Brin Walker
> and Ann Gagan Ginger today, and I
> had completely forgotten them. I didn't know them. They
> were two radical
> Berkeley lawyers who made important contributions to civil
> rights, human
> rights, keeping government honest, stopping the endless
> stream of legal
> and physical abuse coming from the state, etc. They were
> very active in
> 60s rad politics here.
>
> My memory must be melting away faster than the polar caps.
> I was sure I
> remembered something on them in the lbo archives...sure
> enough. See
> below obit note on Walker which Dennis Claxton posted.
>
> Below is a link to an interview with Ann Ginger:
>
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=713215581291529425#
>
> While I was looking around at the Meikeljohn Institute I
> suddenly
> started to remember all kinds of legal work and actions of
> the 60s-70s.
> This work and its concepts were `in the air', and in the
> speeches and
> acted as a training guide to both radical politics and
> radical action.
> Michael Tigar must have known them and or worked for them
> in some way.
> They set up the background to understand the Free Speech
> Movement.
>
> Of course a lot of demonstrations were just rallies that
> may or may not
> end with police violence. But there were other
> demonstrations and
> speeches that were true training system to communicate what
> an earlier
> generation like Walker and Ginger had learned.
>
> Doris Walker's most famous trial was as defence attorney
> for Anglia
> Davis. The obit was posted when Dennis Claxton asked about
> a book about
> Doris Walker.
>
> ``...From 1961 to 1977, Walker was a partner in a law
> practice with
> Robert Treuhaft, a prominent leftist who was married to
> Walker's close
> friend, writer Jessica Mitford. The firm, Treuhaft, Walker
> and
> Burnstein, hired Hillary Rodham, the future first lady and
> secretary of
> State, as an intern in 1971...''
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-doris-walker23-2009aug23,0,4522095.story
>
>
> What I want to say about both Walker and Ginger is what
> tremendous
> teachers they were. When Walker would hold a news
> conference, she used
> the opportunity to lecture on the law and the state. So the
> trial became
> a demonstration project to educate the people on their
> rights, the use
> of those rights and how to fight back against government
> and capital.
>
> I would urge people to click on video link and listen. You
> will see
> immediately what I am talking about. Ginger teaches the
> interviewer, and
> the audience. For example, she explains how to report
> police misconduct
> on the Mexican border to the US government and the UN
> special rapporteur
> for human rights. What's important about these reports is
> that they are
> formally reviewed by the UN and the numbers of cases are
> made public.
> These numbers show how big the problem is and whether or
> not there is a
> systematic policy of abuse. It is really good stuff. These
> statistics
> are also important as legal documentation and are used in
> US courts
> against the government.
>
> She explains the UN charters are treaties, and the US
> constitution says
> that treaties are enforced by the US government. Therefore
> the
> provisions against civil and human rights are also US law.
>
>
> What's strange about all this for me, is I realize that
> many of my
> concepts and thoughts on how to change society came from
> these two
> women. These were the concepts and ideas that were `in the
> air' when I
> was in my twenties. I learned them so long ago, I forgot
> where they came
> from.
>
> I bring this up because that's what we need more of today
> to
> re-construct a left movement. If you listen to the video,
> notice that
> Ginger de-constructs the entire rightwing agenda.
>
> We talk about theory and its relationship to practice.
> Walker and Ginger
> show us how to do that through legal theory. In a manner of
> speaking,
> the theory of our society is to be found in its legal
> constructs, so if
> we want to change the society, we have to perform that
> change through
> the legal constructs that found it. The first example that
> popped into
> my mind was that corporations are virtual people and
> therefore have
> rights, therefore making campaign contributions protected
> speech?
>
> They reminded me of other things I used to think about and
> forgot. The
> apparently empty slogan, Think global, Act locally, for
> example. Now go
> back and think about what Ginger was saying about the UN
> and US law.
> See? She was acting locally with state/federal case law, by
> thinking
> through the global sphere of UN laws and charters.
>
> Another thing that Walker and Ginger added was the way to
> focus on
> issues of the day, and make a few critical items do a lot
> of the heavy
> lifting work of raising public awareness. For example the
> illegal nature
> of government action in prisoner abuse cases goes a long
> way towards
> explaining what's wrong with concept of a war on terror.
> Wars are by
> definition conflicts between two or more states. In the war
> on terror
> there is only one state actor and its action are in
> addition illegal.
> The authorization by written up by the executive branch is
> illegal, and
> more.
>
> There are even fewer radical business/economics lawyers,
> but we could
> use some to de-construct the nonsense that there is such a
> thing as
> jobless recoveries...
>
> This is getting too long...
>
> CG
>
>
>
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