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Lawyers and Revolutionaries and : Lawyers and Revolutionaries 49 Lawyers and Revolutionaries: Notes from the Featuring William Kunstler, Charles Garry, National Conference on Political Justice Jerry Rubin and others1 by Kas Kalba and Jay Beste Kas Katha is a topic editor of Law and Social Action and a doctoral student in city planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Jay Beste, also at the University of Pennsylvania, is in the joint program in law and city planning. In addition, he is associate editor of Planning Comment, the national journal of planning students. Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, 1971 1 Yale Review of Law and Social Action, Vol. 1 [1971], Iss. 1, Art. 5 so The trial of the Conspiracy alienation and often the hair style of "Do It!" Jerry Rubin 8-later-7 has opened a Pandora's box their clients, or there are no lawyers." of questions about the American The following report on the On Thursday evening, Jerry Rubin judicial system. Some of these National Conference on Political arrives on the Penn campus. Half questions concern the revolutionary Justice, held from March 19 to 21, Mighty Mouse, with arched shoulders forces in America. But others strike 1970, may help us to understand some and upraised, clenched fist, and half directly at our thinking about the of the legal and emotional issues Alfred E. Neuman, grinning with courts. involved. The conference was held at satisfaction at nearly 3,000 students Where, for example, does the the University of Pennsylvania, an who gathered at Irvine Auditorium to young lawyer, steeped in the tradition institution that prides itself on not hear him, he proceeds to lambast the of Brown v. Board of Education.fit having undergone any violent student media, parents, the schools, liberals, into the iconoclastic cultural disturbances. But for the most part, ending it all with "Do it!", which revolution that is occurring around the speakers assembled at the not-so-incidentally is the title of his him? Can he cling to notions like legal University brought to its halls a verbal latest book. aid to the poor, school desegregation turbulence that is probably without He speaks a lot about freedom. and civil liberties while the courtroom precedent in the school's lengthy "Freedom in America," Rubin quips, is being transformed into guerrilla history. Moreover, recent events in Bel "is the right to grow up and oppress theater? Air, Maryland and elsewhere fueled your children, dig it .... We're gonna Or, will the radical defendant the rhetorical heat of the speeches and get stoned with our kids .... Seven- allow himself to be defended by gave the conference the air of a minor year-olds know where it's at .... before organizations such as the American historical happening. they get into the schools." Or: "Free Civil Liberties Union? Have his speech in America is Eldridge Cleaver being able to have a best seller and still protests gone beyond traditional be shot down the minute he sets foot questions about rights? As Dwight into the country." MacDonald notes in the introduction In talking about his program, to The Tales of Hoffman, an edited Rubin is less metaphorical, although version of the Chicago trial transcript, not necessarily more precise. "We "In the new style radical courtroom don't want to repeat the miserable life tactics, either the lawyers share the https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yrlsa/vol1/iss1/5 2 and : Lawyers and Revolutionaries our parents lead .... their bore - youngsters after school for bad Who is Jerry Rubin? Someone on a dom .... What we're against is manners and bad thoughts (the intent total ego trip? Someone out to prove competition that makes you look at to riot). "It was like school, that was that violent thoughts and words your brother and say, 'I hope I get the only analogy." should not be outlawed? Or a deadly better grades than him or make more Watching Jerry Rubin's bodily serious revolutionary who is as money than him .... ' We can't count and verbal antics makes one almost disciplined as he is playful? It did not on anyone in power because power is forget that this man carries a prison seem likely that the lawyers who were corrupt." But what do "we" want? On sentence in his hip pocket. Yet prison, to speak on the following days would this count, Rubin's suggestions are Rubin intimates, may be freer than the answer this question. abysmally few. "We're against racism, outside. While, to the bourgeois, sexism, capitalism, and we want to 'do prison is the next worst thing to The Courtroom As it!' "Do what? "We're finding out incest, it is the locus of true brother­ A Political Forum hood to Rubin. "There's no racism that the only truth and education is The four-member panel calmly behind bars," he says. When he was action in the streets." To do what? prepares to discuss "Trials for War ordered to have his hair cut after the To: "do it!" Dissenters." Set above the listeners, Chicago trial, Rubin continues, the In Revolution for the Hell of It, beneath a bank of unseen lights and inmate barber whispered in his ear: "I Abbie Hoffman writes, "We are living fringed on both sides by deep-blue 51 won't cut off much, just trim it a little TV ads, movies. Yippie! There is no drapes, the panel looks like the usual and wet it down." program. Program would make our assortment of patricians preparing to movement sterile. We are living Again, it was youth's obscenity, dissect the judiciary for the student contradictions. I cannot really explain its long hair, and so on, that Julius plebians. it. I do not even understand it Hoffman tried to suppress in Chicago. Bang! "We are on the brink of the myself." The carry-over to Jerry At the same time, Rubin is careful to greatest constitutional crisis since the Rubin at Irvine Auditorium at first point out, youth's enemies are not beginning of this country," Stewart seems complete. Rubin has the only on the repressive right but also Meacham begins.2 "We are in a audience in his palm, but it's not clear among the liberals who-like the four situation where the state is exercising a where he's leading them. Does he dissenting jurors at the trrial-are monopoly on violence to perpetrate really want us to "do it," with all the willing to compromise with injustice. criminal acts on the peoples of the mystery that the term conjures up The same applies to liberal lawyers world." Should the judiciary be the (breaking windows? intercourse? who refuse to acknowledge the forum for the resolution of essentially dropping out of the universities, which political nature of cases against political controversy? This is the issue are only an "advanced form of toilet Yippies, SDS members or Black which the panel, in one form or Panthers. Rubin wants to turn civil training"?), or does he simply want us another, will address itself to. liberties lawyers into flaming to reverberate these two cabalistic The background of the panelists revolutionaries, as happened to words at the enemy? Do it, do it, do puts the controversy in bold relief. William K unstler. it! The enemy won't know what the James St. Clair, attorney for Rev. Ultimately, there is a sense of words mean any more than we do, but William Sloan Coffin of the Boston both overture and apocalypse when invocation of the unknown is power. Five, says, "The courtroom is Rubin speaks. Two students who were Only gradually does the dialetic of inherently unsuited for the resolution present at a private session with the 'the new myth appear. Youth's of political disputes .... I do not at all Yippie leader before his public language is its strength. For a moment, support the conduct of counsel in the appearance reported the following in Rubin plays McLuhan. The youth Chicago trial." While Mike Ferber of The Daily Pennsylvanian: culture, particularly their language, is the Boston Five, in vivid ·contrast, says, continually being commercialized by At one point, one of the people in the "You can't separate politics and the the Establishment. We have revolu­ room remarked to Jerry that his father legal system," and Richard Axelrod, 3 tions in toilet paper, sex through was a judge. To this, Mr. Rubin "I hope Kunstler is held up as an Ultrabrite, trips to the Bahamas, queried, "Why don't you kill him?" Of example to attorneys around the Dodge rebellions. "But the key word is course, we all thought he was country." fuck; they [Rubin smiles) can't co-opt joking-but then, he explained how it The contrast seems too pat, too fuck." really would be "dramatic" and typical, too much in keeping with So "fuck" it is. They'll never print dwelled on the subject of assassination what we know of the participants' ages that in the Chicago Tribune. And to the point where none of us in the and ideas of propriety. St. Clair, the maybe not "do it" either. It's a myth room doubted his seriousness. When perfect libertarian, believes that all of permissiveness we're talking of. one of us asked if the Yippies really people are entitled to legal representa­ That, after all, Rubin points out, was believed in assassination as a political tion. In his view men are indicted for what the trial in Chicago was all tactic, he simply replied "Sure!" and civil or criminal acts, but not political about: youth's obscenity, its hair, seemed surprised that we asked.
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