My friend and fellow criminal defense lawyer, Kathy Manley, had this poster in her office back in Albany. I can’t remember what the graphic was, but the words were written in Hebrew and in English – “Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue” I am not a biblical scholar, and while I’ve been to synagogues on high holy days and have several close, Jewish friends, I don’t know where in the Torah this is or what the context is for it. I do know that justice is a theme throughout the religions of ‘the book’ as we call them – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. No, this isn’t a dissertation on justice in Islam. That’s for another time. And, I suppose I could find a Wiki link for this particular quote, but I assume you, smart reader, could do it yourself. While talk of justice amongst criminal attorneys is as common as talk of sexual conquests at swingers club, it’s an important one nonetheless. And, one that is easy to write about. After all, who doesn’t want to believe they pursue justice?

Last weekend I went to the inaugural conference of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms. The mission of the group is to do something about the spate of preemptive prosecutions by the Department of Justice. Most of the people prosecuted are muslim or of middle eastern origin. They might speak out against US policy in the middle east, most notably the treatment of Palestinians and US policy in that region. Maybe they don’t like the war in Iraq or think Afghanistan is pointless. Roughly half the people who are members of NCPCF are white. They speak out against US policy in discriminating against minorities, against demonizing religions and races of people, and against the lack of respect for civil liberties shown by our government.

Let’s be clear, I’m not anti-war. I’m not a dove by any stretch of the imagination. I think, sometimes, you have to fight. I think, in Afghanistan, it was our obligation to fight and I still think that if we don’t clean that mess up we’re in for an even bigger mess as years go by. You can’t win one war on the backs of a struggling people and then turn away, leaving a wasteland, and not expect very bad things to happen. This is not the same as saying we deserved it. It’s just current events in context.  But just because I’m not a part of the peace community doesn’t mean I’m not a part of the justice community.

So these people are being prosecuted, not for actual acts but for thoughts and speech, and the crime they are being prosecuted for is a violation of the Material Support Provision Under the Patriot Act.  I am not talking here about the shoe bomber or people who have legitimately tried to blow shit up in this country.  I’m talking about people who have been set up by the FBI with their agent provacateurs or people discussing things that would otherwise be classified as speech protected by the first amendment.  Maybe these people have relatives who are actually part of some organization, or they donated to charitable organizations that have tenuous ties to groups that are against US policy in the Middle East.  All of this is against the law.

This year, the Supreme Court upheld the ban on material support despite the fact that there is nary a doubt it infringes on protected speech.  But hell, if our safety is at stake, why not give up freedom?  This was a blow to many groups who provide expert advice to groups that are on the ‘terrorist list’ on how to engage in peaceful dispute resolution, human rights advocacy and educational assistance.  This means that if a lawyer tells a ‘terrorist organization’ that the best way for them to get their grievances heard is to go to the U.N., they can be indicted under this provision.  This is serious stuff, friends, because it is just a slight slip down the rabbit hole to a strange and foreign land called you ain’t got no more freedoms.

There are people out there who are pursuing justice in ways I am not brave enough to take on.  They are petitioning our government, they are lobbying, they are holding meetings across the country to stop this crazy train.  They are setting up brief banks so that people who are taking on these cases won’t have to reinvent the wheel. This group is going to challenge the policy of solitary pretrial confinement for people held on ‘terrorist’ charges (I use this word and phrase in quotes, because the government uses it to fear monger) 23 hour lock down with little to no communication with their families.  They are publicly decrying, once again, the use of secret evidence and secret experts.  They are bringing to light the horrific conditions of confinement at the Communications Management Units (CMU’s) in Illinois and Indiana.  Most importantly,they are giving each other moral support so that when one of their compatriots feels like she can’t keep banging her head on this concrete barrier anymore, someone hands her a bag of frozen peas to press against the bump and says, keep on banging, eventually you will break through.

Dear friend, dear lawyer, dear lover of justice on either side of the aisle, we are giving it all away and have been since 9/11.  When do we stop? When do we say enough? And what are we going to do about it? If ‘they’ hate us for our freedoms, ‘they’ should love us right about now. We are arresting our own, we are intimidating people who are exercising one of our fundamental rights – the right to speak out against our government.  We are indicting people not for acts, but for thoughts, for words. One of the speakers said he frequently feels like he’s preaching to the choir, but want he really wants is for the choir to sing.  I want other people to join the choir, to realize that the government isn’t just doing to them what it couldn’t possibly do to you.  Here, I know you’ve heard this before, but it bears repeating:

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Pastor Martin Niemöller