As part of the $100,000 fund drive to put this revolution on the map, we've wanted to reach lawyers—to raise funds and to introduce them to Bob Avakian's work. This is a strategic section of people and BA's breakthrough work on law, justice and ending oppression and exploitation needs to be seriously engaged—broadly and among those who work in the legal sphere.

Just sending emails has gotten very little response, so we decided to go directly to where we know lawyers congregate—the criminal courthouse. We were particularly interested in meeting lawyers who care about people and want to help those facing injustice. We went in the morning to a huge criminal courthouse in our city to talk to criminal defense attorneys. To give you a sense of scale, the public defenders’ office, which is headquartered in that courthouse, is the largest in the world. 

Now that COVID restrictions have been lifted, there are hundreds of people—many basic masses who are defendants and their families and friends—coming to appear in the morning, and with them, a steady stream of attorneys.

We found the entrance that most attorneys use (you can tell who they are because they have to wear suits to court). We brought displays about The Bob Avakian Interviews on The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, a display of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America and one about the police murder of Tyre Nichols. We distributed two flyers: Noche Diaz's statement on the murder of Tyre Nichols and the flyer about the $100,000 Fund Drive and upcoming livestream, which prominently features the three-part interview of Bob Avakian. We also brought an important article from revcom.us about BA and his work on law which gives people a real sense of what the new communism is about and the importance of its application to the arena of Constitution, law and rights (we gave this to every attorney we spoke with).

While brief, we were able to have substantive conversations with more than a dozen attorneys and many others took flyers. We also reached a number of masses going in for their cases. Next time, we want to have two teams reaching different sections of people going into the different entrances.

We made it clear from the beginning why we were saying revolution was necessary, drawing from BA’s writing on the role of the police, on delusions of reform, and how the oppression of Black people cannot be solved under this system. We talked about how BA has analyzed that we're in a rare time when revolution has become more possible, and what it would mean for them to contribute to putting this on the map. 

One person on our team noted that in going out to lawyers in the past, they ran into the idea that they are doing all they can do—working within the system to help specific clients and working to protect people's legal rights, or even to reform laws. But we found much more openness to real revolution in this outing.

There was only one attorney that we spoke to who was optimistic about reform off of the Tyre Nichols case—saying that never before were murder charges against the police brought so quickly. But most others were deeply disturbed by this murder and the whole slate of police murders that had just taken place in LA of people in mental health crises or another of a double amputee desperately trying to get away when he was murdered.

Others said that they know how bad things are right now and “had no answers.” For a significant number of them, what we were saying resonated. We talked to three public defenders briefly. They responded to the unreformability of the system and the actual role of the police under this system. They were disturbed by the extreme rise of fascism—the open white supremacy and violence, the shredding of the rule of law at the state and federal levels, especially in the Supreme Court. 

You got a sense that they were hearing, for the first time perhaps, how all of this was in service of a larger system of capitalism-imperialism—one of extreme and murderous inequality. And were also hearing for the first time a serious argument for revolution and its potential in this time. 

One lawyer said, “I see the nightmare of this system every day at work.” And she knows that the police are constantly lying on the stand. She said that things have only gotten worse since the protests after George Floyd, not better. And they could see the reality that this system has no future for the youth overall, that there was something very genocidal going on for those on the bottom.

There were a number of attorneys who gave us ways to reach them because we were saying something different than everyone else. An older attorney said he became a lawyer because he was inspired by the trial of Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party and his admiration for the lawyer who defended him. He had in recent years put his support behind Bernie Sanders but said that he remembered when people talked like us and gave us his business card. 

Another “agreed” quickly to every point we made and said he is extremely busy but if nothing else he could probably contribute, scribbled down his email address and got into his Uber. A woman in her 60s said, “You are preaching to the choir,” “I’ve been doing criminal defense for years and years, you keep protesting and I'll probably end up defending you.” She gave us a way to contact her when we said we were talking about making an actual revolution, overthrowing this whole system, and she said she could not stay to talk but to reach out to her. Another attorney who had received a lot of bad press for his defense of a controversial client, said he was completely demoralized and was about to quit practicing law. He said the whole thing, referring we think to the justice system, needs to be overthrown, and handed us his business card. 

Because of the fascist assault on the rule of law, these attorneys are being confronted by a situation that challenges their old frameworks and is compelling them to ask deeper questions. The answers are there, but not in the ways they spontaneously would come to understand. Which underscores the importance of them getting into The BA Interviews—in terms of the analysis, leadership and vision that all comes alive.  And to them contributing to these having societal impact.

This really brought alive the truth from BA that he discusses in Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating:

... as “the normal way” society has been ruled is failing to hold things together—and society is increasingly being ripped apart—this can shake people’s belief that “the way things have always been” is the only way things can be. It can make people more open to questioning—in a real sense it can force people to question—the way things have been, and whether they have to stay that way. And this is all the more likely to happen if the revolutionary forces are out among the people shining a light on the deeper reality of what is happening, and why, and bringing out that there IS an alternative to living this way.

We also talked with some of the masses going in and out of court. The sign on Tyre Nichols's murder tapped into something visceral in people—including those who are facing no prospect for justice. One guy stood by us just venting about how fucked over he's being done by the courthouse. Another guy that followed us on Instagram after talking with us heard an attorney yell out “not all cops are bad” and felt compelled to respond to her opening up a brief back-and-forth. There were several masses who just kind of stopped in their tracks and wanted to find out more about what we were saying about revolution.

There is a potentially powerful mix of people at the criminal courthouses. Next time, we want to go back with a couple more people to reach everyone. Also, at this courthouse there is an area by the main exit where we could set up a TV and sound where we can play clips from the BA Interview right on the spot.