Hatred and Fear

My dad inspired me to become a lawyer. He’s my best friend, confidant, and hero. After graduating from Tulane Law, he worked for five years on the oil side of maritime personal injury, until he couldn’t sleep at night. “It was hard to ‘get jazzed’ about defending Transocean and BP,” he told me. That’s why he became a plaintiff’s attorney–because “it felt right.”

Safety regulations on oil rigs are scant. It's cheaper to pay for lobbyists and lost limbs than to install precautionary measures. Consequently, many injured offshore workers are not victims of bad luck, but of cold calculation. My dad came to see this clearly, and he abhorred it. His desire to right the wrongs inflicted upon these seamen imbued his work with purpose. And now, thirty years after trying a client’s case, he still answers their calls, attends their family weddings, and cheers at their children’s graduations. These men are like family to him. My dad is not John Brown, nor is he Dr. King, but he doesn’t need to be. He recognized the injustice in his small corner of the world and has worked hard for thirty years to make it better. One need not revolt to make the world a better place.

This summer, I am working at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans, and so far, I love it. Last week, I drafted a memorandum that helped prosecute a man who violently abused his girlfriend. This Tuesday, I watched a federal judge convict him. It was an unfamiliar feeling, making things happen using words, but it felt right.

Perhaps I have a future in federal prosecution. Perhaps not. My dad chose maritime personal injury as his arena and his career has shown me that the pursuit of justice is compatible with stability. I don't yet know which front I'll battle on, but I know that my dad’s example and my hatred for injustice will guide me.

But if we take away the rhetoric of the last paragraph, which seems to be intended to show that my statements were somehow received as the answer for you, the draft shows that the answer for you lies elsewhere. I'm not sure how one would transpose King's categories across time, which is why I asked people from the beginning of the course to try that experiment for themselves. John Brown's categories, and Thoreau's, are also not our own.

You want to confront injustice without destroying order. Robert Bolt's version of Thomas More is constructed in that fashion as well, which is why a man of the left such as Bolt considered his More "a man for all seasons." It's a lawyer's way of thinking, isn't it? Not somehow dishonorable, as you imply, because not the form of fighting injustice that extralegalists are inclined to follow, notwithstanding or because of the disorder they imply.

I think the route to the improvement of the draft is the loss of the apology, which seems out of place to me, in favor of the actual outcome of your own experience, which is to receive a call to arms that does not include an effort at revolt.

Life After Katrina: Approaching Justice

-- By Main.JHS - 11 Mar 2017

A death of innocence

These memories mixed with the onset of teen angst to form a potent cocktail. I had peeked behind the curtain of justice and order and glimpsed mankind’s true nature. Stripped of institutions and structural support, society descended into chaos, and men devolved into animals. The fiction of justice and fairness existed only to the extent that our system allowed and when the chips were down, you were just as likely to be shot by a police officer as anyone else. I grasped for validation in existentialist literature. Life was meaningless and the world absurd. These were comforting ideas.

When I began to inquire why the levees broke and the government’s response was so inadequate, my general discontentment was channeled into a disdain for corruption and cronyism. Local politicians misappropriated public funds for levee reinforcement to bankroll marinas, museums, and riverboat casinos. Federal funding for levee protection was slashed. FEMA was run by Mike Brown—an expert on Arabian horses, who also happened to be buddies with President Bush. Political and moral corruption was rife throughout every level of government and no one was forced to take responsibility for the carnage. When I realized that my suffering and the suffering of so many others could have been prevented, hatred boiled inside my chest. Hatred for men who would allow expediency and personal gain to come at the expense of innocent people. I hated injustice, but what I didn’t realize for nearly a decade was that this hatred was restrained by fear.

Hatred and Fear?

As we parted ways at the Christopher St. station, Brit encouraged me to read Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” I read the letter as soon as I got home and a chill rushed through me when I reached the passage Brit wanted me to find.

“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…”

I saw myself in Dr. King’s “white moderate” and it disturbed me. To some extent, all human beings crave stability. And yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my fear of instability was deepened because I knew what it looked like. I had seen the chaos and violence of instability and I never wanted to see it again. Still, the idea of becoming Dr. King’s archetypal “white moderate” tore at my insides.

Reconciliation?

My classmates and I have entered law school at a decisive moment in American history. A man who embodies injustice has ascended to power and, like it or not, we have all been drafted. Our numbers have been called and all that remains to be seen is who will heed the call. I do not wish to be a bystander. FDR once said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” I do not believe that I am alone in my fear of the reckoning at hand, nor is this fear unfounded. Injustice is daunting. I am resolved, however, to do what is necessary.

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