I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
This is the song that got me through the election. That can get us all through the next sixty-five days. The singer is Kay-Kay Filizzola, the guitarist and producer her husband, Fili Filizzola, and they are Sour Honey Nights. You can also find it on Amazon and music streaming services.
[Editor’s Note: Donald Trump is in the middle of pulling what may be his last con on the United States as its president — but don’t give up on him, he’s still got till 20 January and he’s as cranky as a baby with colic (some people believe he actually is a baby with colic — a rather large, elderly one).
People from around the world have written to me to say how alarmed they are at the big baby’s tantrum, as well they should be when a big baby thumb rests on the nuclear button. One of them is the author of this piece, Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan. Dr. Ananthavinayagan is a lecturer in international law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law at Griffith College Dublin. He is also an advocate for human rights, and author of the recent book “Sri Lanka, Human Rights and the United Nations: A Scrutiny into the International Human Rights Engagement with a Third World State.”
Nearly needless to say, he looks aghast at the recent unpleasantness we called the U.S. election.]
It was Martin Luther King, Jr., who delivered a landmark speech in 1957 and said:
Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights. Give us the ballot, and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law. … Give us the ballot, and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill. … Give us the ballot, and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy. … Give us the ballot, and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s decision of May seventeenth, 1954.
Voting rights are the cornerstone in the exercise of democracy, rights that were hard-fought for by the civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to be extended also to the African American community in the United States. However, as we speak and while you read this, the sitting President of the United States and his campaign team are alleging election fraud, without any substantial backup and without any evidence of the claims made. The sitting president said in his first address — while the votes were still (and are) being counted — the following: “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.” Allegations of late ballots, new ballots, and illegal votes are made by the Trump campaign. The sitting president has tweeted and perplexed election experts some months ago by tweeting that mail-in votes are fraud, whereas absentee voting is legitimate. Matter of the fact is: both are the same, only called differently by the US states. Lawsuits are being launched in the US states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia by the legal team of the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign and the sitting president himself are emotionally stirring up the atmosphere, while his supporters attempt to enter the counting centres armed with rifles.
This article will contextualise, against the background of the dynamic developments in the United States, first, the importance of the right to vote (including postal ballots for this purpose) as it is enshrined under international law. Second, this article will contextualise the right to vote in the domestic legal system of the United States.
At the international legal level, voting rights are detailed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as it is stated in Art. 21: “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.” A similar provision is found in Art. 25 of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights. Against this background, the United Nations Human Rights Committee stipulates with its General Comment No. 25:
10. The right to vote at elections and referenda must be established by law and may be subject only to reasonable restrictions, such as setting a minimum age limit for the right to vote. It is unreasonable to restrict the right to vote on the ground of physical disability or to impose literacy, educational or property requirements. Party membership should not be a condition of eligibility to vote, nor a ground of disqualification.
11. States must take effective measures to ensure that all persons entitled to vote are able to exercise that right. Where registration of voters is required, it should be facilitated and obstacles to such registration should not be imposed. If residence requirements apply to registration, they must be reasonable, and should not be imposed in such a way as to exclude the homeless from the right to vote. Any abusive interference with registration or voting as well as intimidation or coercion of voters should be prohibited by penal laws and those laws should be strictly enforced. Voter education and registration campaigns are necessary to ensure the effective exercise of article 25 rights by an informed community.
Considering this valuable General Comment with regards to the USA, this is in line with respective domestic laws. Postal voting “is an increasingly common form of absentee enfranchisement. Many countries (including Canada, the U.K., and the United States) even allow postal voting for non-absentee populations who simply prefer the convenience.” But it goes beyond this aspect of convenience: in times of the pandemic, postal voting has led to a global increase of the use of such, wedding the right to vote with the right to health and right to life (as stipulated in Art. 6 in the ICCPR and Art. 12 in the ICESCR). The postal vote democratises and extends a democratic infrastructure to marginalised and vulnerable populations in line with Art. 25 of the ICCPR, while embedding it within a global health precaution. The sitting president’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud are merely a reflection of his lack of respect for global health and electoral democracy.
Against this backdrop, in Sitaropoulos and Giakoumopoulos v. Greece, the European Court of Human Rights had also enunciated the normative content of Art. 25 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights which have their validity and enforcement in domestic law in the United States, which will be contextualised in the following.
The Voting Rights Act enforces the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It specifically outlaws the barriers previously imposed by some states to stop African Americans from voting. In Section 13 (c) (1) of the Voting Rights Act it is enunciated that:
The terms “vote” or “voting” shall include all action necessary to make a vote effective in any primary, special, or general election, including, but not limited to, registration, listing pursuant to this Act, or other action required by law prerequisite to voting, casting a ballot, and having such ballot counted properly and included in the appropriate totals of votes cast with respect to candidates for public or party office and propositions for which votes are received in an election.
On this token, the Brennan Center for Justice had stated in 2017 already that the rate of voting fraud overall in the US is less than 0.0009%. It is projected that ‘approximately 80 million Americans are projected to vote by mail in the 2020 general election — double the number who voted by mail in the 2016 election.’ In fact, postal voting ‘may prove to be a suitable option to keep electoral systems working and functional, even if we take the limitations postal voting involves into account’, enhancing democracy and effectuating the Voting Rights Act as outlined above. Also the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stressed the need to enable mail-in voting in order to ensure public health while allowing democracy through elections to flourish.
The marginalised communities were already disproportionately affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and according to recent poll by Wall Street Journal and NBC poll, ‘just 11% of Trump supporters said they planned to vote by mail, compared with 47% of supporters of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.’ The Voting Rights Act and the international legal regime are safeguarding, first, the right to vote, but moreover the postal voting are effectuating this very right to vote, while ensuring the right to health in the age of the pandemic. Questioning this is refuting the participation in democracy, disregarding public health and propounding an elitist interpretation of the right to vote.
Donald Trump does what he does best when his position of privilege is threatened: he launches lawsuits. He did so in his life as an heir to a corrupted business empire and in his life as a political populist. W.E.B. Dubois said once that: ‘A system cannot fail those it was never intended to protect.’ This presidential election has seen the highest voter turnout since 1908. It is not crucial, but essential that the most marginalised and the vulnerable regain faith in the political system by holding those accountable who have failed them. If not, this system was always engineered to protect and allow white hegemony to thrive.
[Editor’s Note: Donald Trump isn’t the only government official accused of inciting violence against his own countryfolk. Sian Lewis-Anthony is a human rights lawyer and senior lecturer at Kent Law School in England. She was one of many lawyers who reacted furiously to this tweet from the Home Office a couple of months ago:
Small boat crossings are totally unnecessary and we continue to return migrants with no right to be in the UK. Another flight left today with more planned in the coming weeks. We are working to remove migrants with no right to remain in the UK. But current return regulations are rigid and open to abuse, allowing activist lawyers to delay and disrupt returns. Soon we will no longer be bound by EU laws and can negotiate our own return arrangements.
Home Secretary Priti Patel doubled down in a speech this month by equating lawyers who defend the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers to human traffickers:
No doubt those who are well-rehearsed in how to play and profit from the broken system will lecture us on their grand theories about human rights. Those defending the broken system – the traffickers, the do-gooders, the lefty lawyers, the Labour party – they are defending the indefensible.
Now the lawyers are looking at defending themselves and their clients from further verbal attacks that can magnetize hatred against them. One immigration lawyer has already been the target of a thwarted knife attack.
The following was Lewis-Anthony’s own furious reaction to the original Home Office tweet.]
The Home Office has sunk to new levels of disingenuousness in a tweet today, by depicting lawyers as somehow subverting the state’s efforts in deporting alleged irregular migrants. It is engaged in an ugly war of words that pits an always law-abiding state against an enemy invasion, not of armed warriors, but defenceless, desperate humans, whose sole aim is to find somewhere safe to live and bring up their families. Let us be clear – if bombs were falling on our homes, or murderous paramilitaries were hell-bent on eradicating us and our families, we would doubtless also be taking to the seas in whatever vessels were to hand. We would doubtless also fall into the hands of unscrupulous smugglers and traffickers, who would mercilessly exploit our vulnerabilities for their own considerable financial gain. Our lives would be reduced to the clothes we have on our backs – or sometimes our lives would be lost in our desperate efforts to reach safety and the hope of a life without fear.
To suggest that lawyers — who seek to represent some of the most vulnerable people living in these islands — are subversive, is itself subversive. It suggests that laws passed by parliament are themselves subversive. It suggests that the rule of law — where no one, not even a government minister, is above the law — is also subversive. It is utterly shameful to depict the legal profession in this way. The Home Office needs to issue an immediate apology for its egregious hostility to the legal profession and by extension to those whose rights lawyers are trying valiantly to defend. Without an independent legal profession, there can be no rule of law, and powerful actors including state actors and criminal gangs, can never be held to account or brought to justice. The Home Office needs to stand by our legal system, our system of parliamentary democracy, and the rule of law – not seek to denigrate it in the eyes of the world.
[EDITOR’S UPDATE: On 25 October, the premier British daily newspaper, The Guardian, published a letter signed by eight hundred two practicing lawyers, legal academics, and retired judges who “invite” Home Secretary Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson to “behave honourably by apologising for their display of hostility” to “lawyers seeking to hold the government to the law.” (Spelling and civility peculiar to the UK).
“Such attacks,” they wrote, “endanger not only the personal safety of lawyers and others working for the justice system,” but also “undermine the rule of law which ministers and lawyers alike are duty bound to uphold.”
Signers included three retired justices of the UK Supreme Court, five retired lord justices of appeal, six other high court judges, and hundreds of barristers and solicitors, law professors, and other legal academics, Sian Lewis-Anthony among them.
They await the RSVP to their invitation.]
[Editor’s Note: Dr. Mohamed ‘Arafa is a law professor at Alexandria University, in Egypt, currently teaching classes in Islamic law and comparative Middle Eastern law at both Cornell Law School and Indiana University McKinney School of Law. By my count he has taught on four continents, and possibly one or two continents I haven’t counted.
Other subjects of his teaching and scholarship include criminal law, white collar crimes, human rights law, and transitional justice. Till 2018 he was managing editor of the Arab Law Quarterly in London.
Last year, Pope Francis visited the United Arab Emirates for three days to promote peace and tolerance with the Muslim world. It was an historic first visit in the Arabian Peninsula by a pontiff.
Professor ‘Arafa writes here about the contemporary human rights vision of that visit in relation to another visit, fourteen hundred years ago, of another religious leader.]
The Imām and (NOT Versus) the Pope: Awakening Religious Consciousness — In the Memory of the Prophet Mohammad’s Constitution
Universal statements recently signed by Muslim spiritual leaders define a concept of pledged citizenship that focuses on a shape of relationship justified more on “religiosity” than on “religion.” That refers to the “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” and the Mārrākesh declarations. For Muslim communities, international rules must be compatible within the Islamic legal fiqh (jurisprudence). Thus, the citizenship notion derives back to a memorable document – the Medinā Charter (Mohammad’s Constitution) of 622 CE. It is substantial to read that Charter under the light of today’s call, to draw the concept of “inclusive citizenship” in coherence with the early Classical Sharie‘a along with these current attempts of interreligious dialogue. That Charter is a legal source that permits this new interpretation.
Mohammad’s düstür (Constitution) includes not only the religious meanings but also proves that under Sharie‘a, mu‘āhādāt/mithāq (agreements) are dutifully valuable, and, hence to endeavor for processing them is beneficial; as a paradigm of international peace treaties along with some trans-historical messages, so to draw a new interpretation appropriate for the modern – international – Muslim Ummāh (nation/community). This understanding assumes that some religious messages can have implications in common with other religious groups, as of the unity of religious practice. Moreover, the current collaboration among global faiths needs to be a product of pluralism – respecting our differences – and a recognition of the path that global creeds are entwined even as they appear in unique traditions. Historically, it is likely to realize complex mutual venues when borders and limits between the religious customs were blurred and constantly redrawn. So, historical interpretation is crucial to understand the document’s meanings for the initial religious society, and to extract from it new concepts to share with other religious denominations, as this interreligious interpretation “generates” new cultural ideals to be applied in the modern discourse of international human rights.
The Abu Dhābi Document
On February 4, 2019, Pope Francis made an apostolic trip to the Middle East, especially, to Abu Dhābi in the United Arab Emirates. The main outcome of it was the document “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” signed by the Pope and the Grand Imām of Al-Azhār Ahmad āl-Tayieb. It represents the cornerstone regarding the relations between Christianity and Islam, but so far it has not received the interest that it deserves. On the Catholic side, the declaration has its robust theoretical precedent in the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration (the relations between the Catholic Church and the non-Christian religions). On the Muslim side, the Mārrākesh Declaration on the Rights of Religious Minorities in Predominantly Muslim Majority Communities of January 25-27, 2016, and the Al-Azhār Declaration on the conference “Freedom, Citizenship, Diversity and Integration” represent the main precedents within the Muslim World.
The document’s preface affirms that “Faith leads a believer to see in the other a brother or sister to be supported and loved,” invites “all persons who have faith in God and faith in human fraternity to unite and work together.” The Pope and the Imām speak “in the name of God who has created all human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity,” “in the name of innocent human life that God has forbidden to kill,” “in the name of the poor,” “in the name of orphans, widows, refugees and those exiled from their homes and their countries…(and) all victims of wars (and) persecution.” Al-Azhār along with the Catholic Church, “declare the adoption of a culture of dialogue as the path; mutual cooperation as the code of conduct; reciprocal understanding as a method and standard.” A view of global law is understood when both parties confirm that:
We…call upon ourselves, upon the leaders of the world as well as the architects of international policy and world economy, to work strenuously to spread the culture of tolerance and of living together in peace; to intervene at the earliest opportunity to stop the shedding of innocent blood and bring an end to wars, conflicts, environmental decay and the moral and cultural decline that the world is presently experiencing.
Both leaders ask all people of religion, culture, and the media, to revive and spread “the values of peace, justice, goodness, beauty, human fraternity and coexistence.” Additionally, they decisively confirm their faith “that among the most important causes of the crises of the modern world are a desensitized human conscience, a distancing from religious values and a prevailing individualism accompanied by materialistic philosophies.” Although recognizing the optimistic steps taken by modern civilization, the declaration underscores the “moral deterioration that influences international action and a weakening of spiritual values and responsibility,” which leads many “to fall either into a vortex of atheistic, agnostic or religious extremism, or into blind and fanatic extremism.” Further, both leaders sustain the vital significance of the family, and the importance “of awakening religious awareness,” particularly in youth, “to confront tendencies that are individualistic, selfish, conflicting, and also address radicalism and blind extremism in all its forms and expressions.” Both recall that the Creator “granted us the gift of life to protect it. It is a gift that no one has the right to take away, threaten or manipulate to suit oneself. Indeed, everyone must safeguard it from its beginning up to its natural end.” Thus, they condemn all practices that represent a threat to life, such as genocide, terrorism, abortion, human trafficking, forced displacement, euthanasia, etc., and said that “religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility and extremism, nor must they incite violence or the shedding of blood. These tragic realities are the consequence of a deviation from religious teachings. They result from a political manipulation of religions and from interpretations made by religious groups.”
Likewise they declare “We thus call upon all concerned to stop using religions to incite hatred, violence, extremism and blind fanaticism, and to refrain from using the name of God to justify acts of murder, exile, terrorism and oppression” and recall that “God, the Almighty, has no need to be defended by anyone and does not want His name to be used to terrorize people.” Accordingly, Islam and Christianity’s main message is that:
Furthermore, all places of worship must be legally protected, and, in any event, they should not be attacked for purported religious motives, and terrorist activities shall be condemned by religions, without any appeal. In this regard, the document reads “the protection of places of worship – synagogues, churches and mosques – is a duty guaranteed by religions, human values, laws and international agreements [necessity to protect religious minorities]. Every attempt to attack places of worship or threaten them by violent assaults, bombings or destruction, is a deviation from the teachings of religions as well as a clear violation of international law.” The Pope and the Imām said everyone has equal rights and individuals are not subject to rights because of their membership in a group, for instance to a religion or an ethnic group – this is to prevent degrading “minority” categories (women, children, the elderly and the disabled). Rather, religious individuals have rights because they are citizens, [and] different cultures should enrich each other, assuring them basic human rights.
Accordingly, this document includes “legal” contents that are explicitly cited and plainly recalls the international human rights law norms. It emphasized the important role of religions in the construction of world peace, and upholds “The firm conviction that authentic teachings of religions invite us to remain rooted in the values of peace; to defend the values of mutual understanding, human fraternity and harmonious coexistence; to re-establish wisdom, justice and love; and to reawaken religious awareness…so that future generations may be protected from…materialistic thinking and from dangerous policies of unbridled greed and indifference that are based on the law of force and not on the force of law [emphasis added].”
Human Rights Discourse Status Quo and the Medinā Charter
Regarding the freedom of religion, the text reads “freedom is a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God…through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which [this right/freedom]…to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept.” More precisely, the Marrakesh Declaration reads:
Whereas this year marks the 1,400th anniversary of the Charter of Medinā, a constitutional contract between the Prophet Mohammad…and the people of Medinā, which guaranteed the religious liberty of all, regardless of faith…[we,] along with representatives of Islamic and international organizations…to reaffirm the principles of [that Charter]…declare hereby our firm commitment to the principles articulated in [that] Charter, whose provisions contained a number of the principles of constitutional contractual citizenship, such as freedom of movement, property ownership, mutual solidarity and defense, as well as principles of justice and equality before the law; [and that the objectives of the Charter]…provide a suitable framework for national constitutions in countries with Muslim majorities, and the United Nations Charter and related documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are in harmony with the Charter of Medinā, including consideration for public order.
“Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” reflects the legal concept of “citizenship” as a tool of global control and protection of religious rights. It is described in this way:
The concept of citizenship is based on the equality of rights and duties, under which all enjoy justice. It is therefore crucial to establish in our societies the concept of full citizenship and reject the discriminatory use of the term minorities which engenders feelings of isolation and inferiority. Its misuse paves the way for hostility and discord; it undoes any successes and takes away the religious and civil rights of some citizens who are thus discriminated against…
Pluralism Voices
Saïd Arjomand says Article 15 of the Charter of Medinā marks “the institution of religious pluralism in Islam, which later developed into the recognition of ‘those to whom we have given the book’ (The Qur’an 2:121; 6:21, etc.), or more frequently, the ‘peoples of the book’ (Q. 2:63, 65, etc.) under the protection (dhimmāh) of God. Religious pluralism in Medinā was endorsed in the Qur’ān: ‘There is no compulsion in religion.’”
Thus, the political idea of inclusive citizenship (cultural inclusive groups) is related to the dogmatic notion of fraternity and its recognition as “vertical,” based on superiority and faith in God. This brotherhood is not only emotional or sentimental; it is rather a solid message with a political value. Accordingly, it leads – no doubt – directly to reflect on the citizenship concept: we are all brothers, and hence citizens with equal rights and duties, under whose shadow everyone enjoys justice. Despite the Qurā’nic concept of dhimmāh (protection Q. 9:29), the notion of “minority” vanishes as it leads to tribalism and antagonism. Generally speaking, these declarations acknowledge the rampant use of violence to “enforce perspectives” and resolve conflicts in numerous parts of the Muslim world and emphasize the suffering of minority groups that have endured in the region for centuries. The document quotes Qurā’nic texts that underline the key Islamic teachings about the protection for minorities (prohibition of religious compulsion (Q. 2:256), crucial bonds of humanity among different societies and races (Q. 13:49), the need for kindness with others (Q. 60:8), and the obligation to respect contracts and covenants (Q. 16:91). Also, Mohammad’s early followers were not called “muslimūn”, but rather “mu’minūn.” Uri Rubin affirms that “Being recognized as mu’minūn, keep to their own dīn…li-Yāhudi dinuhum wā li-l-musliminā dinuhum (the Jews shall maintain their own religion and the Muslims theirs)…the latter clause seems to convey the idea that the dīn (religion), of both parties has equal merit so…each party has the right to go on adhering to its own dīn.”
These documents reflect – directly or indirectly – Mohammad’s Constitution, as a model for contractual citizenship to guarantee equal rights for all under the law within the global legal standards, and to call Muslim ‘ulmā’ā (jurists) and authorities to use that Charter as a base for evolving contractual citizenship models in their national constitutions and develop a jurisprudence of that concept as it is deeply rooted in Islamic Sharie‘a principles and mindful of global changes. Muslim scholars argued that the 2017 Al-Azhār statement – as an Islamic system of governance – is the theoretical precedent of the Abu Dhābi proclamation that clarified the relationship among Muslims and non-Muslims. The Medinā Charter did not imply any sort of discrimination or exclusion of any social group, but it included policies founded upon religious, ethnic and social pluralism, as it reads “one community to the exclusion of others” and non-Muslims had the same rights and responsibilities of Muslims. Therefore, Mohammad’s Constitution declined to use “minorities” term and against the ‘blind loyalty’ in human rights’ discourse to avoid discrimination, racism, and disloyalty that jeopardize the states’ internal national security.
In fact, it should be noted that the three documents are not international treaties (not agreements between States) – as legal actors – but they regulate the freedom of belief, especially minorities in Christian and Muslim nations, prompting the behaviors and the agency of the faithful. Many scholars noticed that there can be a global contest between secular and divine norms (orders) due to the normative relevance of sacred classical legal customs. Legal order represents the source of the monitoring power of religions, as of their own symbolic appeal, an interpretive hierarchy, separate constitutive narratives, numerous jurisdictional concepts and conflict resolution standards, cross-border affiliations, global solidarity, and international mobilization capacity. Such documents embody global law sources, that can have an efficient legal regulatory force, different from the one of the States and international organizations. This global law is non-state law; not concerned with formalism and is polycentric and complex with more regulatory forces. If we admit the presence and the legal implication of a great diversity of universal performs – in political and jurisprudential frameworks – legal norms, values, and procedures for managing global human rights, interests, goods, creeds, groups and cultures, these agreements appear to have the features to be among those universal sources of regulation.
To conclude, the Medinā Charter was neither a constitution in the modern sense — because it lacks the nature of a social contract between equals — nor a constitution of the āl-dāwlāh āl-islāmiyyāh (Islamic State), as the Prophet was not interested in establishing a governmental system. Rather it appears to have been essentially a pact tackling the link between “religious” people of various “religions.” The real purpose was to launch a new order to maintain security, self-government, and religious respect among all. In other words, it was to establish a confederation where the tie of religiosity would usurp the tie of kinship, which was preponderant at that time and that was the reason for enduring conflicts and feuds in the Arab peninsula.
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
If I had a hunting accident and blew half my fingers off, I’d still have plenty of room to count the number of Republican lawyers in public life I’m still proud of.
But there’s one in Clearwater, Florida, who’d make me wish for my fingers back so I could include him and a few of his colleagues.
Hell, I’d move to Florida just to vote for him, if he hadn’t already announced his retirement.
Bob Dillinger has been the elected public defender there since 1996.
From the start he became an advocate for the disenfranchised, for the mentally ill, for the homeless, who often find their way into court. When he wasn’t working selflessly to spare some of the least of us from the worst penalty we can inflict on them, of death, he was working to provide encouragement, food, and clothing to disadvantaged children at risk of becoming those people.
He was re-elected in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016.
At his last election it was reported that Jesus Christ Himself voted for him by absentee ballot (Donald Trump instantly whined that was voter fraud).
None of that was what drew me to him. The Pinellas and Pasco counties public defender website did that. Most such website addresses are fairly bland: Brooklyn Defender Services is bds.org; the Los Angeles County Public Defender is pubdef.lacounty.gov; my own state’s public defender address is coloradodefenders.us.
His office is wearethehope.org.
We are the hope. For no other reason than that I checked out his website.
What I saw there was something Bob Dillinger said when he first addressed the men and women with whom he would work for the defense of the seemingly indefensible that is often the work of the public defender. It moved me to remembered tears of when I first felt inspired to champion all the little men and women ganged up upon by the awesome forces of the government — at least till I’d actually met some of those little men and women. (Luckily I met some more who kept me going over the years.)
On his last day, on 31 December, this Atticus Finch of Clearwater will go out with the old year.
On his first day, at his swearing-in ceremony, twenty-three years ago, this is what he said:
We are the hope.
We are the hope of the poor;
We are the hope of those in the system who are innocent;
We are the hope of those overcharged;
We are the hope of the mentally ill that society wants to either warehouse or ignore;
We are the hope of the juveniles who need help and guidance from a system that offers little of either;
We are the hope — probably the only hope — of those our society seeks to execute;
We are the hope.