Remembering Derrick Bell

Derrick Bell
(aalbc.com)

I have been fortunate over the years to interact directly with some very extraordinary people, whose vision and generosity stamped something indelible on me, and one of these was Derrick Bell (1930-2011), who passed away yesterday.  At the time of his death he was a visiting professor of law at New York University, where he had taught for nearly two decades, but long before that he had repeatedly taken courageous stands and stood on principle when, given his keen intellect and well of charisma, social expediency and conformity could easily have paved his route to wealth and success.

For example: in 1959, Bell, who had only recently graduated from the prestigious University of Pittsburgh Law School in 1957 and was the only African American working in the US Justice Department at the time, refused to resign his membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which his bosses thought might compromise his objectivity, or call into question that of the Justice Department, and instead quit his job.  Or: in 1961, after taking a job with the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, he supervised the legal aspect of James Meredith's attempts to enroll in and eventual admission to the University of Mississippi, in 1962.

And: in 1980, Derrick Bell, after having taught at Harvard Law School since 1969, where he became that institution's first tenured African American law professor, left to become the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law. He resigned from his Oregon post in a dispute over the lack of faculty diversity.  He subsequently returned to Harvard in 1986, where he staged a 5-day sit-in in his office to protest HLS's denial of tenure to 2 junior colleagues who were working in what would later become the widely disseminated "critical legal studies" methodology. And again: in 1990, after taking account of HLS's dismal record of hiring and tenuring women and people of color, Bell announced that he was taking an unpaid leave of absence until the school appointed a woman of color to its tenured ranks. When he did not return from his protest leave, having taken a temporary position at NYU Law school, HLS dismissed him, in 1992.  Harvard would not hire a tenured woman of color to its law school ranks until 1998, when it appointed civil rights attorney and former University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Lani Guinier.

During my stint at NYU's Faculty Resource Network, I had the opportunity to work with Professor Bell, who graciously agreed to lead a seminar for the faculty members participating in this academic development program from smaller local and national institutions, including a number of historically black colleges and universities, and Hispanic/Latino-serving colleges and universities. Not only was he a pleasure to deal with, but he made it clear that he saw his role as facilitating knowledge exchange with fellow scholars. The enthusiasm that all the participants of his seminar expressed before it began and after it concluded was a summer highlight. Though he often spoke softly, he had a galvanizing voice and manner, and his innovative, insightful mode and manner of thought, his courage and conviction, and his gentleness and kindness kindled in whatever he was talking about. I never had the opportunity to study with him, but I was able to take his measure and have considered him a model of what a professor, a scholar and a public intellectual might be. Everyone I know who studied under him sang his praises, and working with him, I got to see why.

Derrick Bell's books include Race, Racism and American Law (Little Brown & Co. 6th ed., 2008, original ed., 1973); Silent Covenant: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Oxford University Press, 2004); Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth (Bloomsbury, 2002); Afrolantica Legacies (Third World Press, 1998); Constitutional Conflicts (Anderson Press, 1997); Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protestor (Beacon Press, 1996); Gospel Choirs (1996); Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992); and And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (1992).

His passing is a great loss. RIP, Derrick A. Bell Jr.

Freedom Budget + Occupy Wall Street's Declaration

Much ado about various responsibilities, so no time for intensive blogging, but the ever brilliant Geoffrey J. pointed me toward the following remarkable document, the Freedom Budget For All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, To Achieve 'Freedom From Want,'" which the A. Philip Randolph Institute of New York published in 1966. In edition to the eponymous Randolph, the longtime president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the most important 20th century labor organizations for African-Americans, and a beacon in and of the Civil Rights Movement, other signatories to the document include many of the leading lights of the mid-century labor, progressive, civil, human and equal rights movements, crossing all racial, ethnic, ethnic, and class backgrounds. (There are almost no women on the list, but this document appears almost at the early point of what we now think of as the full-flowering of women's movement and second wave feminism; there are also almost no openly queer signatories, save Bayard Rustin, but the document precedes the Stonewall Riots by 3 years.)

A page from the Freedom Budget, 1966

It's a remarkable document, and I urge you to read it at your leisure, but sooner rather than later; it's hosted on invaluable the Internet Archive site, which allows you to read documents online, download them in a range of formats, and forward them to others quite easily, free of charge.

The Freedom Budget makes an engaging companion template to the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, which was accepted by the General Assembly of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which I first wrote about almost three weeks ago, on September 29, 2011. I am linking to it, but also posting it in full. Whatever one may feel about the protests, which I personally believe are among the most important to have occurred in the US in some time, the principles below articulate a good deal of what a great many people--a great many of the 99% of us who have not been the beneficiaries of the disaster-capitalism, supply-side, neoliberalism-meets-libertarianism economic debacle that has marked not just the decade preceding the Global Financial Crisis 2.0 of 2007-2009 (+), but of the 3 decades before--feel about what has gone wrong, while highlighting a number of other issues that are important to progressives in the US. The document below, like the protests, is both an important start, and a vital link in a long tradition of dissent and protest from the left that has preceded it. Do read it, amend it, talk about it, challenge and debate about it, but above all, pass it on.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

Posted on September 30, 2011 by NYCGA

THIS DOCUMENT WAS ACCEPTED BY THE NYC GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

 These grievances are not all-inclusive, indeed. Now read the Freedom Budget, and note how many of these issues are addressed or touched upon both in its in general principles, and in its specific plans for how the government might spend its--our--monies.

We have a ways to go, but to the people of Occupy Wall Street and all the sibling protests, all over the country and the world, you are on the best track, a new one building upon many older ones, and I like many people say: thank you!