(New York City)
Two summers, when he was in law school, our son, Michael, clerked for our friend Bill Kunstler. Michael told us that the staff was told that, whenever they were out in public with Bill, one part of the job was to keep strangers from coming up to him. It wasn’t that they feared for Bill’s safety. Rather, he was incapable of saying “No” to anyone who might benefit from his help, he never sought a fee when he defended people with no money; and his calendar was always overbooked.
One day he was coming down the steps of the Bronx Supreme Courthouse and a group of people was waiting for him. They had a story and a need he couldn’t resist.
The owner of a derelict apartment house in the section of The Bronx then known as “Fort Apache” (that had been the nickname of the New York Police Department’s 41st precinct, but it came to mark the whole area) had promised them that if they rehabilitated the building, he would give it to them. For two years, they worked on the building, inside and out. They did a beautiful job of restoration. They even had a small farm in a vacant lot next door.
Then, just before he was to transfer ownership to them, the owner sold the building, and the new owner immediately hit all the residents with an eviction notice. The sheriffs came with an order from a Bronx judge telling them they had one day to vacate the building.
Bill was confident that, with a little time, he could force the new owner to honor the previous owner’s promise. The problem was time. It was a Friday and, if they obeyed the court order, they had to get their belongings out of the building by Saturday. There was no way Bill could get a hearing for a stay in a Bronx court before Monday, by which time it would be too late.
Bill went to his friend, Judge Bruce M. Wright, a very liberal New York State Supreme Court Judge in Brooklyn. He was often referred to as “Turn ’em loose Bruce.” (He had officiated at Bill and Margaret’s wedding.) Bill asked Judge Wright for a court order countermanding the Bronx eviction order. Judge Wright said, “I’m a Supreme Court judge in Brooklyn, I can’t override an order from a Bronx Supreme Court judge.”
“That’s true,” Bill said, “but the sheriffs will go to a Bronx judge to get a ruling on that. They won’t want to take the responsibility themselves. And they won’t be able to do that until Monday, by which time I can get this straightened out.”
Judge Wright wrote the meaningless order and Bill went up to The Bronx to be with the residents when the sheriffs came to throw them out. He handed them the order from the Brooklyn judge, saying, “Ignore this at your peril.” He had a great, booming voice, and he could utter lines like that.
The sheriffs went away, Bill went to court on Monday, got the eviction order stayed, and eventually he got the new owners to transfer ownership to the people who had worked so hard to make the building habitable.
The day the building became theirs, they had a party in the vacant lot next to the building. In the farm, the first crop of tomatoes had just come in.
xxx
There was a TV legal drama that was popular about the time Bill, Diane, Margaret and I got to be friends: Petrocelli. Every week, Petrocelli would get a difficult case and the first thing he asked the defendant was, “Tell me: did you do it?”
Bill hated Petrocelli. “I’d never ask a defendant that. Why would I ask a defendant that?” For Bill, that question implied lawyers should only represent people they believed were innocent. That was not the lawyer’s job, he’d say, “Getting them a fair trial is a lawyer’s job. Getting them justice.”
One Friday morning when Diane and I were visiting, Bill was scheduled to testify at a New York City Council meeting hearing having to do with an ordinance prohibiting burning an American flag. “Come with me,” he said, “you’ll enjoy this.”
We got a taxi on Seventh Avenue. The driver looked at us in the rearview mirror and said, “I know you. I don’t agree with anything you do, but I admire the way you do it.”
Let’s talk about that,” Bill said. By the time we reached City Hall, they were buddies and the driver said he had to reconsider some things.
The Council session was just grandstanding: Bill had already won a case in the Supreme Court saying flag burning was protected under the First Amendment, so anything the Council did would be unenforceable. After an hour of bloviating, Bill was asked to speak. He began by saying, “As probably the only person speaking this morning who—“
They leaned forward, no doubt expecting him to talk about the Supreme Court Case; he didn’t mention it at all.
“—has a Bronze Star and Purple Heart earned in combat, I think I do have something to say about this ordinance.” He then proceeded to shred it for the foolishness it was. It failed to pass almost unanimously.
We got on the subway uptown. Bill immediately started working on the crossword. Bill did the New York Times crossword puzzle every day. The easiest is Monday; the hardest, Saturday. That week, Bill was defending a man in the Bronx charged with having tossed a much liked court watcher off a roof. He liked to finish the puzzle on the subway ride uptown. He said it relaxed him for what was going to happen when he got off the train and went inside the Bronx Supreme Courthouse. Three black men, hands in their pockets, were suddenly standing right in front of us, staring down. Bill paid them no attention. I tried not to.
After a while, one of them said, “You Bill Kunstler?”
Bill looked up, said, “Yes,” then went back to the crossword.
“You defended me once,” the man said.
“How’d I do,” Bill said.
“You got me off.”
“Good,” Bill said.
“Just wanted to say thanks,” the man said.
“You’re welcome,” Bill said. He returned to the crossword.
At 96th street, all the white people in the car, except us, got off.
An old black woman got up just before the 110th street station. I’d seen her staring at Bill. As the train slowed, she said, “You’re him, ain’t you?”
“Yes,” Bill said.
“I just want to thank you for what you do for folks like us.”
She was gone before Bill could respond. An older black man had watched that exchange. As the train pulled into the 125th street station, he said, “Me, too,” and got off without waiting for a response.
I don’t know if Bill finished the puzzle by the time we got off at 161st street. After those three encounters, he didn’t need anything to get ready for court.
xxx
It was on that ride that I understood why Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz said nasty things about Bill every chance he could. It wasn’t that Bill defended Arabs and Dershowitz was a fervent apologist for Israel or that Bill unequivocally opposed torture and Dershowitz imagined scenarios in which it would be justified and useful (well: all that may have been part of it). It was, rather, that no one would ever come up to Alan and say, “I just want to thank you for what you do for folks like us.”