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Law Office Management
May 2, 2010
Wherever There's a Fight
Stephen F. Rohde
Email: rohdevictr@aol.com
Stephen is a retired civil liberties lawyer and contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books, is author of American Words for Freedom and Freedom of Assembly.
When Lee Yick arrived in San Francisco from China in 1861 and opened the Yick Wo laundry, he had no idea he would play a crucial role in the dynamic story of civil liberties. Twenty-two years after he arrived, the board of supervisors passed regulations targeting laundries in wooden buildings. The board granted, with one exception, all 80 applications submitted by non-Chinese laundry owners but denied all the requests from Chinese proprietors. When Yick was subsequently arrested for operating an unauthorized wooden laundry, he fought the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a historic, unanimous decision striking down the ordinance. "Though the law itself be fair on its face and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand so as to make unjust and illegal discrimination between persons in similar circumstances ... the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution." Yick's compelling story is but one of hundreds of intriguing tales told in Wherever There's a Fight. Authors Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi, who both previously worked for the ACLU (where this reviewer is chair of the affiliate's Southern California Foundation), believe that the people who "crossed borders, defied unjust orders, went to jail, marched, wrote books, read books, and sang out on picket lines" show us that "civil liberties are not bestowed from on high by presidents, governors, and legislators," but instead are secured by "people who have fought against inequality and injustice," "turning abstract principles into meaningful freedoms and rights." The book also recounts the stories of runaway slave Archy Lee, who fought for his freedom in Sacramento; Charlotte Brown, a black woman who refused to leave a San Francisco streetcar in 1863; and Upton Sinclair, who was arrested in 1923 for reading aloud the First Amendment at a labor rally. The history of civil liberties in California is a checkered chronicle, bursting with examples of personal courage and official cowardice. If the book suffers from anything, it is its own grand ambition to cover centuries of historic events - none of which, except for the internment of Japanese Americans, are fully developed. The authors end with a cautionary chapter warning that "common threads connect past outrages with those of today," including the post-9/11 detention of thousands of Muslims, no-fly blacklists, use of the USA Patriot Act against librarians, warrantless wiretapping from a secret AT&T office in San Francisco, and transporting detainees - on planes furnished by California?based Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. - to foreign countries known to torture. Wherever There's a Fight is an engaging book that provides a valuable public service by retelling the myriad stories of injustice and oppression that have stained California history and should never be repeated. Stephen F. Rohde is a Los Angeles?based lawyer, writer, and activist, and the author of American Words of Freedom and Freedom of Assembly.
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Kari Santos
Daily Journal Staff Writer
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