John Holland, part 06 of 12: "Drawing on Dr. King's Tactics"

bjbjD if you understand Wades routes he s marched at Selma and he understands this movement
concept and was very moved by King and strategized his plan all the time around King you know
passive non-resistance and non-violence but you stay until you get what you want it was
great fun to represent wade because he was what I call 100% guy because I never had to
ask wade what our position was because it was always we wanted everything and we had
no compromise in our way and we would go everywhere do anything to get anyones attention necessary
and so the movement was always very consistent we always disrupted disturbed and destroyed
the purposes of peoples meetings politely well yelling but without violence and then
we paid the price and distributed our position and made speeches and dominated the media
and ruined the purposes of these conventions until people would start to focus on the issues
and so we went from Denver to the national meetings of the transit community and the
health care thing to the national meetings of the health care associations and just tied
up their conventions. These people looked forward to these things you know they go to
Hawaii they go to fancy places who would expect a hundred chairs or 300 people to show up
in wheel chairs in Las Vegas so we got into a lot of trouble and I d spend a lot of my
time representing just on ordinary stuff while we were pursuing the litigation in buses while
Wade was demonstrating we were litigating and RTD became demoralized and stipulated
to retrofit that entire fleet of buses. And so we settled the Atlantis vs. Adams case
in the tenth circuit court of appeals with them despite having won in the district court
before there was a formal ruling after we briefed why the lower judge had a failure
of nerve and had committed a grievance error, RTD decided to take credit for the change.
So between law and activism which was our prescription and my understanding of my role
was well we can try it because what would it hurt and if it worked great. So like the
nursing home litigation worked took a long time but it worked. The RTD litigation worked
also but it took the pressure of demonstration to secure that victory and we always left
with each other in disgust well who did what but clearly in my mind as brilliant as was
the litigation far more brilliant was the demonstration. So the fusion of law demonstration
and media was a fascinating calculus which I think Wade and I packaged for him to take
across the land and other lawyers would become involved and other lawyers would do the same
litigation and other demonstrations and very few of our people spent a lot of money or
time in jail or on fines because we demoralized the courts and nobody really wanted to fuck
with people for protesting that they were being fucked by the social order, to use the
vernacular a little too much. It was called Heritage House Owner Normal Owner Microsoft
Office Word Microsoft, Inc It was called Heritage House Title Microsoft Office Word Document
MSWordDoc Word.Document.8