Narrative-based Campaigns
Friends of Justice carries out narrative-based campaigns to create an avalanche of criminal justice horror stories featuring the mistreatment of low-status defendants. Operation Blind Justice works outside the legal system to organize affected communities to create media scandals around questionable prosecutions as they unfold. We are effective because we shift the focus from the courtroom to the court of public opinion. Our unique model of pre-conviction intervention also creates openings for other progressive advocacy groups to achieve new victories with established methods like civil rights law, policy analysis, and legislative lobbying.
The first step is to investigate cases of wrongful prosecution with the potential to become national scandals. Working through direct appeals and the civil rights community, Friends of Justice will continue to identify critical cases with discernable evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, dishonest use of evidence, or blatant police misconduct. We choose cases that show promise of attracting major media attention.
The second step is to build a partnership with a local leadership team, who can join the Friends of Justice Network as a pre-existing organization or as a newly formed team of 4-12 people.
The third step is to produce a tight, chronological narrative that undermines the government’s case simply by presenting the most relevant legal and social facts. To do this, we spend hundreds of hours talking to the defendants, their families, local newspaper editors, opinion leaders in the high-status community and religious leaders. Then we visit the courthouse, poring over relevant documents until the legal issues come into focus. Once our narrative gets into the right hands, influential people start asking “Why is a case this flimsy being prosecuted?”
The fourth step is to organize public protest by the affected community in order to dramatize our narrative in the public eye. A good counter-narrative allows defendants and their families to adapt their story to a fifteen-second sound bite or a two sentence quote. Friends of Justice conducts grassroots organizing to help defendants and their families tell their story. Our unique history has given us the skills to organize in the most politically disaffected communities in America. When criminal defendants tell their stories to the media, they become real people with a face, a faith, a family and a future, who can no longer be convicted in evidence-free trials.
The fifth step is to generate media coverage dramatizing the problems of democratic accountability in law enforcement. As the case unfolds, Friends of Justice works with the media to encourage them to cover the case in an objective manner that is fair to both the defendant and the prosecution. As part of this process we produce our own commentary on the case in whatever form seems advisable: letters to the-editor, press releases, blogs and appearances on radio talk shows. We help arrange media interviews with the defendant, their families, and other community allies. As the scandal builds momentum, Friends of Justice cooperates with national organizations like the ACLU and the NAACP, who are well positioned to offer commentary and to initiate legal intervention where appropriate.
The sixth step is to recruit attorneys to take on strategic cases. We secure competent legal counsel for indigent defendants. Humanizing defendants in the court of public opinion is vital, but only attorneys can advance the fight in the courtroom.
The seventh step is to follow up with the Friends of Justice Network and the Common Peace Initiative. We continue to build grassroots capacity through our Network of local leadership teams, who act together to hold public officials accountable over the long-term. In 2008, we launched the Common Peace Initiative, an outreach to Texas faith communities that uses these stories to generate dialogue across race and class lines.
DO JUSTICE. LOVE MERCY. WALK HUMBLY.
