| | |
|
WhyThreeBulletPointsOnAPieceOfPaperAndSilenceMayNotWork 4 - 11 Mar 2010 - Main.JonathanWaisnor
|
| | So by now, many of you have probably heard of Mr. Chuck. Mr. Chuck is a 3L at NYU Law School. He has been referred to as “Rosencrantz” on Abovethelaw.com. Mr. Chuck was also supposed to be working and as far as I know, still is working at Mayer Brown as a first year associate upon graduation whenever the deferral period is over.
I have met Mr. Chuck. He’s a nice guy. We’re facebook friends. We have mutual friends. But his story represents why a lot of us probably don’t try to organize and protest the status quo. For the full story, go here: http://abovethelaw.com/2010/03/mutiny_at_mayer_brown.php. For the follow-up and some youtube videos made my Mr. Chuck titled – “Overeducated and Unemployed: Waking Up from the American Dream during a Recession”, go here: http://abovethelaw.com/2010/03/nyu_3l_takes_unemployment_plig.php. | | | Aside from the various miscalculations, I think one lesson learned is that organizing works best person to person. Email blasts and leafletting are often not effective at connecting to people, and are easy to take out of context and become blog post fodder. I think Mr. Chuck would have done better if he got together with a lot more than one colleague, and spent time, in person, figuring out a plan everyone was committed to.
-- DevinMcDougall - 11 Mar 2010 | |
>
> | I don't think the Internet or law blogs have really changed the dynamic (maybe they've just sped up the inevitable conclusion). In every oppressed group throughout history, there were always a few ready to actively support the oppressor, a small group of radicals resisting or pushing for change, and a giant mass of people in the middle who agreed the situation was less than optimal but were waiting to see where the chips fell because they feared ending up like Mr. Chuck, who is now basically a pariah who embarrassed his firm before starting work. Sometimes, external circumstances change and the people being blasted for being radicals end up as heroes (see John Brown) because more of the middle group is pushed into joining the radicals. The Nazis and Russian Socialists both had failed revolutions before their ultimately successful ones- the difference was that the successful movements followed depression and world war.
I'm sure that most of the deferred associates are also scared, worried and a little pissed off at their situation. Had this complaint been handled with some more tact (like Krystal suggested), they might have joined up with Mr. Chuck. There are probably also another group of deferreds who are the kind of people who will bill 2200 hours because everybody else is billing 2000 and they welcome the opportunity to disassociate from Mr. Chuck. Once these people responded, the folks in the middle followed or clammed up. This happened at Texas Law this week, and is unfortunately what I think will happen to a lot of the proposals being floated over on the StudentAction thread if they are ever put into action.
Re the ATL comments section: On law blogs, there is always a lot of racism, misogyny, and tough talk from anonymous posters. I wouldn't take this as anything more than the ranting of some individuals who feel very marginalized in law school and the legal community in general.
-- JonathanWaisnor - 11 Mar 2010 |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |