If you\u2019re interested in modern Texas history, you could do worse than begin with Jim Harrington\u2019s founder\u2019s tale of The Texas Civil Rights Project. Although billed as a memoir, the book is much more judicial than personal. It recounts the highs and lows of what the lawyer counts as roughly 2,600 civil and human rights lawsuits \u2013 a number that seems modest in terms of the state and national reverberations of the courtroom and organizing actions inspired, supported, and defended by Harrington and his allies across the state of Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One might think they required hundreds of attorneys and staffers \u2013 in fact, a very few dedicated people carried the burden for all of us. Working with the South Texas Project, its successor the Texas Civil Rights Project<\/a>, the United Farm Workers<\/a> (where for 18 years he represented C\u00e9sar Chavez<\/a> and the UFW), and allied organizations, Harrington enabled farmworkers to organize for better conditions and better pay; exposed racially discriminatory policing; protected farmworkers and their families from toxic pollution; defended women and children from family violence; organized for grand jury reform; defended privacy rights and the rights of the disabled; and defended free speech and assembly rights against legal and police repression.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the outset, Harrington acknowledges that the book is not \u201ca pure memoir in a literary sense,\u201d since he wished to write \u201cmore about those with whom I labored in the vineyard, striving boldly for human rights and dignity, than about me.\u201d You can learn quite a bit about Harrington\u2019s character in the book, but largely indirectly. (He mentions his family, including his ex-wife, former United Farm Workers Texas Director Rebecca Flores \u2013 but only in the context of their mutual political work.)<\/p>\n He focuses on the stories of his clients \u2013 often colleagues in struggle \u2013 and how the causes they pursued amplified the legal cases built around those causes. He says he had to be \u201cgently coaxed\u201d into writing the book by friends and family, but decided to do so \u201cas a way of paying respectful tribute to the people at the grassroots, la gente, who fought the good fight and committed themselves to the struggle, quite often at personal cost.\u201d In doing so, Harrington has recorded an indispensable legal history of the ongoing fights for civil and human rights in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth emphasizing that Harrington\u2019s book appears at a particularly dark time in state and national politics, especially for the millions of Latino families (\u201cla gente\u201d), citizens, and immigrants explicitly targeted by the current regimes in Austin and Washington, D.C. The struggle continues, and this book is a part of that struggle.<\/p>\n Harrington has recorded an indispensable legal history of the ongoing fights for civil and human rights in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Harrington\u2019s method is simple and cumulative: He recounts a particular legal issue or lawsuit, briefly describes the people at its center, and reports the outcome, good, bad, or mixed. Nearly all the fights are difficult and complex. In a chapter on the surprising effectiveness of the Texas Equal Rights Amendment, he writes most proudly of what he calls the \u201ctrifecta\u201d of victories enacting farmworker employment rights: inclusion in workers\u2019 compensation, unemployment benefits, and limitations on the growers\u2019 reckless use of pesticides. \u201cIf the only time given to me on earth was for these cases,\u201d Harrington writes, \u201cmy life would have a \u2018well-lived\u2019 tag on it.\u201d<\/p>\n As that quote suggests, Harrington\u2019s inveterate earnestness can carry an edge of sanctimony. His career began as a Catholic seminarian in Michigan, where studying Spanish led him to work with migrant laborers \u2013 and a Saturday morning cartoon episode of Underdog<\/a>, no less, inspired him to shift to law school, then the Rio Grande Valley, and the South Texas Project that began his lifelong work. A few years ago, he found his way back to the clergy; as a non-salaried priest, he directs Proyecto Santiago<\/a>, a Hispanic outreach mission at St. James\u2019 Episcopal<\/a>.<\/p>\n (Dedicated as he is, I can testify that Harrington can occasionally be cantankerous. Decades ago, he objected<\/a> to our Chronicle coverage of a police shooting<\/a>, and then complained of my over-aggressive defense of the story. In retrospect, we were both partly wrong, but with a crucial difference: Harrington is a lawyer. Wanting to avoid becoming lawsuit No. 2,601, I apologized<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n