Spotlight-loving radical is focus of documentary
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100114/ARTICLE/1141035?Title=Spotlight-loving-radical-is-focus-of-documentary&tc=ar
By STEPHEN HOLDEN The New York Times
January 14, 2010
For William Kunstler, the wild-haired, radical civil rights lawyer
with the raspy voice who became a left-wing political star in the
late 1960s, Michelangelo's statue of David symbolized how he saw
himself. A photograph of the statue that morphs into a drawing of
David twirling his slingshot is a recurrent image in the crisply
made, largely admiring documentary "William Kunstler: Disturbing the
Universe." To him, it embodied the moment everyone faces at some time
or other when one has to stand up to injustice or keep silent.
A refresher course on the history of American left-wing politics in
the 1960s and '70s as well as an affectionate personal biography of
Kunstler, "Disturbing the Universe" was directed by Sarah and Emily
Kunstler, his two daughters from his second marriage. Although the
film, with its home movies and family reminiscences, portrays him as
a heroic crusader for justice, it is by no means a hagiography of a
man who earned widespread contempt late in his career for defending pariahs.
The metamorphosis of Kunstler, who died in 1995, from armchair
liberal to middle-aged hippie revolutionary reflected the volatile
political climate of the era. A general-practice lawyer who lived in
Westchester County, he became involved in the civil rights movement
through a local housing lawsuit in 1960; the following year he flew
to Mississippi at the behest of Rowland Watts, the legal director of
the American Civil Liberties Union, to support the Freedom Riders.
Later, he defended the Catonsville Nine -- Roman Catholic activists,
including Daniel and Philip Berrigan -- who burned draft files to
protest the Vietnam War. He achieved national notoriety as the lead
counsel in the theatrical trial of the Chicago Seven, who were
accused of conspiracy and inciting to riot during the 1968 Democratic
National Convention.
It was the events surrounding that trial that radicalized Kunstler,
the film says. He was outraged by the treatment of the Black Panther
activist Bobby Seale, the eighth defendant. Several weeks later the
fatal shooting of the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in his bed by
Chicago police further incensed Kunstler. The film includes an
excerpt from an angry speech in which he denounced all white people
(including himself) as racists.
He had his first major setback in September 1971 as a negotiator and
lawyer for inmates at Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New
York who seized the prison to demand better living conditions. After
armed state troopers stormed Attica, killing dozens, he blamed his
own idealism for his reluctance to tell the inmates what their
options really were. Kunstler's successful negotiation of a standoff
between American Indians and the United States government at Wounded
Knee, S.D., in 1973, was a personal redemption of sorts.
The critical turning point for Kunstler's reputation was his 1986
defense of Larry Davis, a Bronx drug dealer accused of shooting six
police officers. He lost more of his support after the 1991 acquittal
of his client, Egyptian-born terrorist El Sayyid Nosair, for the
murder of the militant Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Jewish Defense League
founder and Israeli politician. That brought picketers to the
Kunstler home, and Emily, who narrates the movie, recalls that she
and Sarah pretended they didn't live there when they returned from school.
Other signs that Kunstler had grown overly fond of the spotlight were
his defense of a cat for "crimes against humanity" in a mock TV trial
and his embrace of the Mafia chieftain John Gotti in front of the
courthouse press corps. A loss of perspective and an inflated sense
of self-importance: all too often these are side effects of stardom,
whether in Hollywood or in the legal profession.
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