TONY SERRA and PAULETTE FRANKL
“Lust For Justice: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra"
Hosted by: Brian Edwards-Tiekert
Wednesday, March 6, 7:30 PM
Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley
$12 at the door or at Brown Paper Tickets
Tony Serra is a living embodiment of the anti-establishment hero. After graduating from UC Berkeley's Boalt School of Law in 1961, he began his career as a deputy district attorney for Alameda County. Rapidly disillusioned with the justice system, he became a private defense lawyer and has since become notorious for representing - and winning - cases on behalf of the downtrodden: drug dealers, Hell's Angels, Black Panthers, even the Symbionese Liberation Army. His defense of a Korean man wrongfully convicted in a Chinatown gang murder inspired the film 'True Believer.' Ever the bohemian, Serra owns no property and doesn't have a checking account. He takes most cases for free.
Serra has spent his life defending society's outcasts, including among many others: Huey Newton (Black Panthers), the White Panthers, Russell Little & Kathleen Soliah (SLA), the Hell's Angels, Chol Soo Lee, Hooty Croy, Ellie Nesler, Bear Lincoln, Judi Bari and Daryl Cherney.
Author/artist Paulette Frankl followed Serra in and out of the courtroom for more than a decade to capture in words and images this unique legal warrior.
"I am a creation of the Sixties. The greatest influence on me was the ideology of the Sixties: anti-materialism, brotherhood, nonracism, love. Those are things I still believe in." — J. Tony Serra
KPFA BENEFIT
