Occupy Lansing, Lansing, MI 15 October 2011, © 2011 Michael Maurer Smith

My wife and I attended the Occupy Lansing demonstration at Michigan’s state capitol building on the 15^th of this month. It was remarkable for the intelligence and civility on display.

Contrary to the criticism of some writers in the Lansing State Journal, that this demonstration and its Occupy Wall Street counterparts in other cities are without focus, I found the focus clear and apparent. Stated simply, it is time for citizens in this democracy to reclaim and assert their moral and legal rights in the face of rampant corporate greed, incompetent and uncaring government, a biased and partisan Supreme Court, and a banking industry that through its callous disregard for the nation’s well being has driven this country to the brink of disaster.

Occupy Lansing, Lansing MI 15 October © 2011 Michael Maurer Smith

The speakers I heard did not condescend to those assembled. Instead they addressed complex issues with words and facts that reflect the enormity of this nation’s situation and its many dimensions—legal, social, environmental, political, medical, financial and moral.

Occupy Lansing was an invitation to dialogue, challenge, think, observe, learn and awaken as people—as citizens.

© 2011 Michael Maurer Smith

Whatever the truth of those allegations a larger question looms. That is the abundance of lawyers in our society and the disproportionate effect of the legal mindset upon our society and government.

Michigan has more than 40,000 licensed attorneys, and each year the law schools graduate more. Where will they find work? And what is the correlation between this abundance of lawyers, the number of frivolous lawsuits and the public’s increasing distrust of lawyers and government?

Consider the current Congress (112^th) of the United States. There are 148 lawyers serving in the House and 52 lawyers serving in the Senate. By comparison there are 15 medical doctors serving in House and 2 in the Senate. In the House there is 1 physicist, 6 engineers and 17 farmers. So whose professional influence and approach to problem solving is likely to dominate?

Much of the political circus in Washington owes its mediocrity, inefficiency, ineffectiveness, waste and lack of imagination to an entrenched legal mindset with its emphasis upon winning. The interminable arguments and legal maneuverings too often negate meaningful, substantive, timely, and effective action and have brought our country to its economic and cultural knees.

Our adversarial legal system teaches that the client, no matter how reprehensible he, she or it may be, is entitled to the best legal representation. So when lawyers are elected to public office they come predisposed to framing every issue as a contest—as something to be argued and won. The problem is that the greater public good isn’t easily identified or defined as a client or contest. Nor can it lobby for itself or sign checks.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2011

NOTE: Columnist John Schneider published portions of this piece in his blog in the Lansing State Journal. Responses to the remarks may be seen here.

The individual or small business that can only afford to spend a few hundred dollars will now ask what’s the point? If giants like AIG, General Motors and Exxon Mobil can spend millions of dollars to hire the best writers, designers, photographers and filmmakers to make their ads in support of their favored candidates, political parties and issues, how will the small business or individual get heard? Politicians remember and favor those who get them elected and big money buys access.

So far the protests against this ruling assume that the relative financial disparity is the problem. I’d like to suggest otherwise.

As a designer I develop communications intended to extend the client’s message to their target audience. The message is crafted to persuade and encourage action. To do this I use various typefaces, photographs, illustrations, formats, colors and media to set a specific tone and to bring content and form into an integrated whole that promotes a specific point-of-view and sets a tone. When doing this more money certainly allows more options. This is why WalMart’s advertising is typically more polished and effective than that of the small business owner.

So it seems to me that fairness would be a law that required all political campaign and advocacy advertising to be limited to type only. No sound, illustration, photography or color, other than black and white, would be permitted. Likewise, only a single typeface could be used, say Helvetica or Arial—something precise and modern but lacking a suggestive character. Everyone would be required to use this same typeface (or Braille for the blind).

Type set in Helvetica.

All this would assure visual neutrality and a kind of equality. It would compel and challenge those who write the copy to persuade their audience using only the written word—appealing to the intellect. Unlike colors, photographs, illustrations and sounds, which are responded to immediately, viscerally and emotionally, the written word must first be read and interpreted—it requires thinking and understanding.

These restrictions would apply to everyone rich or poor, individual or corporate. The individual or corporation could say whatever he or she wanted to but only using words, no pictures and no movement or sound. The emotional appeal of color and imagery would be unavailable and the need for big budgets for production costs would disappear. Anyone with access to a desktop computer could prepare typewritten copy ready for use in print, online or on television.

Taking this a step further designated sites on the Internet could be made available for these ads and statements. Such sites would be open to all and at no cost.

Of course some people write better than others, and the better writer will be more persuasive. However superior writers may be found at all income levels and writing requires little in the way of production costs. So restricting published (print or online) political advertising and advocacy to the written word would go a long way toward assuring that everyone will have a fair and equal opportunity to be heard, regardless how much money they may have.

It is worth remembering that before the Internet, radio and television and before the halftone process permitted photographs to be reproduced in books, magazines and newspapers most publishing and advertising took the form of the printed word.

In the end it is our choice. We now have to accept that corporations have been granted the same rights of free speech formerly exclusive to human beings. However we can insist that equal opportunity, access and methods be available to permit the exercise of free speech for every citizen (Can a corporation be a citizen?) regardless of their finances, power or connections. Indeed we must do this if we are to remain a Democracy and not become a Plutocracy.

© 2010 Michael Maurer Smith

Yes, we have gotten change, the change of spin and rhetoric. But corporate greed and the arrogance of the nation’s top bankers continue unabated while our social fabric and economic system shreds. In contemporary America, justice, ethics, morality, compassion, fairness and humility have become little more than words in the dictionary.

Having endured eight years of the arrogant, cynical and inept Bush/Cheney regime Americans are now credulously being asked to accept as statesmanship the diddling of the Democrats and hyper-partisan circus Washington has become. Change indeed! Tweedle dee and tweddle dumber!

Today’s (15 January 2010) Lansing State Journal reported the President as saying the recent round of bank bonuses were “obscene.” And so they are.

But, Mr. President it was you and your fellow Democrats we elected to end the abuse and you haven’t. We’d hoped you might forge the bipartisan support you promised, but all we’ve seen is the withering of that promise. And now you sound like just another impotent citizen—off to the side decrying how unseemly it all has become.

As President and a Nobel Prize winner you speak eloquently of responsibility and compassion. As a savvy politician you are able to say nearly everything to everyone and commit to nothing! As an attorney, well schooled in Constitutional law, you cite the law with authority. And perhaps it is because you are a lawyer, like so many of your colleagues in the Congress and Senate, that this county is in the mess it is.

Of the 269 members of the current 111^th Congress, 204 list their occupations as lawyers! By comparison 6 are engineers, 16 are doctors, 1 is a veterinarian and 1 is a psychologist. There is even one comedian.

Lawyers are trained to be zealous advocates for their clients, their paying clients. They are taught that even the most dispicable criminal is entitled to the best legal representation he or she can afford. They are encouraged to frame and approach problems as arguments and contests. They are taught to use the law to argue and win for their client, albeit within the rules of law, regardless of whether the outcome is just and benefits the greater good. Once in politics the lawyer’s de facto clients become the big money donors who finance his or her campaigns.

It is this occupational mindset of confrontation, contest and the all-important win that the lawyers bring to the Congress, Senate and the Presidency.

What we have just seen in the recent health care debate (calling it that is being generous) is lawyers, in the guise of senators and congresspersons, championing the interest of their current de facto clients, the big businesses and special interest groups that financed their election. Only a few are trying to represent those people without influence—the average working person, the non-voting child, the elderly person living on a fixed income, the incarcerated, and the mentally ill.

I posit that it is the predominance of the lawyering mindset in government that severely compromises its ability to hear and address the real needs of the American people. One has to wonder if we had 204 doctors in this Congress, instead of 16, what kind of health care debate would have ensued and what kind of legislation would have resulted? What changes would occur if we had 204 teachers, or social workers, or farmers in the Congress?

I feel obligated to disclose that my “day job”, is with the State Bar of Michigan. However, I am not a lawyer. I am a communication designer. What I have written is my personal opinion, which as of this writing is still protected by the first amendment.

I must also acknowledge that there are many caring and well-meaning lawyers who do their utmost to serve the public good and achieve justice. However, in general, the legal profession has historically favored the status quo and the rich and powerful. Too often it has turned a blind eye to injustice. One need only recall that the Civil Rights Act did not pass until 1964, women did not win the right to vote until 1920, and that it took a Civil War to bring about the emancipation of the slaves.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2010