On poetry

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. Leonard Cohen

We are one complex family

The Boston Globe did a fascinating piece about my brother, a lawyer in Boston. I was/am stymied by their apparent perplexed attitude about what I see has his basic "fairness" gene...the one I share...that often puts principle ahead of ideology, in ways that can make it hard to make "consistent decisions." So I echo the article here both as a tribute to my bro and because I admire his evenhandedness, even as it challenges his psyche.

Organized labor of love

Lawyer Harold Lichten's suits on both sides of the affirmative-action issue have put him in the hot seat

By Irene Sege, Globe Staff February 16, 2005

The holiday party of the Massachusetts Employment Lawyers Association was well underway when suddenly, amid the chitchat and noshing on turkey and cookies, attorney Wendy Kaplan screamed at attorney Harold Lichten.

You're a racist, she yelled. You shouldn't be here, she insisted, which was awkward given that they were standing in the library of Lichten's law firm.

The reason for the dust-up? Lichten had successfully overturned minority hiring quotas in Boston's fire and police departments, and MELA is an organization of progressive lawyers committed to affirmative action. Lichten had recently won the police case, and the next day he would file a similar reverse-discrimination suit against the city of Newton.

But still further in the future was a complaint filed this month that thrust him in the news yet again -- this time on behalf of four African-American aspiring firefighters suing the city of Lynn, which no longer uses quotas, and the state for relying on a civil service exam they allege discriminates against minority candidates.

''It was not a good place to do it, but I did call him a racist," Kaplan, who is white, says in a conversation that takes place before Lichten files the Lynn litigation. ''I don't know what's in his heart. I know what he does. What he's doing is supporting white supremacy and fighting affirmative action."

Harsh as Kaplan's words were, they reflect a discomfort Lichten himself shares as he moves from a Newton case he calls his last reverse-discrimination suit to a Lynn case he hopes restores his frayed reputation as an advocate for the underdog.

''The question is whether I really believed that taking the Boston cases was going to help attack the root problem, which was the exam, or whether I was just doing it to win some cases and make some money. The Lynn case strikes me as the litmus test on that issue," says Lichten, who is 52.

''I have no reason to think minorities won't fare just as well as Caucasians in a test that's really looking for who the best firefighter is," he adds. ''If you have a fire in your home, you really don't care whether someone got a 99 on the exam. You want someone who's tough, courageous, strong, and willing to walk through a fire to save you."

At 235 pounds and 6 feet 4 inches tall, the former college basketball player is an imposing presence in the courtroom and in the world of employment law. His affable, easygoing manner outside of court belies his reputation as a tough, aggressive attorney whose regular clients include a number of firefighter and police unions. Before the reverse-discrimination cases, Lichten was known for landmark victories on behalf of disabled workers, a specialty he stumbled into as a young legal services attorney in Maine when a dwarf walked into his office complaining he'd been denied a job at Bath Iron Works. ''That was the late '70s," Lichten says, ''and handicapped rights were the new thing." He won the case.

Almost a quarter-century later, in 2002 in Boston, a federal judge ordered United Airlines to hire John Sprague, a mechanic Lichten represented, after United withdrew its job offer because Sprague is deaf. The previous year, in a case involving another Lichten client, a hearing-impaired police recruit named Richard Dahill, the Supreme Judicial Court pushed state law beyond federal safeguards by ruling that people with handicaps that are correctable -- with hearing aids, for instance -- are nonetheless protected by disability law.

In 2003, Lichten represented 15 bilingual teachers in Lawrence placed on unpaid leave after failing an English fluency test. To settle the suit, the school committee offered language training, interim jobs as substitute teachers, and the promise of reinstatement as classroom teachers once the affected educators passed the exam.

Yet no cases attracted more notice than the ones that, in 2003 and 2004, toppled a quota system established in 1974 consent decrees to increase minority representation among Boston's firefighters and police officers. Under the decrees, the city kept separate lists of white and minority candidates, each arranged by exam score, and hired one minority candidate for each white one.

The cases landed Lichten on the cover of Massachusetts Super Lawyers magazine last November and earned him ''lawyer of the year" honors from Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in 2003, each time with articles touting his initial hesitation to take the cases. MELA, miffed that Lichten was affiliated in print with the association, discussed taking a stand against him.

Now comes the Lynn suit, which, if Lichten prevails, could change the way police and firefighters are hired in communities across the state. ''It sounds like a powerful, very progressive case," says attorney Paul Merry, president of MELA. ''I'm not sure Harold's seeking redemption, but this might serve that purpose." Kaplan remains skeptical. ''He's either trying to mend his reputation -- I doubt he's seen the light of day -- or he's responding to the onslaught of criticism," she says.

'Fighting for the underdog'
Lichten's involvement in the Boston cases began with a telephone call in 2001 from Roger Kendrick, a white man frustrated by his unsuccessful attempts to become a Boston firefighter despite scoring 100 on the exam.

''He said, 'Would you be interested in this case? Me and a group of white people cannot get hired in Boston,"' Lichten recalls. ''I thought about it. I spoke to other lawyers in my office. They said they would not help me."

Lichten took the case anyway. ''The way they were going about hiring in the city of Boston was nuts. Although there should be affirmative action, the quota system they were using didn't make a lot of sense. If I could successfully end these quota systems, I thought that perhaps then we could attack the real problem," Lichten says. ''If someone's going to do it, I thought it's better it be me, who would be more sympathetic to the minority interests than someone from a right-wing think tank."

Shannon Liss-Riordan is one partner in Lichten's firm who refused to help him. ''We didn't need to be the ones who were reversing this decades-old consent decree," she says. ''We have other clients, other priorities."

Now she is his co-counsel on the Lynn case. ''He's been my mentor," says Liss-Riordan, 35. ''He's an incredibly smart lawyer from whom I've learned a great deal. He's brilliant in the courtroom. He has cutting-edge legal strategies. He loves what he does. He loves fighting for the underdog."

Lichten grew up in New Jersey, where his parents owned a clothing store in Pleasantville. He describes them as ''pretty liberal," by which he means that they, like only 37 percent of Garden State voters, cast ballots for George McGovern in 1972. Relatives used to regale Lichten with stories of their involvement in the civil rights movement. ''I grew up thinking I'd do good in the world," he says.

At age 12 he pitched on a team that almost made it to the 1965 Little League World Series. ''Horse" Lichten played baseball and basketball at Atlantic City High School, ran a losing bid for class president using the slogan ''The Horse, of course," co-chaired an unsuccessful campaign to lower the state's voting age to 18, and then headed to the University of Pennsylvania. He arrived on campus in 1970 with long, bushy hair, which he cut very short at the basketball coach's command. A few months later the coach ordered another haircut. Lichten refused and was kicked off the team.

''People judged you back then by the length of your hair, so I decided not to get a haircut. I didn't want people to think I was in ROTC or anything like that," Lichten says. ''I missed it terribly. I missed basketball."

Lichten's downtown office is decorated with photographs of old firehouses, and his computer screen saver displays a photograph of Checkers, the pony of one of his 6-year-old twin daughters. He views his affection for firefighters and horses with bemusement. Not what you'd expect, he jokes, of a Jewish boy from Jersey.

''Interestingly, I had that sort of Jewish middle-class liberal bias against firefighters and police officers before I represented them. I've just really come to change my view of that," he says. ''I really think they have a difficult job, and I'm really happy they're there. I'd assumed most police officers and firefighters were conservative and would be motivated more by self-interest. What I've discovered is some of the police and firefighter unions I represent are incredibly like a brotherhood. If one of their members gets in trouble, especially firefighters, they will go to whatever extent it takes to make sure that firefighter is taken care of."

From country to courtroom
Lichten has lived since 2003 in a century-old converted greenhouse on 2 1/2 acres in Hamilton, ''Horse" Lichten in horse country, near the Myopia Hunt Club, which he sheepishly acknowledges he wouldn't mind being asked to join. The property is next door to the home of the nanny who introduced his daughters to riding when the family lived in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Now Lichten owns two ponies and an old quarter horse. His redheaded twins, Kate and Maddie, have collected almost three dozen riding ribbons between them.

Lichten comes late -- and only after several years of therapy -- to family life.

''I dated a lot and couldn't commit. Whenever someone was starting to get serious, I was trying to bail out. The other thing is because I'm actually shy, I could never tell people that I didn't want to see them. I would just try to hem and haw and not be available," he says. ''So I went into therapy, which helped a lot."

In 1996, when he was 44, he married Susanne Csongor, an interior designer 10 years his junior. He quit therapy and the men's group he'd joined. ''I'm about as happy as a guy could be," he says.

Weekend mornings find Lichten, his face perpetually sunburned from all his time outdoors, up early mucking the horses' stalls, listening to rock 'n' roll on the radio. He puts hay at the edge of his rolling pastures and leads the horses to the field for the day. ''It's very calming," he says. ''It's so different from what I do."

In a cramped Suffolk County courtroom, as Lichten defends a police union and one of its officers accused of sexual harassment recently, his size is striking as he stands to cross-examine the plaintiff. This is a part of his work he particularly enjoys.

''He can really rip a witness apart," Liss-Riordan says. ''I remember the doctor who testified in the Richard Dahill trial for the Boston Police Department was really reduced to smithereens during Harold's scathing cross-examination."

On this winter morning, however, the plaintiff is a diminutive former union employee who claims she lost her job after refusing Lichten's client's advances. Here, in a case he would win a few days later, Lichten is restrained as he asks her about the bitterly contested election that forced her old boss from office.

''It's very important when you're cross-examining a sympathetic witness who claims to be the victim of discrimination that you not seem like you're trying to tear into her, which is different from when you cross-examine a corporate official," Lichten says. ''I was trying not to get loud with her."

Other times -- say, when he's representing labor against management -- he might employ his full voice.

''I represent unions," Lichten says. ''They love it when I'm there attacking one of their managers. It's what they've always wanted to do but can't."

On my once (and future?) profession, journalism

In one of my favorite blogs, er, forums, by Jim Romanesko, at the Poynter Institute, a thread was rolling along about whether the NY Times weddings page (and social section, for that matter) are "a closely guarded over-class preserve." After a few turns round the dance floor, David Johnston, of the Times, threw a grenade into the fire, expanding the debate far beyond the original parameters. I couldn't resist joining the fray.

David Johnston poses the "What's wrong" question about American journalism, and I would argue that the lists of 'what's right' and 'what's wrong' are long, but that at the heart of the issue are holistic issues, broad societal changes, paradigm shifts that threaten newspapers with the fate of other declining technologies like railroads to radio. And against the backdrop of the paradigm shifts are the faults journalists must shoulder: especially one: The fragile flame of public trust has not been sufficiently nurtured, and is damn near out. The public's skepticism and suspicion of institutions, corporate malfeasance, fraud, "sins" of personal and corporate ego, and malpractice have spilled over and become, forgive the analogy, a tsunami swamping the mainstream press. It's just not as simple as class heirarchy and egalitarianism.

First the societal changes around technology and community: The disintermediating force of the internet rolls along, throwing away middlemen in profession after profession, linking the public markets directly to whatever they want, directly. This force makes each of us and our blogs - and the aggregators of good blogs - as easy for the public to bond with as the NYT (my candidate for the world's greatest journalistic middleman).

And in the same way as people moved from small communities into cities because cities gave us easy access to the people and things and jobs we needed, people are now moving back into virtual communities - not city-centric - because these virtual communities give us access to the people and things and jobs we need. And newspapers as a core part of the "glue" of geographic cities are losing that role too.

Now back to trust:
The mainstream press may never win it back. It's not just the Janet Cooke and Jason Blair sagas. Not just the Rather mess. Not just the ever growing influence of paid media influencers who help businesses and organizations create the news, then spin the reporting of it. not just the Fox news bundled as objectivity ("32 more days til we re-elect the President headlines"). Not just the interplay of cost and quality where ratcheting down the former keeps eating away at the latter. Not just the conflicts of interest pay-to-play scandals. Not just the public breastbeating as we criticize ourselves and each other to pieces in public until no viewer/reader/listener can deduce what's true.

What's wrong, David asks. Why do even model reports come under fierce attack while sloppy ones are elevated? Why does no one act on dire facts once exposed? What has happened to the symbiotic relationship of audiences and media? From whence comes the deep suspicion?

My answer? From the drip drip drip of our own collective integrity leaching out of the profession. From the lack of an articulated, clear commitment to delivering reliable value to the public, expressed in a way that the public can hear that commitment. While we understand subtle distinctions between kinds of journalists and kinds of journalism organizations, to most of the public, the distinctions do not exist. Our concept that one public error is the work of a rogue is no more defensible than that position around Enron. We need to collectively raise standards again, preach them internally to the profession, defend them and speak them to the public, for they are the building blocks of trust.

I share these thoughts from a place that includes more perspectives than my pure journalism hat: Journalist for 20 years in radio, tv, magazines and mostly newspapers, executive of online publications, executive of a global pharmaceutical firm, and now executive of one of the nation's top non-profits. I've watched my peers in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors interviewed, known the truths behind the stories, and watched what emerged in print. I've watched organizations strategize their approaches to the press and the press' response to those approaches. I understand why the trust is broken.

I still believe that the ethics and practices of journalism - generated in 100+ years of careful thought - if applied, enforced, enjoyed, taught, celebrated, articulated, and understood, could go a long way toward mitigating the crisis of trust. But probably not far enough. I fear the tipping point has passed.

To circle right back to the question that launched this thread, of the NYTimes weddings page, I would respond that out there in public, most people are forming their own communities of people like themselves, living with people like themselves, reading about people like themselves, socializing with people like themselves. Even those who cry, "No, I love diversity" are seeking out communities of like-minded people who love diversity. So why are we surprised if the NYTimes reflects and serves its readers, just as the Philadelphia Daily News or the Boston Herald does. Just as the printers of community gazette flyers in the 18th century did. Just as writers of blogs do. I think the challenge is not to reinvent the broadcast mentality but to serve the remaining broad- and and the ever-growing narrow-casting communities brilliantly. With integrity. And rules of engagement. And ethics. Earning trust. And for the love of getting it right.