Zenith Award for Political Action: Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys

Bar Leaders Work for a More Representative and Accountable Judiciary.

By Katheryn Hayes Tucker

Daily Report

November 9, 2016

 

 

 

As leaders of the state's largest African-American lawyers' groups, Holland & Knight partner Charles Johnson III and AT&T in-house counsel Suzanne Ockleberry have been working for decades to increase diversity in judicial elections and appointments. But a few years ago, they began to see crucial gains being lost. African-American judges in Atlanta and other cities were retiring and being replaced with whites. Some cities had never had an African-American judge.

 

They started Advocacy for Action in 2013. This year, they've begun to reverse the trend with elections and appointments of diverse judges in different courts around the state.

 

Johnson, former president of the Gate City Bar Association, and Ockleberry, former president of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys, brought luminaries from both groups together to take action. Their first step was to talk.

 

They put their concerns and their case into a letter—four pages single spaced—which the Daily Report published in 2012. They gave it the headline: "Will the last African-American judge please turn out the lights?"

 

They called it a crisis that fed on silence and apathy. "The idea that the judiciary should reflect the best and brightest legal minds, regardless of race, will be a quaint bygone idea," they wrote. They quoted Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without a demand."

 

They issued a call to action. "The question we must ask is what can we do, personally and as a community. The answer is we must speak."

 

And speak they did—to community groups, continuing legal education events, panel discussions and on social media. They made their research and statistics available on their own website. They began a targeted campaign to make people aware of the importance of electing representative judges. They recorded videos and posted them on YouTube. They encouraged sitting judges to stay in office long enough to open their seats in an election, rather than allowing a governor to appoint a replacement. In some instances, they targeted incumbents with opposition for re-election. They helped fund campaigns through a political action committee and a private corporation that could accept anonymous donations. They learned that plenty of lawyers would gladly give up the tax deduction in exchange for not having to publicly oppose a sitting judge. They recruited qualified minority lawyers to seek judicial office either through election or appointment. And they communicated with decision-makers to ensure that qualified diverse candidates were included in consideration for appointments.

 

The process has not been easy. Last year, lawyers involved with the group sued Gov. Nathan Deal to block his naming of three white judges to fill three new positions on the Georgia Court of Appeals. They lost. But they made their point nonetheless. This year, the governor named an African-American judge to that court.

 

Last year, the group successfully lobbied the Cobb County Superior Court for the appointment of an African-American woman as chief magistrate judge. They backed an African-American woman appointed by the governor to fill an open seat in Macon. And in this year's elections, Fulton County Superior Court gained its first new African-American judges in many years.

 

They measure their success in tiny increments.

 

"Every once in a while, I think we are heard," said Johnson. "There is some heightened awareness of the importance of voting, and of becoming informed about candidates. There is less of a tendency to ignore these races. We've had something to do with that."

 

This work is not part of their day jobs, Ockleberry noted. "We do this because we believe in our heart of hearts in the mission of this organization," she said. "A more representative and accountable judiciary is what we're seeking."

Georgia Can Honor Dr. King's Legacy with a Simple Change to its Tax Code

By Charles S. Johnson

Originally Published March 31, 2018

Much attention is currently focused on the events which occurred fifty years ago, the last year in the life of Dr. of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the course of this year’s many commemorations, too little attention is focused on the causes to which he devoted his final year. There is a tendency to forget that, at the end of his life, Dr. King’s central message concerned the need for economic justice.

The rapid economic expansion which the United States experienced in the 1960s was not shared by all Americans. Throughout that decade, despite the gains brought about by the Civil Rights Movement, the rate of poverty among African-Americans remained at three times the rate experienced by white Americans.

By 1967, Dr. King had concluded that the Movement’s focus should expand from an emphasis on civil rights to a broader emphasis on human rights: that African Americans and other disinherited citizens would never achieve full citizenship until they attained economic security and, accordingly, that something must be done to focus the nation’s attention on the problems of poverty and economic inequality. 

Toward the end of 1967, Dr. King announced his intention to lead a Poor People’s Campaign the following year.  His plan was for thousands of poor people of all races and backgrounds to descend on the nation’s capital, to demand that government officials address the needs of the nation’s poor.

Dr. King spent the early months of 1968 traveling around the country, generating support for the Poor People’s Campaign. To illustrate the plight of the working poor, he embraced the struggle of the sanitation workers in the City of Memphis who were currently striking to demand better pay and working conditions.

The central demands of the Poor People’s Campaign were summarized in an “Economic Bill of Rights,” notably including the right to a meaningful job with a livable wage. In this most prosperous nation on earth, participants in the Poor People’s Campaign called on the nation to embrace a guaranteed annual income.

In the weeks following Dr. King’s death, a Committee of 100 began meeting with members of Congress and leaders of executive agencies to lobby for the Campaign’s demands.  By May, thousands of the nation’s poor had begun to assemble in an encampment on the National Mall referred to as Resurrection City, and they began a series of demonstrations in support of the Economic Bill of Rights. 

By the end of June, the inhabitants of Resurrection City had been evicted. Many of them continued to lobby for changes in federal policy, with modest results. Others went on to demonstrate at the Democratic and Republican conventions later that summer.

But the idea of supplementing the income of the nation’s poor, so prominently featured in the Economic Bill of Rights, did not die with the evacuation of Resurrection City. In one form or another, the idea continued to be discussed among policymakers at the highest level.

The year 1968 culminated with the election of President Richard Nixon and a renewed emphasis on economic approaches that were seen as conservative.  While many conservative leaders recoiled at the idea of subsidizing the idle poor, many of them began to embrace the idea of finding a way to assist the working poor.  A major concern arose as to the best way to encourage poor people to enter and remain in the workforce and thus reduce the number of families needing what was then referred to as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (“AFDC”). Some policymakers began to entertain the idea of a negative income tax, under which people with low incomes would receive money back from the government instead of paying taxes to the government.

Conservative economist Milton Friedman had proposed a negative income tax as a replacement for traditional welfare: giving to poor people cash which they could use as they saw fit, rather than giving them an array of welfare benefits. Friedman believed that such an approach would introduce a new level of simplicity, since it would be administered centrally by the IRS instead of many different organizations. Friedman’s approach included the introduction of new lower but graduated tax rates, such that taxpayers would lose benefits as their income rose, but they would always come out ahead with a higher earned income.

In 1971 President Nixon proposed a “Family Assistance Plan” welfare reform program including a negative income tax, guaranteeing money to families with children, with assistance payments declining as a function of earnings. Although Congress declined to adopt this measure, policymakers continued to experiment with a variety of tax-driven approaches to income maintenance.  Senator Russell Long proposed a “work bonus” plan to supplement the wages of poor workers.

 
The Tax Reduction Act of 1975 introduced a “work bonus” plan but renamed it the Earned Income Tax Credit (“EITC), a temporary refundable tax credit for lower-income workers to offset the Social Security payroll tax and rising food costs. The EITC was made permanent in the Revenue Act of 1978.

The EITC is now seen by many as both an anti-poverty program and an alternative to welfare, because it incentivizes work. President Reagan described it as “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”

Recognizing that state and local taxes continue to disproportionately burden individuals with low and moderate income, twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have adopted some form of EITC, generally by matching the federal credit. These state credits provide a modest yet critical boost for taxpayers who already receive the federal EITC. State EITCs are typically claimed as a percentage of the federal credit’s value, ranging from a low of 3 percent in Montana to a high of 40 percent in Washington, D.C. Hawaii, Montana and South Carolina each enacted new EITCs in 2017.

The concept of an EITC has much in common with the proposals advanced by Dr. King in the last year of his life.  In fact, the EITC improves on Dr. King’s proposal of a guaranteed annual income by directly encouraging workforce participation. Georgia, the home of Martin Luther King, is among the states that do not provide a state match to the federal EITC. By enacting its own EITC, Georgia can provide much-needed support for working families while honoring the legacy of one its prominent native sons.

Georgia's Quest for a More Representative Judiciary

Charles S. Johnson: Profile

Charles S. Johnson, a seasoned trial lawyer, currently practices in the areas of health law, higher education law, dispute resolution, and public policy.

Following his graduation from Boston College Law School, where he was a member of the Law Review and a recipient of the Law School’s O’Keefe Award,  Mr. Johnson began his legal career as an antitrust lawyer.  His antitrust practice has included service as principal Georgia antitrust counsel for a major automobile manufacturer and as coordinating antitrust counsel for a national insurance rating organization.  He also served as Adjunct Professor of Antitrust Law at the University of Georgia.  His litigation practice eventually expanded to include health policy litigation, education policy litigation, tax litigation, employment litigation, securities litigation, civil RICO and qui tam litigation, eminent domain litigation, zoning litigation, and litigation of commercial disputes. He currently serves as a member of the Commercial Dispute Resolution Panel for the American Arbitration Association.

Mr. Johnson’s public policy practice has included counseling, regulatory and legislative advocacy, and litigation.  He participated in the creation of Zoo Atlanta, the Countywide Library System for Fulton County, and Georgia’s first tax allocation districts.  He advised Morehouse College in securing the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection.  He has litigated questions related to the regulatory authority of Georgia’s Commissioner of Insurance and the Georgia Department of Community Health, the taxing power of local school districts, and the enforcement of the Clean Air Act.  His litigated cases have made it possible to vigorously enforce the federal Fair Housing Act, and they have also made it possible for the courts to consider quality of education when fashioning a remedy for school segregation.

Mr. Johnson is Chair of the Board of the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, President of the Southern Regional Council, Co-Convenor of Advocacy for Action, Immediate Past Chairman of the Board of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia, Co-Convenor of Advocacy for Action, and a member of the Board of Trustees of Bard College (his Alma Mater). He previously chaired the Board of Trustees of Leadership Atlanta, the ABA Committee on Insurance Regulation, the Atlanta Judicial Commission, the Atlanta Urban League, the Atlanta Exchange and the Atlanta Region Open Housing Coalition.  He also served as President of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and the Gate City Bar Association.  He formerly served as Vice President of the National Bar Association and as a member of the Board of the Atlanta Bar Association, the Theatrical Outfit, the Atlanta Branch NAACP, the Atlanta Council of Younger Lawyers, the Atlanta Business League, the Metropolitan Atlanta Red Cross, the Alliance Theater/Alliance Children's Theater, Jomandi Productions, the Southern Christian Home for Children, Techwood Park, Inc., and the Young Democrats of Georgia. 

Mr. Johnson has been named as one of Ten Outstanding Young People in Atlanta and one of the Best Lawyers in America.  Atlanta Magazine has recognized him as one of Atlanta's “Powers to Be” and one of Georgia’s Super Lawyers, and the King Center has recognized him with its Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace and Justice Award.  He has been inducted into the National Bar Association Hall of Fame and the Gate City Bar Association Hall of Fame. He is a recipient of the Randolph Thrower Lifetime Achievement from the State Bar of Georgia Committee to Promote Inclusion in the Profession, and the Zenith Award for Political Action from the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys.