Thought for the Day: A More Costly Advocacy

"Advocacy is the making of oneself vulnerable on behalf of another, even unto death."
-William Stringfellow

Stringfellow was a civil rights attorney whose writings I've enjoyed exploring recently. He went from the halls of Harvard Law to start a practice serving the residents of East Harlem in the fifties, and I appreciate his simple definition of advocacy far more than the cheap advocacy so commonly witnessed in the lawyering profession.

That vision usually involves the lawyer as a mere mouthpiece for hire.

Stringfellow's is a far more costly advocacy, one that represents "an invitation to share pain and vulnerability and a call to set [oneself] free in relationship to those the world condemns" to quote Prof. Emily Fowler Hartigan's exposition of his idea. I'm still struggling to come to grips with what this might mean in a place like Cite Soleil, or back in North Philadelphia, but it's far more reflective of who I aspire to be as a lawyer and person than the cheap advocacy I so often see.