The eJustice Network

Open mouth, insert foot. Imus has demonstrated quite a skill for that.

But he's done us all a favor with his recent remarks. Because he reminds us that we still keep ourselves separate from others, and retain patterns of thought and behavior designed to emphasize the differences we perceive.

Racism and bigotry are still part of our world. We all wish they weren't, but they are. The question is, why? And what can we do about it?

All of us want a world which is a safe place to raise our families. Yet, we know that the world is filled with war, famine and genocide. In the United States, however, tragedy all too often occurs with our motor vehicles.

As a litigator for many years, I have represented families who have lost children due to the negligence of another driver. I have lived with their pain for a long time and now it's time for me to release my pain.

As a lawyer with over 25 years experience in the criminal and civil courts, I have vigorously represented my clients interests whether the client was the State of Ohio in a criminal prosecution, or a business seeking q remedy or damages in a civil case or a spouse seeking a divorce in a Florida Family Courts. Prosecution and litigation usually brought out the worst behavior in people.

I"ll never forget a criminal case where I was told by the defense, that I was prosecuting two innocent men for rape by two teenage girls. I knew in my heart that my clients were lying. All I had to do was to convince my bosses to drop the charges. This was no easy task. In fact when presenting their cases to my superior, I was told to try the case. I believed at the time that they thought I was trying to ease my workload as I was pregnant.

There was a lot of ground covered at the We Media Conference. Perhaps one of the most important to those trying to create a project with a significant impact was the one on financing your media venture. The term media, by the way, encompasses the delivery of almost any kind of content, including opinion, information, news, and entertainment, whether by TV, radio, Internet, mobile, or print.

Anyway, this note is on the session on how media projects are financed. Good stuff, particularly because it involved a discussion between different types of lenders (and even someone who didn't use any). It was fascinating hearing the VCs interacting with strategic investors interacting with others who chose not to seek outside financing.

Just returned from the We Media Conference a few hours ago. Let me share some of my thoughts before I forget them.

Last year Laura and I attended the Digital Media Conference in D.C. and picked up a lot of good stuff. I was hoping this would be even better, particularly since it was to cover how media was the glue by which communities are pulled together.

It exceeded my expectations, touching off thoughts and ideas in me I hadn't anticipated. Here's some of what I found:

After so many years in the trenches fighting for people to get what they want or keep what they've got, I offer another, simpler definition:

Justice is a level playing field. Plain and simple, everyone's equal. Not more equal because of who they know or the resources at their disposal, or because they can get a better mouthpiece with better experts lined up on their side. Nor the system they've managed to stack in their favor.

How do we do justice to our environment? What does Mother Earth ask of us, and how do we balance that with our need to survive and carve out lives that work for us?

Equal justice. For everyone. Everywhere. That's what we're about.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? But look around. Where do you really see justice that meets that definition?

Everywhere justice is stacked in favor of those with money, power, or influence. That's certainly not equal, is it? So here we're going to do our best to consider new concepts in justice, and how it can be brought into our world.