The
Struggle and Achievement of a Courageous Ethiopian
Woman
STOLEN
JUSTICE: One Woman’s Struggle over Race-Bias,
Corporate Greed and Legal Malpractice
By
Tseghe M. Foote
Stolen
Justice, L. L. C.
Reviewed
by Dr. Ghelawdewos Araia
“I
will rule the people with righteousness and
justice and will not oppress them. And may they
preserve this throne, which I have established for
the Lord of Heaven who has made me king and the
earth, which carries it.”
Emperor
Ezana, 4th century AD, Ethiopia
The
author is a native of Ethiopia and was born as
Tseghe Mebrahtu in the regional state of Tigray.
In the formative years of her adolescence, she
was exposed to the Peace Corps Volunteers and
ultimately married one of them, a Mr. Foote, and
came to America slightly over thirty years ago.
Like
most immigrants, Tseghe had envisioned the mirage
of American paradise and quite obviously she could
not have dispelled misconceptions about American
society given the positive impressions she had
when she was back home in Ethiopia. Not long after
she arrived in Denver, Colorado, her marriage
failed, finds herself as a single mother and
shoulders a mammoth responsibility of taking care
of her son, Mengesha.
Tseghe,
of course, is a resilient woman and in spite of
the early negative encounters in Denver, true to
her childhood dream, she founded the Africa House,
an African art boutique. Initially, however,
housing African House was not easy and the owner
could hardly find a lease contract and then she
“never expected the ‘land of opportunity’ to
have so many closed doors” (p. 32).
Nevertheless, her mirage still lingered and thus
her “faith of humanity felt renewed” when she
found a space at Cherry Creek and she kept hope
alive not knowing that her struggles against the
Tivoli landlords would continue in a different
form against the Tabor Center, a new site for
Africa House. In fact, she soon got eviction
notice from the Tabor Center and she had no choice
but to hire a lawyer(s) and continue to fight. The
newly hired lawyer reassured Tseghe that he will
“file an injunction in federal court to block
the eviction first in the morning.” (p. 73)
Adding
insult to injury, Tseghe was threatened by
anonymous caller who told her, “You are pushing
too hard. Go back to Africa or you are a dead
woman.” (p. 79) Despite threats and a gloomy
environment that surrounded her, however, this
brave Ethiopian woman was determined to keep on
going and fight for her rights. By doing so, she
wanted to tell her story in her own terms, a story
that has created multiple refractions as a result
of multidimensional negative encounters. Instead
of ruminating over disappointment, Tseghe sought
to fight it all till the end. Though she chose the
metaphor of the boxing arena to depict her trials
and tribulations, I found the author’s ordeal
rather attributable to the Spanish Bull Fight,
where the human challenger is no match to the
beast!
As
per the author, “it took 11 years from 1996 to
2007 to fight the injustice” (p. 205) and during
those long traumatic years, Tseghe countenanced
subsequent contrasting fates. She was caught in
the crossfire of two groups of lawyers, one on her
behalf and the other in defense of the owners of
the Tabor Center. Tseghe trusted her lawyers, but
being unflinchingly honest can be dangerous
sometimes and again she stumbles into a wholly
unpredictable situation, in which, to her chagrin,
she found herself betrayed even by her own
lawyers. In fact, as the author aptly puts it, she
“stood up to find out the truth, but it was
stolen by the judges and the lawyers all over
again.” (p. 204).
The
author’s ordeal manifest a painful journey
indeed, but as Richard Stern, professor of
literature and novelist, once said, “the
conversion of the negative is important…don’t
duck pain. It is precious. It is your gold mine,
it is gold in your mine.” In point of fact,
Tseghe finds ironic relief out of her pain. “In
principle I won,” she says.
Barbara
Jordan, who became the first African American
woman from the South to be elected to the U. S.
Congress was the key note speaker for the 1976
Democratic Convention and in her speech, “Who
Then Will Speak for the Common Good?” she
states, “I could list the problems which cause
people to feel cynical, angry, frustrated:
problems which include lack of integrity in the
government; the feeling that the individual no
longer counts; the reality of material and
spiritual poverty; the feeling that the grand
American experiment is failing or has failed. I
could recite these problems and then I could sit
down and offer no solutions. But I don’t chose
to do that either.”
In
the entangled mess of the judicial process, Tseghe
as individual did not count indeed, and she was
surrounded by a wilderness of material and
spiritual poverty and utter depravity of the
lawyers and judges. She perhaps wished to enjoy
justice, an Ethiopian ethos, she could yearn in
retrospect, as in the tradition of ancient
Ethiopian monarchs who wanted to rule their people
with “righteousness and justice” as Ezana’s
ethical conception of rulership demonstrates.
Interestingly,
Tseghe “could not sit down and offer no
solutions” either.
She rather sought to struggle in an effort
to get some justice and convey the message to
others by being exemplary. Luckily, there were a
‘few good men’ and women on the side of the
plaintiff. There were individuals like “the
brave lawyer who was willing to challenge the
lawyers and the powerful firm that had failed”
Tseghe (p. 38) and of course there was Jana Thorpe
who filled Tseghe’s “heart with hope”
(p.119) and Lew Gaiter who “had helped [her]
with securing [her] business loan” and also
“rallied to [her] defense” (pp. 121-122).
It
is perhaps the lack of “few good men” that
usually creates havoc to the larger society and
subsequently inflicts sufferings upon many good
people of our planet earth. It is due to this grim
reality, I believe, that Edmund Burke, an English
philosopher of the 18th century, once
said, “the only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil is that good men do nothing.” Burke’s
contention must be examined contextually, of
course. His statement is either in reference to
the ‘monster within us’ in general or to the
violence perpetrated by the French revolutionaries
in 1789 in particular, to which he was vehemently
opposed.
Irrespective
of how Burke made reference to ‘good men’,
which is a metaphor, Stolen Justice also
underscores the significance of these few people
who can make a difference. In point of fact, in
regards to Tseghe’s experience the 12 jurors to
whom the book is dedicated to, happen to be the
few citizens who stood for justice despite the
emasculation and death of the latter in the hands
of the magistrates and lawyers who are expected to
do justice.
The
book is highly readable and the anecdotes that
make up the corpus of the entire text are enriched
by lucid metaphors that could serve the reader,
scholars of juris prudence, and students of
criminal justice system as fulcrum to the study of
the intricate and complex judicial system in the
United States. Above all, the book is about social
justice and though it contains a lot of rage, its
central emotion is compassion. I recommend
everyone who has a passion for books to read
Stolen Justice and once sh/e begins to read the
book, it would not be possible to stop in the
middle without finishing it through to the end.
_______________________________________________
All
Rights Reserved. Copyright © IDEA, Inc. 2008. Dr.
Ghelawdewos Araia can be contacted for educational
and constructive feedback via dr.garaia@africanidea.org
.The Author, Tseghe M. Foote, can be contacted via
info@stolenjustice.com
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