B. Kwaku Duren
Encyclopedia
B. Kwaku Duren is a controversial African American lawyer, educator, writer, editor, Black Panther, long-time social, political and community activist; and a former convict who now lives and practices law in South Central Los Angeles. He has run for United States Congress
three times and once for Vice President of the United States. As a young man, he spent nearly five years in California prisons for armed robbery. He began reading extensively and taking college classes while incarcerated and after his parole in the fall of 1970, he founded and chaired the National Poor People’s Congress. A couple of years later, he and his younger sister, Betty Scott, along with Mary Blackburn and other community activists, founded an alternate school—the Intercommunal Youth Institute (1972–1975)—in Long Beach, California
.
In the wake of the shooting death of his sister by a California Highway Patrol officer during a routine traffic stop, Duren helped found and was a co-chair of the Coalition Against Police Abuse
(CAPA) from 1975-77. From 1976 to 1981 he was the Coordinator of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party
(SCC/BPP). From 1979 until 1991 he worked for the Los Angeles Legal Aid Foundation, beginning as a Community Outreach Worker; later, as a paralegal and attorney; he was one of the founding members and first president of the Union of Legal Services Workers of Los Angeles (AFL-CIO/UAW).
Duren attended law school at the People's College of Law
in Los Angeles. He graduated in fall of 1989 and was admitted to the California State Bar on August 8, 1990. He has worked as a “people’s” lawyer and community activist in South Central Los Angeles ever since.
A founding member of Community Services Unlimited, Inc., he was its Executive Director from 1977-2008. As Chairman of the New Panther Vanguard Movement
—since 1994—Duren was co-editor-in-chief, with his ex-wife, Neelam Sharma, of The Black Panther International News Service, a quarterly newspaper published in Los Angeles from 1995 to 2001.
In the summer of 2009, he opened new law offices as B. Kwaku Duren & Associates, a Professional Corporation, in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. He practices civil and criminal law, in state and federal courts. The new firm’s civil litigation practice includes all of the areas of law that Duren has worked in. This spectrum of legal work includes wrongful employment practices, civil rights violations, police misconduct, family law, commercial and residential real property disputes. Most recently, he has been handling loan modifications cases and wrongful residential homeowner foreclosures.
, the hometown of his father, William Prescott “Brack” Duren, and his mother, Willie Wade Bennett. Duren is the only son in a family of four children. His father worked as a miner, a prizefighter, and a steel mill worker.
During the Second World War, when Duren was an infant, his parents moved to Cleveland, Ohio. They lived in various places around Cleveland until settling into some new “housing projects." His mother was a housewife for many years but also worked as a housekeeper and seamstress. When “Brack” Duren had his hand severely mauled in an industrial accident at Midland Steel (he lost two-and-a-half fingers of his right hand), and the company dismissed him with a tiny settlement, Willie Duren was forced to seek work cleaning the houses of whites to help support her family.
In 1959, Duren’s mother relocated from Cleveland to Long Beach, California. Her husband followed his family to Long Beach shortly thereafter. In 1960, Brack Duren was arrested in a house raid by the FBI and charged with committing armed robberies of illegal gambling joints in Cleveland, which he had done after being injured and unable to find work. He was extradited to Ohio where he served many years in Chillicothe Correctional Institution
before becoming a jailhouse lawyer, doing research on his own case (with the help of his eldest daughter, Joyce), appealing, and ultimately winning his release on a technicality. He rejoined and re-married his wife after his release from prison and lived the remainder of his life in Long Beach.
At the age of 17 years, Kwaku Duren was arrested for breaking and entering into a television shop. He served six months in an L.A. county jail facility before being placed on probation. Following his release he worked in a pool hall in Long Beach, sold drugs, and, with a partner, committed a series of convenience-store holdups over several years. In spring of 1966, he was arrested for sticking up a cab driver, convicted, and sentenced to five years to life. He spent four-and-a-half years in Chino and Soledad prisons. (In a bit of irony, he worked as a cab driver while putting himself through law school.)
During his three-and-a-half years in Soledad, a black counselor introduced Duren to the writings of the African American historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois
—especially The World and Africa. Even before his slide into criminality, Duren had been a voracious reader. He thus began an intensive study of African-American history while in prison, reading books such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He also devoured works by writers such as J. A. Rogers
, Erich Fromm
, Friedrich Engels
, Karl Marx
, and Vladimir Lenin
. He ordered these books through the California State Library and the U.N’s UNESCO
library. One particular area that he devoted himself to was the history of slavery
and its effects on, and reverberations in, contemporary life. In addition to his autodidact pursuits, Duren enrolled in and completed classes in economics, sociology, and psychology, as well as astronomy, at San Francisco State University
. He was paroled in September 1970 at the age of 27.
. Duren was the Institute Director and taught world history. Betty Scott was the business manager. The IYI received a certification from the state board of education and also received Title I [federal] funds. The IYI’s motto, “The World is a Classroom,” captured the school’s methodology. As well as giving instruction in the “three Rs”, the IYI strove to teach its students self-awareness strategies to avoid gangs, drugs, and the criminal life.
In the summer of 1975, the Venceremos Brigade
chose him to lead a delegation of youth to an international youth summer camp in Cuba to meet with and to discuss youth issues with other students, and to learn about the Cuban Revolution
. Upon Duren’s return to the U.S., the FBI and INS detained him. He was released after a lengthy interrogation about his purpose for visiting Cuba.
, Betty Scott and her partner, George Smith, were pulled over at 4 a.m. in Pleasanton, California
, near Oakland, reportedly for a speeding violation. Ms. Scott was driving. During the stop, two California Highway Patrol officers, Curtis Engberson and Gordon Robbins, approached the car. Engberson was young, a recent recruit to the CHP. He approached Ms. Scott on the driver's side of the vehicle; Robbins took the passenger's side. There is a conflicted claim as to whether the officers had their guns drawn, which would not be routine in a traffic stop. Other details of the subsequent events are disputed as well. What is on record is that Scott was shot once in the neck by Engberson, fell into Smith’s lap, and died almost instantly. The shooting was probably without malice—though Engberson and Robbins could still have been held responsible—and occurred as a reaction by the young, nervous officer to Robbins’s shout, “She’s got a gun!” Smith did keep a gun in the glove compartment, and Ms. Scott had been reaching into the compartment to produce the car’s registration in response to Engberson’s order to do so. However, powder burns on the victim’s neck, the trajectory of the bullet, other physical evidence, and Smith’s account strongly suggested that the police testimony was, in crucial details, a fabrication after the fact in order to diminish culpability. An Alameda County grand jury did exonerate the officers (returning a verdict of justifiable homicide), thereby concurring with the police report that Ms. Scott had pointed the gun at the officer and yet this pistol had somehow managed to fall back into the glove compartment after the officer shot her.
Smith, who had been in the front seat beside Scott, was charged with attempted murder of a police officer, although he did not have a gun in his possession and was in shock due to Scott’s shooting. Charges against him were later dropped after a series of demonstrations organized by the Scott-Smith Defense Committee. Off-the-record testimony by another CHP officer to a member of the Duren family stated that the officer who killed Scott subsequently suffered emotional trauma as a result of his action.
Duren and his family, including Duren’s first wife, Virginia Harris, and Mary Blackburn formed the Scott-Smith Committee for Justice to investigate the incident and then sued the CHP for three million dollars in a wrongful death suit. The suit was unsuccessful. Following Scott’s death, the IYI dissolved.
In February 1976, Duren helped create—along with former Black Panthers Michael Zinzun
and Anthony Thigpenn—the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA). Duren became its co-chair. The Coalition, notable for its broad-based alliance between the black and Mexican communities in L.A., had as its purpose to prevent, expose, and resist abuse and misconduct by police, and to seek legal redress for such abuse. Duren has been involved in police abuse and brutality issues ever since the formation of The Scott-Smith Committee for Justice and CAPA.
These elements came together in the Public Disorder and Intelligence Division (PDID) of the LAPD. The PDID flourished while Daryl Gates
was chief of the LAPD. Gates’s tenure as chief (1978–1992) was marked by repeated charges of racism, arrogance, secrecy, refusal to talk with community-policing advocates, and brutality toward citizens—black citizens in particular, and those of Mexican descent as well — by officers of the force. CAPA, with Duren as one of two dozen or so plaintiffs, sued the LAPD on First Amendment
grounds that exposed the unlawful harassment, surveillance, and infiltration of the progressive movement in Los Angeles by LAPD agents. The lawsuit against Gates and the LAPD proved successful. The PDID was ordered to disband. In February 1984, an out-of-court settlement awarded $1.8 million dollars to the named plaintiffs, individuals, and organizations who had sued the City of L.A.
Gates eventually was forced out as chief in 1992 as part of the aftermath of the infamous beating of Rodney King
by a group of LAPD officers.
, Chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, to discuss reforming the Party in L.A.
In October, nearly a year after his sister’s killing, and after meeting with members of the Central Committee of the Party, Duren officially joined the Black Panther Party. In January 1977, while LAPD helicopters circled overhead, Duren inaugurated the new office of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party (SCC/BPP) on Central Avenue in South Central. He believed that the Party had the potential for raising the consciousness of black youth and others in the continuing struggle for “people’s power.” In the summer of the same year, Huey Newton, who had co-founded the Party in 1966 with Bobby Seale
, returned from political exile in Cuba. Late in 1977 Elaine Brown quit the BPP as the result of a conflict with Newton, whose behavior had become increasingly erratic, perhaps due to a power struggle exacerbated by Newton’s cocaine use.
Nonetheless, Duren continued to work with the Party, reorganizing the Southern California Chapter, growing its membership, and carrying out its community involvement agenda. However, his strong stand against the use and trafficking of cocaine by Party members apparently put him in conflict with Newton and other members of the BPP leadership.
The re-established SCC under Duren’s Coordinator status was always small in member numbers. Duren kept it this way because he felt that many prospective applicants were drawn to the Party more for its public and symbolic role rather than for the serious political agenda that the BPP promulgated. Still, the chapter thrived organizing its “survival programs.” These included martial arts training for youth and adults, a Tutorial/Liberation School Program for youth, and a Seniors Against a Fearful Environment (SAFE) escort program.
David Bryant, an African American, who was an LAPD officer, illegally infiltrated the SCC. This “domestic spying” became part of the suit against the LAPD. In any case, in August 1981, Duren submitted his resignation to the BPP Central Committee and closed the SCC for good after the settlement of the CAPA v. Gates lawsuit.
Around 1981, Duren started an independent law study program with Linda Ferguson. However, his involvement with CAPA v. Gates split his focus, so he withdrew from the study program.
He returned to the formal study of law by re-enrolling in the PCL in 1985. He graduated in June 1989, received his JD degree, and took the bar for the first time in October 1989. He received confirmation that he had passed in November 1989. The California Committee of Bar Examiners delayed his admission to the state bar as the Subcommittee on Moral Fitness put his attorney application on hold. Duren wrote the State Bar
's Governing Board and threatened to sue. He was then admitted and continued to work for legal aid, but as a staff attorney. Duren was sworn in by Judge Richard Paez
—at the time a superior court judge who had been a former executive director of Legal Aid—in Paez’ courtroom in 1990. Paez was later appointed as a federal judge.
Duren left Legal Aid for private practice in 1991 due to political pressure from the National Legal Services Corporation
in the form of heightened scrutiny of his several campaigns for political office (including running for Congress in 1982 and 1986). There was at the time, and still is, a Congressional prohibition of attorneys employed with Legal Aid running for political office (the legislation that proscribes Legal Aid attorneys running for political office was sponsored by the Republican senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch
). In 1993, Duren was certified to practice law in Federal Court and in 1998 certified to practice in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was appointed to the Superior Court Arbitration/Mediation Panel in 1997 and to the Federal Court's Settlement Officer Panel and Pilot Prisoner Mediation Program in 2000.
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
three times and once for Vice President of the United States. As a young man, he spent nearly five years in California prisons for armed robbery. He began reading extensively and taking college classes while incarcerated and after his parole in the fall of 1970, he founded and chaired the National Poor People’s Congress. A couple of years later, he and his younger sister, Betty Scott, along with Mary Blackburn and other community activists, founded an alternate school—the Intercommunal Youth Institute (1972–1975)—in Long Beach, California
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...
.
In the wake of the shooting death of his sister by a California Highway Patrol officer during a routine traffic stop, Duren helped found and was a co-chair of the Coalition Against Police Abuse
Coalition Against Police Abuse
The Coalition Against Police Abuse is a currently active community organization in Los Angeles with the stated aim of organizing marginalized groups such as the poor, homosexuals, blacks, and Latinos to prevent, expose, and resist abuse by police and seek legal redress for such abuse.-History and...
(CAPA) from 1975-77. From 1976 to 1981 he was the Coordinator of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
(SCC/BPP). From 1979 until 1991 he worked for the Los Angeles Legal Aid Foundation, beginning as a Community Outreach Worker; later, as a paralegal and attorney; he was one of the founding members and first president of the Union of Legal Services Workers of Los Angeles (AFL-CIO/UAW).
Duren attended law school at the People's College of Law
People's College of Law
The People's College of Law is an unaccredited, private, non-profit law school located in Los Angeles, California. PCL offers a part-time, four-year evening law program centered around work in the public interest.-History:...
in Los Angeles. He graduated in fall of 1989 and was admitted to the California State Bar on August 8, 1990. He has worked as a “people’s” lawyer and community activist in South Central Los Angeles ever since.
A founding member of Community Services Unlimited, Inc., he was its Executive Director from 1977-2008. As Chairman of the New Panther Vanguard Movement
New Panther Vanguard Movement
The New Panther Vanguard Movement was created in South Central Los Angeles as a response to the Los Angeles rebellion of 1992. Former members of the Black Panther Party and other community activists came together after the rebellion and shared their frustration with the lack of leadership in the...
—since 1994—Duren was co-editor-in-chief, with his ex-wife, Neelam Sharma, of The Black Panther International News Service, a quarterly newspaper published in Los Angeles from 1995 to 2001.
In the summer of 2009, he opened new law offices as B. Kwaku Duren & Associates, a Professional Corporation, in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. He practices civil and criminal law, in state and federal courts. The new firm’s civil litigation practice includes all of the areas of law that Duren has worked in. This spectrum of legal work includes wrongful employment practices, civil rights violations, police misconduct, family law, commercial and residential real property disputes. Most recently, he has been handling loan modifications cases and wrongful residential homeowner foreclosures.
Early life
B. Kwaku Duren was born in Beckley, West VirginiaBeckley, West Virginia
Beckley is a city in Raleigh County, West Virginia, United States, which was founded on April 4, 1838. The 2008 population was estimated to be 16,832 by the U.S. Census Bureau. Early in its history, the town was known as Beckleyville and Raleigh Court House...
, the hometown of his father, William Prescott “Brack” Duren, and his mother, Willie Wade Bennett. Duren is the only son in a family of four children. His father worked as a miner, a prizefighter, and a steel mill worker.
During the Second World War, when Duren was an infant, his parents moved to Cleveland, Ohio. They lived in various places around Cleveland until settling into some new “housing projects." His mother was a housewife for many years but also worked as a housekeeper and seamstress. When “Brack” Duren had his hand severely mauled in an industrial accident at Midland Steel (he lost two-and-a-half fingers of his right hand), and the company dismissed him with a tiny settlement, Willie Duren was forced to seek work cleaning the houses of whites to help support her family.
In 1959, Duren’s mother relocated from Cleveland to Long Beach, California. Her husband followed his family to Long Beach shortly thereafter. In 1960, Brack Duren was arrested in a house raid by the FBI and charged with committing armed robberies of illegal gambling joints in Cleveland, which he had done after being injured and unable to find work. He was extradited to Ohio where he served many years in Chillicothe Correctional Institution
Chillicothe Correctional Institution
Chillicothe Correction Institution, or CCI, is a state run medium security prison on the west bank of the Scioto River in Chillicothe, Ohio. It is located adjacent to Ross Correctional Institution and Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. The prison is a former military camp, named for Civil...
before becoming a jailhouse lawyer, doing research on his own case (with the help of his eldest daughter, Joyce), appealing, and ultimately winning his release on a technicality. He rejoined and re-married his wife after his release from prison and lived the remainder of his life in Long Beach.
At the age of 17 years, Kwaku Duren was arrested for breaking and entering into a television shop. He served six months in an L.A. county jail facility before being placed on probation. Following his release he worked in a pool hall in Long Beach, sold drugs, and, with a partner, committed a series of convenience-store holdups over several years. In spring of 1966, he was arrested for sticking up a cab driver, convicted, and sentenced to five years to life. He spent four-and-a-half years in Chino and Soledad prisons. (In a bit of irony, he worked as a cab driver while putting himself through law school.)
During his three-and-a-half years in Soledad, a black counselor introduced Duren to the writings of the African American historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Born in Massachusetts, Du Bois attended Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate...
—especially The World and Africa. Even before his slide into criminality, Duren had been a voracious reader. He thus began an intensive study of African-American history while in prison, reading books such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He also devoured works by writers such as J. A. Rogers
Joel Augustus Rogers
Joel Augustus Rogers was a Jamaican-American author, journalist, and historian who contributed to the history of Africa and the African diaspora, especially the history of African Americans in the United States. His research spanned the academic fields of history, sociology and anthropology...
, Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...
, Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, and Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
. He ordered these books through the California State Library and the U.N’s UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
library. One particular area that he devoted himself to was the history of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
and its effects on, and reverberations in, contemporary life. In addition to his autodidact pursuits, Duren enrolled in and completed classes in economics, sociology, and psychology, as well as astronomy, at San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
. He was paroled in September 1970 at the age of 27.
The Intercommunal Youth Institute
Duren, his younger sister, Betty Scott (aka Betty Scott-Smith), and other community activists founded the non-profit Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI) in Long Beach during the summer of 1973. This alternative school, a project of the Experimental Educational Institute, Inc., was organized by Duren and was modeled after the highly successful Black Panther Party community school in Oakland, CaliforniaOakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
. Duren was the Institute Director and taught world history. Betty Scott was the business manager. The IYI received a certification from the state board of education and also received Title I [federal] funds. The IYI’s motto, “The World is a Classroom,” captured the school’s methodology. As well as giving instruction in the “three Rs”, the IYI strove to teach its students self-awareness strategies to avoid gangs, drugs, and the criminal life.
In the summer of 1975, the Venceremos Brigade
Venceremos Brigade
The Venceremos Brigade is a politically motivated international organization founded in 1969 by members of the Students for a Democratic Society and officials of the Republic of Cuba...
chose him to lead a delegation of youth to an international youth summer camp in Cuba to meet with and to discuss youth issues with other students, and to learn about the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
. Upon Duren’s return to the U.S., the FBI and INS detained him. He was released after a lengthy interrogation about his purpose for visiting Cuba.
Death of Betty Scott
On September 20, 1975, while on her way to the Monterey Jazz FestivalMonterey Jazz Festival
The Monterey Jazz Festival is one of the longest consecutively running jazz festivals. It debuted on October 3, 1958 and was founded by San Francisco jazz radio broadcaster Jimmy Lyons.-History:...
, Betty Scott and her partner, George Smith, were pulled over at 4 a.m. in Pleasanton, California
Pleasanton, California
Pleasanton is a city in Alameda County, California, incorporated in 1894. It is a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area located about east of Oakland, and west of Livermore. The population was 70,285 at the 2010 census. In 2005 and 2007, Pleasanton was ranked the wealthiest middle-sized city in...
, near Oakland, reportedly for a speeding violation. Ms. Scott was driving. During the stop, two California Highway Patrol officers, Curtis Engberson and Gordon Robbins, approached the car. Engberson was young, a recent recruit to the CHP. He approached Ms. Scott on the driver's side of the vehicle; Robbins took the passenger's side. There is a conflicted claim as to whether the officers had their guns drawn, which would not be routine in a traffic stop. Other details of the subsequent events are disputed as well. What is on record is that Scott was shot once in the neck by Engberson, fell into Smith’s lap, and died almost instantly. The shooting was probably without malice—though Engberson and Robbins could still have been held responsible—and occurred as a reaction by the young, nervous officer to Robbins’s shout, “She’s got a gun!” Smith did keep a gun in the glove compartment, and Ms. Scott had been reaching into the compartment to produce the car’s registration in response to Engberson’s order to do so. However, powder burns on the victim’s neck, the trajectory of the bullet, other physical evidence, and Smith’s account strongly suggested that the police testimony was, in crucial details, a fabrication after the fact in order to diminish culpability. An Alameda County grand jury did exonerate the officers (returning a verdict of justifiable homicide), thereby concurring with the police report that Ms. Scott had pointed the gun at the officer and yet this pistol had somehow managed to fall back into the glove compartment after the officer shot her.
Smith, who had been in the front seat beside Scott, was charged with attempted murder of a police officer, although he did not have a gun in his possession and was in shock due to Scott’s shooting. Charges against him were later dropped after a series of demonstrations organized by the Scott-Smith Defense Committee. Off-the-record testimony by another CHP officer to a member of the Duren family stated that the officer who killed Scott subsequently suffered emotional trauma as a result of his action.
Duren and his family, including Duren’s first wife, Virginia Harris, and Mary Blackburn formed the Scott-Smith Committee for Justice to investigate the incident and then sued the CHP for three million dollars in a wrongful death suit. The suit was unsuccessful. Following Scott’s death, the IYI dissolved.
In February 1976, Duren helped create—along with former Black Panthers Michael Zinzun
Michael Zinzun
Michael Zinzun was an American ex-Black Panther and anti-police brutality activist of African American and Apache descent.-Early life:...
and Anthony Thigpenn—the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA). Duren became its co-chair. The Coalition, notable for its broad-based alliance between the black and Mexican communities in L.A., had as its purpose to prevent, expose, and resist abuse and misconduct by police, and to seek legal redress for such abuse. Duren has been involved in police abuse and brutality issues ever since the formation of The Scott-Smith Committee for Justice and CAPA.
CAPA v. Gates
From 1980-1983 Duren was a lead plaintiff in the domestic spying lawsuit CAPA v. Gates, et al.. Los Angeles has a long history of ultraconservative police chiefs who pursued union-busting, radical-hunting, and harassed political dissenters while tolerating, indeed sharing in the spoils of, corruption.These elements came together in the Public Disorder and Intelligence Division (PDID) of the LAPD. The PDID flourished while Daryl Gates
Daryl Gates
Daryl Gates was the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from 1978 to 1992.-Early life:...
was chief of the LAPD. Gates’s tenure as chief (1978–1992) was marked by repeated charges of racism, arrogance, secrecy, refusal to talk with community-policing advocates, and brutality toward citizens—black citizens in particular, and those of Mexican descent as well — by officers of the force. CAPA, with Duren as one of two dozen or so plaintiffs, sued the LAPD on First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
grounds that exposed the unlawful harassment, surveillance, and infiltration of the progressive movement in Los Angeles by LAPD agents. The lawsuit against Gates and the LAPD proved successful. The PDID was ordered to disband. In February 1984, an out-of-court settlement awarded $1.8 million dollars to the named plaintiffs, individuals, and organizations who had sued the City of L.A.
Gates eventually was forced out as chief in 1992 as part of the aftermath of the infamous beating of Rodney King
Rodney King
Rodney Glen King is an American best known for his involvement in a police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991...
by a group of LAPD officers.
Black Panther
In the summer of 1976, Duren first enrolled in the People’s College of Law in Los Angeles. Concurrently, he and some other black activists formed a political study group. He and these activists went to Oakland and met with Elaine BrownElaine Brown
Elaine Brown is an American prison activist, writer, singer, and former Black Panther leader who is based in Oakland, California. She is a former chairperson of the Black Panther Party. Brown briefly ran for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008...
, Chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, to discuss reforming the Party in L.A.
In October, nearly a year after his sister’s killing, and after meeting with members of the Central Committee of the Party, Duren officially joined the Black Panther Party. In January 1977, while LAPD helicopters circled overhead, Duren inaugurated the new office of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party (SCC/BPP) on Central Avenue in South Central. He believed that the Party had the potential for raising the consciousness of black youth and others in the continuing struggle for “people’s power.” In the summer of the same year, Huey Newton, who had co-founded the Party in 1966 with Bobby Seale
Bobby Seale
Robert George "Bobby" Seale , is an activist. He is known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with Huey Newton.-Early life:...
, returned from political exile in Cuba. Late in 1977 Elaine Brown quit the BPP as the result of a conflict with Newton, whose behavior had become increasingly erratic, perhaps due to a power struggle exacerbated by Newton’s cocaine use.
Nonetheless, Duren continued to work with the Party, reorganizing the Southern California Chapter, growing its membership, and carrying out its community involvement agenda. However, his strong stand against the use and trafficking of cocaine by Party members apparently put him in conflict with Newton and other members of the BPP leadership.
The re-established SCC under Duren’s Coordinator status was always small in member numbers. Duren kept it this way because he felt that many prospective applicants were drawn to the Party more for its public and symbolic role rather than for the serious political agenda that the BPP promulgated. Still, the chapter thrived organizing its “survival programs.” These included martial arts training for youth and adults, a Tutorial/Liberation School Program for youth, and a Seniors Against a Fearful Environment (SAFE) escort program.
David Bryant, an African American, who was an LAPD officer, illegally infiltrated the SCC. This “domestic spying” became part of the suit against the LAPD. In any case, in August 1981, Duren submitted his resignation to the BPP Central Committee and closed the SCC for good after the settlement of the CAPA v. Gates lawsuit.
A People’s Lawyer
Duren began taking law classes at the People’s College of Law (PCL) in August 1976. He dropped out about six months into the program and devoted himself to organizing around police abuse/misconduct issues, resulting in the formation of CAPA, as mentioned above, and the reopening of the SCC/BPP in 1977. In late 1979, he was hired as a Community Outreach Worker by Linda Ferguson, Director of the Watts Legal Aid Office (located at Manchester and Broadway in South Central). When a Legal Assistant opening became available about a year later, he was moved into that position; simultaneously, he took paralegal classes at the University of Southern California's Paralegal Program and received a Certificate of Completion.Around 1981, Duren started an independent law study program with Linda Ferguson. However, his involvement with CAPA v. Gates split his focus, so he withdrew from the study program.
He returned to the formal study of law by re-enrolling in the PCL in 1985. He graduated in June 1989, received his JD degree, and took the bar for the first time in October 1989. He received confirmation that he had passed in November 1989. The California Committee of Bar Examiners delayed his admission to the state bar as the Subcommittee on Moral Fitness put his attorney application on hold. Duren wrote the State Bar
State Bar of California
The State Bar of California is California's official bar association. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law, investigating complaints of professional misconduct, and prescribing appropriate discipline...
's Governing Board and threatened to sue. He was then admitted and continued to work for legal aid, but as a staff attorney. Duren was sworn in by Judge Richard Paez
Richard Paez
Richard Anthony Paez is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.- Early life and education :Paez hails from Utah. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brigham Young University in 1969...
—at the time a superior court judge who had been a former executive director of Legal Aid—in Paez’ courtroom in 1990. Paez was later appointed as a federal judge.
Duren left Legal Aid for private practice in 1991 due to political pressure from the National Legal Services Corporation
Legal Services Corporation
The Legal Services Corporation is a private, non-profit corporation established by the United States Congress. It seeks to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by providing civil legal assistance to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it...
in the form of heightened scrutiny of his several campaigns for political office (including running for Congress in 1982 and 1986). There was at the time, and still is, a Congressional prohibition of attorneys employed with Legal Aid running for political office (the legislation that proscribes Legal Aid attorneys running for political office was sponsored by the Republican senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch
Orrin Hatch
Orrin Grant Hatch is the senior United States Senator for Utah and is a member of the Republican Party. Hatch served as the chairman or ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1993 to 2005...
). In 1993, Duren was certified to practice law in Federal Court and in 1998 certified to practice in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was appointed to the Superior Court Arbitration/Mediation Panel in 1997 and to the Federal Court's Settlement Officer Panel and Pilot Prisoner Mediation Program in 2000.