Follow the author’s journey from a conventional life of privilege and the values thereof, to the real privilege of helping people in need. Two significant decisions shaped his course. The first was to stop devoting a fourth of his precious Harvard education to becoming an officer when the army inevitably took him, and instead to spend nearly two years as a private with zero privilege—a decision that broadened him in ways he hadn’t expected. Later came the decision in his early forties to leave the conventional practice of civil litigation and devote the rest of his career to the criminal side.

Two milestones followed. The first came when as a New York State prosecutor, he blew the whistle on the State’s sham effort to hold accountable the police who perpetrated the 1971 Attica prison massacre. He paid a price, and unexpected rewards came his way.

The second began when he met his wife Nancy, who was a Quaker, and he became one himself. Together they joined the Sanctuary Movement and went on to join the quest for truth, justice, and peace, and against mass torture and homicide, in Central America and beyond.