The Tables Have Turned: A Street Guide to Guerrilla Lawfare [Paperback]

kwami k. kwami's "THE TABLES HAVE TURNED: A Street Guide to Guerrilla Lawfare." has already been nominated for the 2001 Independent Publishers' Book Award in the area of politics and he has been asked to present it at the celebration of Small Press Month 2001 at New York University Law School. He will also present it at the 2001 BookExpo America convention in Chicago in June. Finally, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association has requested a copy to review. At Kwani's request, subscribers to the "Learning Electronically About Freedom" mailing service will be treated to nine independent reviews of his tour de force all from within "the Freedomlaw family."

In it, he tells you why it is so very important for everyone to "LEARN LAW" (two of the eight keywords atop every page at Freedomlaw.com). As kwami observes, "I have visted your website at minimum twice a month (over the last 4-5 years) to study and learn the things that I needed to know to successfully write "THE TABLES HAVE TURNED: A Street Guide to Guerrilla Lawfare." I matter-of-factly consider myself an alumnus of the freedomlaw.com law school."

You can visit your local college, university, of half-priced used bookstore and get a copy of the Prentice-Hall publication "Paralegal Practice and Procedure - A Practical Guide for the Legal Assistant" and thereby learn the ways of officially sanctioned how-to instruction. You can also visit the web and buy a copy of "The Underground Lawyer" by Michael Louis Minns, and there learn that Houston attorney Minns first wrote a manual to train one assistant, then saw his practice grow, so he re-wrote the book to train a staff of assistants, and, finally, he saw a need to address the "widespread disenchantment and confusion concerning the complexity of the law, politics, and the truth about the legal profession, of which few non-lawyers are knowledgeable."

Both of these books are worth the reading; both instruct the reader in the "how" of legal research. Minns' book even encourages people to read the Constitution and urges more people to question Government authority, publicly redress Government for change; and "give the non-lawyers a tour of the legal sewers, so they will not be so helpless."

kwami's "Street Guide" addresses the "WHY" of legal research and, in doing so, harnesses the power of the press with the power of the Internet to help those "helpless" as never before. As noted above, kwami's research material and sources can be found with ease by using the site search engine atop every page of Freedomlaw.com. In fact, this is the book MY mother always wanted me to write (but my 78 year old mom refuses to look at the Internet-book I have written online, so I am heartened by kwami's literary achievement since it "proves the concept" of my educational outreach activism which has been the exclusive focus of the last seven years of my life).

BE WARNED, however, that this is NOT your garden variety assemblage of quotations from Founding Fathers about the best defense against tyranny. This book expresses outrage at the militarization of our nations' "police powers" and takes swipes at the law enforcement and prison industry special interests in the same manner that "Hemp re-legalization Godfather" Jack Herer rails about the brutal fraud of the War on Citizens in the name of prohibition of drugs.

kwami's guide is a hands-on practice manual ("hands-on" like Rodney King and Amadou Diallo) for the frustrated and infuriated city-dwellers who overwhelming acquiesce in those money-laundering scams known as Government entitlement programs at the cost of their individual responsibility and, thereby, their personal freedom. THIS BOOK IS NOT COMFORTABLE READING! The Libertarians like to remind you that, "There's no such thing as a free lunch" to which kwami adds the refrain of the Last Poets (rappers of the civil rights era in the heat of the Black Power Movement whose verse was featured in the 1970 soundtrack recording from the milestone Mick Jagger film, "Performance.") "WAKE UP NIGGERS, OR YOU'RE ALL THROUGH!"

kwami, a.k.a. PHaTLiP a.k.a. the Chameleon catalogs the wake up calls in his young life, together with his informed, articulate responses, decrying the plight of dumbed-down "masses" in his contemporary "hip-hop" speech that conjures up an urgent stylistic referent to the essays of Albert Jay Nock. To this list of aliases, I would only add , kwami is CALEB (Citizen Against Law Enforcement Brutality).

Far from being a jailhouse lawyer or even one who has been in the stir, kwami didn't wait until it was his ox was being gored, he wrote this book to serve as a condom for Generation-X, a prophylactic literary device produced precisely because HE IS NOT A VICTIM!

The guerrilla lawfare rules are very simple: 1. KNOW THE DEFINITIONS 2. APPLY THE DEFINITIONS AS THEY RELATE TO YOU 3. QUESTION ALL AUTHORITY 4. ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS WITH QUESTIONS

The beauty of this manifesto is that the author has synthesized all of the "patriot" arguments (along with some of their mindless prattle), which was composed and intended for consumption by "free white men" or "non- 14th Amendment citizens," with the current police-state disaster that masquerades as "law and order."

This book is 225 pages of tough love from an erudite urbanite!

Activists always pay a price for being right and taking the high road, only to be stopped "Driving While Broke" or some other inane pretext. Everyone should read this book NOW! After reading it, you'll what to do, on your own, mindful of the late Abbie Hoffman's "FIRST RULE OF ACTIVISM" which is, "STAY OUT OF JAIL!" ...

I recommend it to every Black Man, regardless of age, economic level, religion, education status or location in the world. Police brutality is not limited to one sub-division or location of Black Men and this book should not be either.

Tyree Amala