The Summons

The Summons: Advocacy Insights for Systemic and Transformative Change "summons" readers to duty as change agents. Specifically, this book seeks to arm readers with insights and skills for achieving justice, change, and transition through nonviolent and constructive means. It is written to fill a void in law school instruction, as an aid to those seeking to free a loved one from the grips of a legal system that wrongfully holds them, and for those seeking to transition from a failed legal system to one that does not harm. This includes Louisiana's legal system, as well as any other system that harms. The Summons begins by explaining the competencies that change agents must display. After those prerequisites are introduced, specific advocacy strategies and suggestions are provided. The lessons imparted in this book are intended for lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

Angela A. Allen-Bell is an American activist scholar and an internationally recognized expert on the interplay between race and justice who specializes in a particular brand of lawyering that places restorative and transitional justice at the center of her efforts to dismantle systems that harm and oppress. It was her research that catapulted the movement that successfully ended the use of non unanimous juries in Louisiana in 2018. Her advocacy efforts aided in the release of Soledad Brother John Clutchette, Vincent Simmons, and Angola 3 members Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, men with the distinction of having been housed in solitary confinement longer than anyone in the United States. Her ultimate goal is to engineer a criminal justice transformation whereby crime and conflict are situated in proper context-as harm to people as opposed to violations of law.