J. Tony Serra, Criminal Defense Attorney; Author, The Green, Yellow, and Purple Years in the Life of a Radical Lawyer

Serra will speak and read from his book The Green, Yellow, and Purple Years in the Life of a Radical Lawyer, a chromatic, metaphoric account of Serra’s defense of groups such as the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New World Liberation Front, Nuestra Familia, Earth First!, the Hells Angels, and the Mafia. He wrote it while in federal prison for refusing to pay taxes. Serra explains in his foreword, “Forgive my romanticized and self-indulgent propositions in the forthcoming pages. Recall that such were written at Lompoc Federal Prison camp during my incarceration for U.S. tax resistance. I was not purporting to document case histories. You can find those references on the internet. Mine is not a quest for accuracy. Mine is a flight into whimsy and caprice, a retrospective twinkle in the eyes of memory: In short, confinement escapism.”