A Warrior Falls

     Fly your Alaska flags at half-mast this week. Honor Eric Johnson.

     The death of Eric Johnson, a Native-rights and environmental attorney, has left many of us wondering how we will fill the yawning canyon of his legal contribution.

     How to react to the news of his absence?

     After countless trips with Eric in Alaska’s great parks: South Denali, Wrangell-St. Elias, the Chugach, and so on, I think I may have an idea.

     To celebrate his life, Eric would have wanted us all to go out to some wild part of Alaska, exclaim: "Behold!" He would advise us against plans to remember him in a way that involves traffic somehow, telling us, in the words of Thoreau, to avoid those places of "quiet desperation," rather that we should "live deliberately" by taking a stroll beneath a canopy of shimmering birch, by pausing to contemplate the sophistication of a beaver dam at the bank of a stream, by striding with outstretched arms towards a valley with escalating beauty. When you get to your wild place, laugh with Eric's deep chuckle, hear his flow of literary language, spread your arms and cry, "BEHOLD!"

     For Eric, lower an Alaska flag at half mast.

     He was, easily, one of Alaska's most brilliant attorneys. He used jurisprudence as his activism, believing in the sanctity of the U.S. and Alaska Constitutions to defend the rights of those marginalized by politicians who seek to corrupt the doctrines of fairness and equality that is the intent of the judicial system

     Eric’s work for the cause is exceptional. Easily one of Alaska’s top lawyers, Eric successfully stopped the racist “English-only” language initiative, narrowly passed by voters in ’98, from taking effect. He was also a lead attorney in a case that demanded an end to law enforcement segregation between Native and Non-Native Alaska. The State Supreme Court, unfortunately rejected Eric and other’s claim that Alaska has a Jim Crow-style inequality when it comes to police protection. Rural Native villages have either no protection or a single Village Public Safety Officer, who is typically under-trained, under-funded and over-worked. Why the disparity?

     But those cases are just a few of dozens. Eric’s “to-do” list was as long as the shopping list of a Costco shopper from the Bush. But instead of pistachio nuts and peanut butter, Eric’s list comprised mostly legal filings.

     Eric was a warrior. I call him “Erik the Viking!” For the 15 years I knew Eric, he was an example of optimism, confidence, and courage, particularly, moral courage. Lift Eric’s sword of moral courage and carry it onward.

     Make Eric your hero. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Che Guevara—my heroes—Eric died at the end of this 39^th year of life. His commitment to civil rights and justice should inspire us all.

     As Eric would have said, in the words of Joe Hill, “Don’t mourn, dear friends. Organize.”