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Attorney Paves Mean Streets with Advice
Elizabeth native and author is committed to keeping hip-hop kids out of justice system

By JASON JETT STAR-LEDGER STAFF

Elizabeth attorney Muhammad Bashir, a 51-year-old civil liberties advocate, meets and greets as if he is at home on the streets of Elizabeth.

"Hey, it's out," Bashir shouted early this week to an acquaintance crossing the street in front of the Union County Administration Building. "The book, it's out. In my office."

After all, he is a hometown kid who made good, overcoming hardships and expectations of doom.

Bashir once roamed the streets around the Migliore Manor public housing complex, where he lived until escaping that hardknock neighborhood for Howard University in Washington, D.C. Now he makes a living at the county court complex.

The attorney lives with his wife, Aliyah, and their five children in the D.C. suburb of Bowie, Md., but Elizabeth's streets are where life and work merge.

In a half-hour spent outside at the court complex Tuesday, he gave shout-outs to a half-dozen people and held discussions with four others. Those streets around the courthouse are where Bashir continues or renews acquaintances with residents of his former neighborhood, the drug-plagued, economically depressed Elizabethport.

Only now he is the attorney with an office on Westminister Avenue representing the old friends, or their children. Often he is the last hope they have of avoiding prison.

Bashir has written a book, "Raw Law: A Hip-Hop Guide to Criminal Justice," about what he has seen both on the streets and in the courtrooms. The tome (two more books are planned in the series) is a harsh admonishment to the youths who embrace that culture and often find themselves along its criminal edge.

Raw at times and intentionally preachy at others, Bashir said he adopted the vernacular of youths to whom he hopes to provide the understanding to avoid the criminal justice system at all costs.

Or, to equip them with basic legal skills to know what to do if they are caught up in it.

"The voice that I keep reading and hearing about that is supposed to be the most powerful since the civil rights/anti-war movement of the '60s is hip-hop," he wrote. "But your generation is caught up in its image. 'Hard.' 'Thug Lovin'.' 'Jiggas.'

"And all it is, is image," he added. "All form, no substance, you stand for nothing." Bashir writes in a chapter titled "Ride or Die," "I wouldn't give 50 Cent fifty cents for the images this generation is riding to fortune and fame.

"Your images are selling a public perception that is manifesting itself in young boys who value nothing but the dollar (the bling) or their own personal pain or passion. Society takes these images, sees him in the courtroom, and votes guilty to perception before they ever hear a fact in his case."

Bashir blames society, particularly families, for conferring responsibility for the transmission of social values to the media, a development that he writes has led to "idol worship."

"The media and societal violence are joined at the hip, and the result is the devaluation of life in the real world," he wrote.

Born to an orthodox Muslim family, and the older brother of Hassen Abdellah, a prominent attorney and former assistant prosecutor in the county, Bashir said he's committed to a life-long fight to defend the average person on the city's mean streets.

His escape from those streets was part of the dream of his parents, who wanted him to become a lawyer. A fifth-grade teacher, Lester Randolph, turned him from a teacher's terror into a teacher's pet and successful student.

At age 16, Bashir said he and his best friends put aside rivalries with other groups of youths and formed Foxhunters Inc., a social services organization established to raise college scholarships for themselves and which still assists college-bound city youths.

In 17 years of the practice of law, Bashir's most high-profile case was as co-counsel for a defendant in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Though that case was lost, he said he learned a lot by working with and against top attorneys. It taught him that "being a great lawyer requires working 24/7." In the book, Bashir shares real-life dramas, such as when a defendant for whom he worked "night and day" to get off a homicide charge admitted a week after acquittal he actually did it. There's also the instance when he rescued a 13-year-old girl from a group of children who were pummeling her, only to see a police officer arrive and point his gun at him.

Not much has changed since he left South Park and Sixth streets in 1975, Bashir writes, adding perhaps neither has he.

NOTES: This story also appears in the MIDDLESEX edition.

PHOTO CAPTION: 1. Attorney Muhammad Bashir in his Elizabeth law office. Bashir has authored a book, "Raw Law: A Hip- Hop Guide to Criminal Justice," about his experiences on the streets