Public defense, as it is often practiced, can at times function as an extension of the very system it is meant to counter. When constrained by resources, overwhelmed by caseloads, and operating within narrow procedural expectations, it can be pulled toward managing outcomes rather than fully defending the people it represents.

Another path is possible.

In San Francisco, under the leadership of Manohar Raju, I have seen a different orientation take shape. This is a form of public defense that fiercely defends community members, advocates for community power, and directly confronts forms of state-sponsored violence. These strategies are rooted in a vision where collective humanity is cherished, and where love, excellence, compassion, and courage are actively held.

I invite you to spend time with this work directly by reading the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office website.

This shift runs deeper than tone. It reaches into what public defense understands itself to be responsible for. It requires holding the line on what adequate defense demands, even under pressure. It requires maintaining the integrity of representation in the face of demands for efficiency. And it requires understanding the work as legal, relational, and structural at once. Right now, this is playing out in real time.

Mano is navigating an active confrontation with the courts around caseloads and the constitutional limits of representation. He has taken a position that places a boundary around what his office can carry without compromising the people it serves. This moment marks a clear articulation of responsibility within a system that consistently exceeds its own limits.

I also want to name my admiration and respect for the people who carry this work every day. The attorneys, advocates, and staff within the Public Defender’s office are operating under immense pressure with a level of clarity and dedication that is both rare and consequential. I remain deeply inspired by their commitment to the people they serve and by the steadiness with which they continue to orient toward the common good.

At the same time, a deeper structural imbalance continues to shape the terrain. District Attorney offices hold disproportionate authority in defining harm, accountability, and public safety. They determine charging decisions and shape the narrative of what is happening and why. Public Defender offices operate with significantly fewer resources and less institutional authority, while remaining in continuous relationship with those most impacted.

This concentration of power defines accountability within prosecutorial frameworks and constrains the development of defense-centered and community-based pathways. The conditions shaping this moment are also intensifying.

Across the country, communities are experiencing expanded immigration enforcement and the growth of detention systems that generate fear and reduce access to public institutions. At the same time, federal agents are operating in increasingly militarized ways, often indistinguishable from local law enforcement, eroding trust and creating confusion about who is responsible for public safety. In several cities, National Guard deployments and federal interventions in urban centers have further blurred the line between civil governance and military presence.

These dynamics are being felt directly in communities, especially in the seams where enforcement, instability, and displacement converge. In this context, public defense becomes even more central.

The restorative justice field has not been able to hold in this terrain. In the Bay Area, a significant portion of restorative justice infrastructure developed in alignment with District Attorney offices. With the recalls of District Attorneys, including in San Francisco and Oakland, many of these efforts lost their institutional anchor and resourcing. Programs slowed or stopped, and coordination across organizations weakened. What had been built through alignment with prosecutorial leadership proved vulnerable to political turnover.

This moment has made visible the limits of anchoring accountability work in offices that do not remain in continuous relationship with people over time. As a result, the part of the system that does remain in continuous relationship with people—public defense—has lacked the reinforcement required to carry accountability across time. This has left a gap that is now increasingly visible.

In response, we are working in partnership with the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office to build an accountability layer within public defense itself. This is a structured process designed to hold consequence in relationship over time—anchored in defense, grounded in community, and protected from the pressures that fragment accountability.

Across the last decades, many of us have worked within restorative justice, transformative justice, and healing justice. These efforts have expanded our capacity to respond to harm, to understand its roots, and to care for its impacts. At the same time, they have struggled to consistently hold consequence across time, especially under conditions of structural pressure and rupture.

Another lineage has been developing alongside this work—one that begins in love politics, takes form through Poetic Futurism, and extends into poetic jurisprudence. This lineage emerges from the conditions of rupture that shape our hemisphere, where continuity, responsibility, and relationship must be actively carried.

Poetic justice emerges from this lineage. It brings forward a practice that holds consequence in relationship across time with discipline and continuity. Through poetic jurisprudence, it takes shape as a governance practice that remains intact under pressure, where responsibility is carried, and where memory, consequence, and transformation remain connected.

The work of building community, and the capacity required for our communities to remain capable of practicing democracy, is inseparable from our constitutional commitments to public defense and due process. These are living structures that determine whether people can participate, be heard, and remain in relationship to the systems that shape their lives.

Justice lives in the capacity to hold consequence in relationship over time. Through that capacity, harm is named and carried, responsibility is taken and sustained, and people move through processes that remain connected to their lives and communities.

Public defense can be a site of poetic justice, and it is so in San Francisco.

Poetic justice lives inside governance. It lives in the capacity to hold consequence coherently, to remain in relationship through difficulty, and to carry responsibility across time. Governance is the disciplined work of holding consequence in ways that sustain relationship and responsibility.

What we are building is a governance function within public defense. It takes shape as a poetic practice—one that holds consequence in relationship over time, where memory, responsibility, and transformation remain intact. We need our whole community's support to strengthen the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office programs and to build this new function. The work in San Francisco will influence public defense everywhere.

As conditions intensify, the question centers on where continuity and accountability can be held in ways that endure.

These are the strategies required in public defense now and into the future.