Photo Credit: Anarchist Agency https://anarchistagency.com/rest-in-power-murphy-hoopes-1987-2025-obit/

A Life Dedicated to Liberation

James Murphy Hoopes dedicated his life towards wielding his experiences and skills as tools for liberation. A former law clerk, activist, organizer, and filmmaker who passed away on January 18, 2025, Murphy understood what the system obscures: that law can be used to either further oppression or as a weapon to fight against it.

From serving meals with Food Not Bombs to providing free legal service to immigrants facing a deliberately hostile system, from public defender internships to co-counseling his first jury trial defending a journalist against fascist state prosecution, Murphy always chose a side. He stood with those who were criminalized for combatting and documenting state violence. He stood for a more equitable future.

Murphy’s fluency in Spanish and his documentary work on Chilean social movements weren’t credentials, they were commitments. He understood that the fight for liberation connects across borders, that state repression uses the same playbook worldwide, and that solidarity means more than sympathy.

Murphy knew what we know: the legal system isn’t designed for justice. It’s designed to keep power in the hands of a few, and keep the rest of us fighting against each other for the scraps. But within its contradictions lie opportunities . . . to defend those targeted by state repression, to expose its racist neocapitalist projects, and to create space for movements to organize and resist.

Fighting Back Through Legal Work

CLDC is proud to officially announce the James Murphy Hoopes Clerkship Fund – a special campaign that will offer paid opportunities to train the next generation of movement lawyers like Murphy, who understand that defending civil liberties means confronting power, not pleading with it.

Contributions to this campaign will:

• Fund annual summer clerkships that provide courtroom combat training for law students ready to defend protesters, journalists, and the most at-risk communities
• Build a pipeline of movement lawyers who understand the stakes – because they’ve lived them like Murphy did
• Honor Murphy’s legacy by equipping future movement lawyers with the skills to fight state repression with their bar license

Investment in Resistance

Every dollar funds legal resistance:

• $100-999: Arms clerks with research tools to dismantle oppression
• $1,000-2,499: Supports a month of frontline legal training
• $2,500-4,999: Funds half a summer learning how to defend civil liberties
• $5,000-9,999: Sponsors a full summer clerkship position
• $10,000+: Builds toward a full attorney fellowship – mentoring a new generation of movement lawyers

Build the Defenders We Need

Murphy understood what movements know: we have to defend our communities and our rights together, in the streets and in the courts.

The James Murphy Hoopes Clerkship Fund doesn’t produce lawyers who serve power. It trains advocates who challenge it, and who understand that defending constitutional rights means defending the people criminalized for exercising them; that protecting free speech means protecting those the state tries to silence; and that civil liberties work means standing between communities and state violence.

Murphy lived his politics. Help the next round of movement lawyers do the same.