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When eco-activist Tre Arrow famously climbed to a ledge on the U.S. Forest Service building in downtown Portland in 2000, he was protesting logging in the Mount Hood National Forest.
When Sara Graham, one of Portland's Seriously Pissed-Off Grannies, threw herself in front of a tank during the 2007 Grand Floral Parade of the Portland Rose Festival, she was protesting U.S. militarism.
And when Matt Rossell, a noted animal rights activist, planted himself in front of Scamps pet store in the Lloyd Center Mall in 2009, he was protesting puppy mills.
A Multnomah County circuit judge ordered Arrow off the ledge. Portland police arrested Graham. And mall cops tackled and handcuffed Rossell.
And at their side in court was Stu Sugarman, a celebrated defense lawyer who represented everyone in Portland from pimps to protesters with equal vigor, say activists and colleagues. Sugarman died Monday from complications of diabetes. He was 52.
"So many people in the activism community had him to thank for their legal representation," says Rossell. "He was an activist in his own right, and he genuinely believed in the causes he was fighting."
Sugarman represented high-profile protesters such as Arrow, but also Iraq War protesters and Occupy Portland participants.
"Stu was always there," wrote friend and activist Cat Jones in an eulogy posted online Wednesday. "He was a comrade in arms. He defended the famous, the infamous, and the unknown with equal resolve. If you were a forest activist, an animal rights activist, a media activist…any underdog fighting the good fight, you didn't need to worry if you couldn't afford a lawyer; Stu would stand up for you pro bono."
His work had implications far beyond individual cases. In 2004, with Sugarman helping to coordinate legal arguments, the Oregon Supreme Court struck down a state law that allowed police to break up protests that inconvenienced or annoyed the public.
"All Oregonians are better off for the work that he did," says lawyer Ryan Scott, who called Sugarman "the very definition of a happy warrior."
Sugarman, who stood 6-foot-6, also defended indigent clients in criminal cases and pursued a yearslong case that sought to block chemical weapons incineration in Umatilla, Ore.
"He'd be in court one day on a robbery case, and on the next day he'd be involved in really in-depth, dry ammunition litigation," says Multnomah County Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht. "He practiced law with his heart and his mind."
A memorial is planned for Thursday, March 31, at Laurelhurst Park from 6 pm to dark at Picnic Area E, near Southeast Ankeny Street and the pond.
"Stu," says Graham, one of the Seriously Pissed-Off Grannies, "was absolutely wonderful."
Willamette Week