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American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
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The Center for Constitutional Rights
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Palestine Legal
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John Marshall Law School Student Chapter of the NLG
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University of Chicago Student Chapter of the NLG
- Chicago-Kent Student Chapter of the NLG
NLG CHI Demands: Move the CLE!
NLG Chicago, in partnership with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, The Center for Constitutional Rights, and Palestine Legal, are demanding that the Chicago Bar Association’s March CLE conference be moved out of Jerusalem. The National Lawyers Guild Chicago is deeply concerned that the Jerusalem CLE Conference discriminates against Chicago Bar members who would be denied the right to attend due to their religion, race or national origin, and lends legitimacy to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, in violation of international law.
Please sign our petition to move the CLE.
If you are a member of the Chicago Bar Association, please contact president Steven Elrod at steven.elrod@hklaw.com and tell him you want the CLE to be moved.
Read the full list of signatories to our letter.
Read our full letter to the Chicago Bar Association here. NLG Letter to Chicago Bar Association.2.20.2019_Final
DisOrientation 2018
(Dis)orientation is an annual city-wide student retreat hosted by the National Lawyers Guild of Chicago. This September, (Dis)orientation was held at The John Marshall Law School and included panels on surviving law school, finding internships and volunteer opportunities with progressive organizations, working as a people’s lawyer, and remaining accountable to communities.
Panelists included attorneys, activists, and organizers from Chicago Community Bond Fund, Raise the Floor Alliance, Uptown People’s Law Center, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, First Defense Legal Aid, Assata’s Daughters, and more. The daylong event began with a keynote address from Jan Susler of People’s Law Office and ended with a Legal Observer training from L.O. Coordinators Joseph Dicola and Michael Podgurski. Over 50 students, representing every Chicago law school and Northern Illinois University, attended.
NLG Chi 2018 4th Quarter Newsletter
Thank You to our 2018 Annual Celebration Sponsors
A big THANK YOU to everyone who is sponsoring our 2018 Annual Celebration. You make our work possible.
Sponsors
Peter Bustamante and Claudia Sainsot
Jim Fennerty
Law Offices of David S. Lipschultz
Donna Makowski
Mark and Jesse Stern
Activist Level Sponsors
Martha Biondi and James Thindwa
Kenneth N. Flaxman P. C.
Samantha Liskow and Matthew Robison
Mobilizer Level Sponsors
Sara Garber
Potter Bolaños
Uptown People’s Law Center
Loevy and Loevy
Revolutionary Level Sponsors
People’s Law Office
Our Annual Celebration is just a few days away on Friday, November 16th. Buy tickets now at https://nlg2018.brownpapertickets.com
Learn more about our 2018 Annual Celebration Honorees
Our 2018 Annual Celebration is coming up on November 16th. This year we are honoring Melinda Power with our Kinoy Award and #NoCopAcademy with our NextGen Award. Learn more about our honorees below. And of course, buy tickets today at https://nlg2018.brownpapertickets.com/
Melinda Power
Melinda Power has worked for 37 years at West Town Law Office, a community-based law office in the heart of the Puerto Rican community in Chicago. The office specializes in criminal defense, civil rights and domestic relations. She is proud to represent her clients, many of whom have been falsely arrested and physically abused by the police.
Melinda works closely with the Puerto Rican community. Additionally, she has represented people arrested due to their political convictions. In the 1980s, Melinda Power represented Alejandrina Torres, convicted of seditious conspiracy for her commitment to fight for Independence for Puerto Rico.
Ms. Power also represented protesters who opposed U. S. intervention in Central America in the 1980s. She, along with a team of attorneys, successfully won two mass criminal trials using the necessity defense, in which the defendants presented evidence that their actions in trespassing on U.S. military bases were necessary to prevent the greater harm of U.S. war in Central America.
In the 1990s, Attorney Melinda Power successfully represented protesters arrested protesting the first Gulf War in 1991; women who opposed pornography; and supporters of locked-out Staley workers in Decatur, Illinois. More recently, Attorney Power, with a team of lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild, fought and won a nine year class action lawsuit on behalf of the 850 people wrongly detained and arrested by the Chicago police on March 20, 2003.
Ms. Power represented one of the anti-NATO protesters arrested in May 2012 who was charged with terrorism. She arranged for her client, Mr. Senakiewicz, to go to “boot camp”, which he successfully completed.
More recently, Attorney Melinda Power successfully represented protesters arrested at Black Lives Matter protests. Currently, she is part of a legal team representing protesters arrested at Standing Rock, North Dakota, while they peacefully voiced their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Additionally, she is part of a team of lawyers who has a pending civil suit against law enforcement in North Dakota who used excessive force against peaceful protesters.
Melinda has been a proud member of the National Lawyers Guild since her first day of law school in 1977. Along with Janine Hoft, Ms. Power has co-chaired the local National Police Accountability Project (NPAP) for 11 years. Due to their leadership our local NPAP has been successful in providing important CLE’s and in creating a very supportive network for lawyers, law students and legal workers, who are involved in police misconduct litigation, in which ideas about often difficult legal and factual issues can be discussed.
#NoCopAcademy
The #NoCopAcademy campaign is a Black youth led effort to prevent the construction of a $95 million dollar new cop academy in West Garfield park. We demand that that $95 million be redirected into Chicago’s most marginalized communities instead. Real community safety comes from fully-funded schools and mental health centers, after-school and job- training programs, and social and economic justice. We want investment in our communities, not expanded resources for policing.
Teens from Assata’s Daughters, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Simeon Young Activists, Arab American Action Network, with support from over 70 grassroots organizations have given their time, patience, passion and commitment to this campaign. Black youth have been leading workshops, canvassing, phone banking, disrupting city hall, sit-ins, disrupting Black Caucus fundraiser events, shedding light on and shutting down a plan that Rahm wanted to pass quietly.
NLG Chicago Annual Event 2018 – November 16!
Come support National Lawyers Guild Chicago! Join community activists, organizers, legal workers, law students, and lawyers at our annual celebration as we honor #NoCopAcademy with our Next Gen Award and Melinda Power with the Kinoy Award. Enjoy delicious vegan appetizers catered by Hel’s Kitchen, and entertainment provided by the amazing Free Write Sound & Vision! All of it to benefit National Lawyers Guild Chicago’s work supporting liberation movements.
This year’s event will take place on Friday, November 16th, 6:00pm – 9:00pm at Second Unitarian Church, 656 W. Barry. The Next Generation Award was established to honor the essential contribution of the next generation of Chicago activists, peoples lawyers, legal workers, and law students who have engaged in inspiring and relevant organizing or legal work promoting equality and social justice, to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests. The Arthur Kinoy Peoples Law Award is in honor of Arthur Kinoy, a celebrated and beloved member of the National Lawyers Guild who dedicated himself to using law in service of the People and encouraged generations of others to do the same. Arthur Kinoy was a fierce civil rights lawyer and an active Guild member for most of his adult life. |
Tickets available at https://nlg2018.brownpapertickets.com.
NLG Chi hosts CLE on Direct Actions and Mass Mobilizations
On August 23, NLG Chicago hosted a workshop that focused on the unique situations that arise when representing organizers and activists arrested at mass mobilizations or direct actions, with an emphasis on supporting LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS movements. The presenters were Janine Hoft, attorney at People’s Law Office, who has decades of experience providing legal support to activists and has represented over 1,000 people arrested at protests, and Jeanne Kracher, Executive Director of Crossroads Fund and an organizer with extensive social justice experience and founding member of ACT-UP/Chicago. The event was moderated by Emmanuel Garcia, community organizer and founder of Vives Q, a public program by and for the Latinx LGBTQ community in Chicago.
The discussion drew upon Janine and Jeanne’s shared history of participation in and support of social movements from the 1980s to the present, from ACT-UP and International solidarity actions to protests against police brutality and the War in Iraq to movements for immigrant rights and economic justice.
They addressed how lawyers can empower their activist clients within a disempowering legal system and the role of a lawyer in advising and guiding clients while giving them agency to decide their own legal and political goals. The presenters also discussed the tension of zealously advocating for an individual client while also considering the collective goals of other defendants and a larger movement.
Jeanne Kracher reminded us, “The law is incomprehensible to anyone other than lawyers.”
This was the second event in an ongoing series of workshops provided by the Mass Defense Committee of NLG Chicago.
NLG Chicago Is Hiring A Chapter Administrator
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) was formed in 1937 as the country’s first integrated national bar association. The NLG is dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system. We seek to unite the lawyers, law students, legal workers and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people, to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.
The Chicago Guild is hiring a part-time chapter administrator and organizer. We are looking for a self-starter who will bring a forward-looking perspective and renewed energy into the Guild office. Organizing skills and a commitment to social justice are required. The person who fills this position will be tasked with building the Chicago Guild and facilitating our continued growth. Fundraising experience preferred.
The chapter administrator position includes the following roles (additional tasks may be assigned):
- Performing office administrative duties, including responding to phone calls, email, and receiving postal mail in the Guild Office
- Coordinating and facilitating chapter wide events, including NLG Chicago’s annual fall fundraising event and spring May Day Party
- Growing chapter membership and fundraising through organized initiatives & outreach
- Building relationships between the Chicago Guild and like-minded or partnered organizations, plugging the Guild into the progressive community in Chicago
- Maintaining NLG Chicago’s online presence by updating our website, Facebook, and Twitter pages
- Maintaining listservs and sending updates to chapter membership through MailChimp
- Meeting with the NLG Treasurer to discuss budgetary matters
- Directing and managing office volunteers
The position will begin as soon as possible and require 10 hours per week, with regular office hours and some flexibility depending on the Chapter activities each month. The compensation is $20/hour.
NLG Chicago is an equal opportunity employer and minorities are encouraged to apply. To apply, please email a resume, cover letter (in the body of the email), and three references, to chicago[at]nlg[dot]org, with the subject line “NLG Chicago Administrator Application.” Applications will be accepted until 11:00pm on August 19, 2018. Interviews will be held in late August and early September. No phone calls please.
NLG Chicago Attorneys & LOs Give Legal Support to Protestors of Harith “Snoop” Augustus Shooting
On July 14, Chicago Police shot and killed Harith Augustus, a barber and father to a 5-year-old girl. The South Shore community immediately gathered to demand answers. NLG Chicago volunteers responded to requests for support by sending Legal Observers to the scene to document police violence against demonstrators and by sending lawyers to track and visit people in CPD custody.
CPD reported that four people were arrested in total, but without names, we are unable to confirm those numbers or the whereabouts of everyone. At least two people who were briefly taken into custody were released without charges. NLG Chicago collaborated with First Defense Legal Aid and the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender to identify and support the one other person who remained in CPD custody.
On July 16 at 1 pm, Melvin Johnson, the person who was violently arrested by Chicago Police on the night of July 14, received an I-Bond at 1pm today. Johnson was arrested. This means he will be released without having to pay money.
On July 18, civil rights activist William Calloway sued the Chicago Police to compel the public release of all unedited videos of the July 14th police shooting. Mr. Calloway is also represented in his suit by Matt Topic and Joshua Burday of Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law.
Please follow Black Lives Matter Chicago and BYP 100 for additional updates on the demand for justice for Harith Augustus. #BlackLivesMatter
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