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.