NLG CHICAGO

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Meet Our 2018 Board Members

Top row from left: Adi Lerner, Nickolas Kaplan (outgoing), Daniel Edelstein, Miranda Huber, Shubra Ohri, Sandra Tsung, Samoane Williams
Bottom row from left: Anna Maitland, Kris Clutter, Alexis Rangel

 

No election was held in November 2017 because it was uncontested. Our new board members are Adi Lerner and Daniel Edelstein. Here are the bios of the current board members so you can get to know them better!

 

Adi Lerner
A strong believer in the power of communities, Adi has spent her career working in grassroots organizations, as an organizer, educator and advocate. She is honored to serve on the NLG board and looks forward to support movement building and developing radical spaces for the Chicago organizing community. Adi is a human rights attorney from Israel, currently serving as the Program Director at the Westside Justice Center. In Israel, Adi worked on a range of human rights issues, including state accountability for torture, prisoners’ rights, punitive house demolitions and humanitarian law. During law school, Adi worked as the head of the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants’ Crisis Intervention Center, working with communities and volunteers to provide direct services and promote the rights of undocumented refugees and migrants in Israel.

Alexis Rangel
Alexis J. Rangel is a recent graduate of Loyola University Chicago where they obtained a Master of Public Policy and a Juris Doctor with certificates in Public Interest Law and Child & Family Law. During law school, Alexis served as an Executive Board Member for the Loyola NLG Chapter, President of the LGBT student group OUTLaw, a Student Board Member for LAGBAC, and Director of Policy Initiatives for the National Latino/a Law Student Association. As a community organizer and policy professional, they are most passionate about helping radical progressive movements achieve substantive legislative change. To that end, Alexis has served in legislative offices at the city, county, state, and federal levels, and is currently working on political campaigns to elect progressive legislators and judges.

Anna Maitland
Anna Maitland’s interest is in working with and alongside marginalized and underserved communities to support their vision and leadership in the struggle to create progressive and sustainable change. She sees the NLG as a venue towards building up and supporting this approach to advocacy while developing creative and collaborative spaces for accountability, reflection, and radical change in movement-based lawyering. Anna currently serves as a staff attorney with the Immigrants and Workers Rights working group at LAF. She previously worked on health as a human right with the Northwestern Human Rights Law Clinic and prior to coming to Chicago, she co-founded a social and economic rights non-profit in Nigeria that partners with communities impacted by poverty to hold government and private actors accountable. She is honored to serve on the board and looks forward to continuing to work with the incredible people that make up the NLG.

Daniel Edelstein
Throughout my short time in the law, NLG has been a motivating and supportive community. As a student chapter president and learning from NLG lawyers, I’ve come to understand how lawyers can be leading voices for justice. My interest in joining the board is based in a deep appreciation for NLG’s commitment to combating injustice in all of its forms.  As a board member, I hope to build NLG’s position in Chicago as a leader in legal advocacy and social justice activism. I would like to ensure that current goals and strategic plans are achieved. I hope to identify new funding streams and develop new partnerships to ensure that NLG’s work is driven by the current needs of the Chicago community. Finally, my work is focused on food law and policy, so I hope to identify ways for NLG to be part of food justice movements. I’m part of the Advocacy Working Group of Advocates for Urban Agriculture, a board member of First10 Public Interest Network, Young Professionals Board, a Legal Assistance Foundation
and Chicago Bar Association member.

Joe Moses
My name is Joe Moses and I have been been active in the Guild, on and off, since resurrecting my law school chapter at John Marshall Law School in the early 90’s. Several years, ago, I re-joined the guild and see it as a way of combining my civic and professional talents, needs and goals. The law firm that I started with my partner out of law school is in its 25th year. We primarily represent victims of motorcycle or bicycle collisions. This is my second year serving on the Chicago NLG Board. I have been active in the Dinner Planning Committee that has provided most of the operating expenses for the Chicago chapter. I aided in hosting the national NLG conference here in Chicago a couple of years ago.  I am a member of the American Association for Justice and NLG.    I am a member of the Bar of Texas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Oregon, Georgia and Illinois. Additionally, I have worked in Wisconsin throughout the Obama administration as a poll watcher and vote protector. While a resident of Illinois the entire time, I traveled on election days to protect the process in the swing state of Wisconsin.

Kris Clutter
Kris Clutter is a legal worker at the People’s Law Office (PLO). The PLO has been successfully fighting for the civil rights of victims of police brutality, wrongful convictions, false arrest and other government abuses for over 40 years. Kris has worked at the PLO since 2012. He was introduced to the National Lawyers Guild through the PLO and has been actively going to the fabulous NLG happy hours for many years. Kris has been on the NLG Chicago board since November of 2016. Before joining the board, Kris served on the board of the now defunct police watchdog organization Citizen’s Alert and helped organize and start the Chicago chapter of Black and Pink, an open family of LGBTQ prisoners and “free world” allies who support each other. He hopes to help build and strengthen the Chicago chapter while also creating a fun social environment for progressive lawyers, legal workers, and law students.

Lillian McCartin
Lillian M. McCartin is a criminal defense attorney in solo practice in Chicago.  She obtained her J.D. from Chicago-Kent School of Law, with a Certificate in Public Interest Law.  In her practice, she represents individuals from all walks of life who have been charged criminally for misdemeanors and felonies.  Her clients have included activists and radicals who have committed civil disobedience or otherwise faced criminal charges resulting from their political actions and associations.  She has been active in the National Lawyers Guild as former president of the Chicago-Kent Chapter, co-coordinator of the Next Gen Committee of the Chicago Chapter, as a coordinator of criminal representation for the Chicago Mass Defense Committee, and she has served on the Chicago Board since 2015. She hopes to strengthen the local NLG chapter so it becomes a dependable resource for radical and progressive lawyers, legal workers and law students.

Miranda Huber
Miranda Huber serves on the NLG board as the Student Representative. Her role allows her to connect with Chicago-area law students interested in movement lawyering and to ensure they know about all the opportunities available to them through the Guild. She is also on the board of the NLG chapter at Chicago-Kent, where she is in her 2L year and focuses her studies on labor and employment law. In addition, Miranda is on the Labor and Employment Committee of the Chicago NLG. Miranda is interested in how the labor movement can listen to, uplift, and center workers’ voices. In her free time, Miranda enjoys NPR, knitting, and hanging out with whatever cats may be nearby. She hopes to help the Guild take on new projects, welcome new folks into its bond, and build its capacity to create a more inclusive world.

Samoane Williams
Samoane Williams is the Policy Director at Raise the Floor Alliance where she advocates for low wage workers city and statewide. She started her career at First Defense Legal Aid where she helped the organization lead the Chicago police accountability movement by providing legal representation to clients and advocating for policy changes to preserve custodial suspects’ rights. She also organized volunteer attorneys and law students to join the movement. As a passionate advocate for social justice, Samoane understands her work in social justice to be a lifestyle rather than a job. She spends her free time volunteering with the Chicago Community Bond Fund. Samoane has been a member of the National Lawyers Guild since 2014 and joined the board in 2016. She is also a member of the Chicago The United People of Color Caucus (TUPOCC) subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild.

Sandra Tsung
My name is Sandra Tsung and I have been a Guild member since 2008 and a member of the Chicago board since 2012. Since 2015, I have served as the chapter’s Treasurer and as our Mentorship Program Administrator, which is a program we run in partnership with the IL Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism. I graduated from DePaul University College of Law in 2010 and initially practiced as a solo attorney, but my work now is in attorney training and development. Even before I became a member of the Chicago board, I was involved in many of the chapter’s projects and programs. Since 2010, I have served as co-chair of our CLE Committee and as a member of the Dinner/Annual Fundraising Committee. I have also been involved in our local TUPOCC and Next Gen Committee, the latter of which I formerly co-chaired.

Shubra Ohri
Shubra Ohri is an attorney at the People’s Law Office where she concentrates her practice on representing people who have suffered from police misconduct, government misconduct and wrongful convictions.  Her advocacy has taken her from federal civil courts to the United Nations.  Before joining the People’s Law Office, Shubra worked at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the Death Penalty Worldwide project based at Northwestern University School of Law’s Center for International Human Rights. Prior to her legal career, Shubra worked as a human rights advocate in Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Palestine and India.  She is a proud member of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials project and The United People of Color Caucus of the NLG.

Stephanie Ciupka
Stephanie Ciupka is a staff attorney and Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Lawndale Christian Legal Center (LCLC), sponsored by Latham & Watkins, where she provides holistic criminal defense services to young adults. She recently graduated from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law (J.D. 2017). During law school, she worked on criminal cases through the Bluhm Legal Clinic, and interned at the Cook County Public Defender, LCLC and CALA. She served on the boards for Northwestern’s NLG Chapter, If/When/How, Public Interest Law Group and SFPIF. At graduation, she was honored to receive the Service Award for dedication and commitment to public service by the legal profession. Previously, Stephanie studied Public Policy at the University of Chicago (B.A. 2010), before serving in Peace Corps Peru (Water and Sanitation, 2010-2012).

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Charlottesville and Law Enforcement Investigations Into Social Movements

The statement below was written by individuals providing legal support to anti-racist and anti-fascist movements. It includes an update on law enforcement investigations into the incidents in Charlottesville. The statement also includes valuable advice regarding the risks of talking to law enforcement and why you should seek counsel from experienced movement attorneys if you are contacted by the FBI, local police or other law enforcement officers.

 

If you are in the Chicago area and are contacted by law enforcement regarding any political action, call the hotline for National Lawyers Guild of Chicago: 312-913-0039 and press “0”.

 

In the aftermath of this summer’s white supremacist rallies and attacks in Virginia, local and federal law enforcement are contacting anti-fascist and anti-racist activists and others who were in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12, 2017.

As of this writing (October 27, 2017) we are aware that state and local police (including the Charlottesville Police Department, Albemarle County Police Department, University of Virginia Police Department, and Virginia State Police) have contacted dozens of activists. We are also aware of two activists who have been contacted by federal law enforcement including the FBI. All of the activists contacted by law enforcement were injured either on the evening of August 11 at the University of Virginia campus or during the August 12 march in Charlottesville when a fascist rammed a car into the crowd. Law enforcement is telling all activists that the activists themselves are not the subject of the investigation, but that law enforcement would like to speak to them as victims and witnesses as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Everyone we have been in touch with directly has agreed to the above information being shared on their behalf in the interest of transparency and in the spirit of solidarity.

Many people have been calling for the state to prosecute fascists for the extreme violence, terror, and injuries inflicted on August 11 and 12. We recognize that in light of this some people may be considering sharing information with various law enforcement agencies for the purpose of prosecuting the fascists, and that some people have already done so. In this moment we would like to encourage everyone considering “helping” the state’s investigation of fascist violence get legal advice before deciding to talk to any law enforcement agents.

We suggest that people start from the presumption that any information shared with law enforcement will be used against other anti-fascists & anti-racist activists, and that everyone keep the following points in mind:

  • Law enforcement can lie about what the subject of their investigation is.
  • Law enforcement agencies do routinely share information with other agencies (for example, local police departments may share the substance of an interview with the FBI or with ICE).
  • In fact, inter-agency structures are in place to facilitate exactly this type of information sharing (for example, the Virginia Fusion Center: http://www.vsp.state.va.us/FusionCenter/index.shtm).
  • If you make statements now in order to assist police in the investigation and prosecution of fascists and the state later decides to broaden their investigation to include anti-fascist and anti-racist activists, you may be subpoenaed for more information. Refusing to comply with a subpoena later is more difficult (from a legal defenses perspective) if you have previously cooperated with law enforcement investigation efforts.
  • It is possible that a special grand jury either has been or will be convened to investigate anti-fascist and anti-racist actions and efforts surrounding the events in Charlottesville and elsewhere. Any and all information given to law enforcement deepens the reach of a grand jury investigation. Grand juries have historically been used as a tool to repress political movements.
  • Even simply confirming to law enforcement that you were present at an event on specific date or at a certain place can lead to further adverse actions against leftist activists and subpoenas to you for testimony and/or for access to your records (including electronic devices like cell phones and cameras) at a later stage.

We would like to remind everyone of your rights when interacting with law enforcement:

  • You are not required to speak with any law enforcement officer or agent.
  • You have a right to consult an attorney before talking to law enforcement or deciding whether or not to talk to them.
  • You have a right to have an attorney present while being questioned by law enforcement even if they tell you that you are not the subject of the investigation or if you volunteer to do an interview.

We recommend the following:

  • If you are contacted by law enforcement, simply get their name and contact information and firmly let them know that you do not want to speak with them at this time and that they will hear from your attorney.
  • If you do ultimately choose to share information with law enforcement, never discuss your political views or affiliations and never discuss anyone else in any way (including who else was present).
  • Remember that giving photo or video records to law enforcement that show other people does amount to confirming the whereabouts of other activists without their consent.

We also remind everyone that information shared with law enforcement will be used against other people in anti-fascist and anti-racist movements. Even seemingly innocuous details about where you were and at what time can end up being used against other people or simply to construct social maps of our communities. Sharing information can also inadvertently expose others to the type of right-wing harassment and doxing which have recently been so harmful to people in our communities.

For these reasons we recommend that no-one speak with law enforcement. If you have already done so, contact a lawyer as soon as possible for assistance moving forward. If you have been contacted by law enforcement and are considering speaking with them, don’t do it without first contacting an attorney to privately discuss these issues and to decide how to proceed. Always use attorneys who have experience representing members of political movements during criminal investigations or defending activists with criminal charges.

We also encourage people to continue to be transparent about these developments as they occur – secrecy leads to isolation and feeds fear, which are both harmful to solidarity.

This information is not the most up to date, but contains important information and resources.

Resources:

National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Know Your Rights materials:
http://www.nlg.org/know-your-rights/
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) If an Agent Knocks booklet:
https://ccrjustice.org/if-agent-knocks-booklet

Article by NLG Chicago member Michael Deutsch on the history of grand juries and how they have been used against political movements
http://peopleslawoffice.com/improper-use-of-federal-grand-jury-michael-deutsch-political-repression/

Freedom Archives background on how grand juries have been used against political movements in the past:
https://search.freedomarchives.org/search.php?s=Grand+Juries

For more on grand juries and the criminal legal process for activists in general we recommend:
A Tilted Guide to Being a Defendant
https://tiltedscalescollective.org/full-book/

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Highlights from DisO 2017

Dis-Orientation is an annual city-wide retreat for law students held by the National Lawyers Guild of Chicago. This year, Dis-Orientation was hosted by Chicago-Kent College of Law Chapter. The speakers for this year were lawyers and organizers with People’s Law Office, Chicago Community Bond Fund, Community Activism Law Alliance, First Defense Legal Aid, Uptown People’s Law Center, and other organizations.

Timothy Rose of People’s Response Team, Emily Coffey and Quinn Rallins of the Shriver Center, and Lam Ho of CALA speak what law in action looks like.

Lavette Mayes of CCBF and Monica Crosby of UPLC explained what lawyers need to do to be accountable to oppressed communities and liberation movements.

The panel on the role of policy was led by Lilian Jimenez, Chief of Staff for Commissioner Chuy Garcia, Alan Mills of UPLC, Max Suchan of CCBF and Samoane Williams of Raise the Floor.

The event was topped off with a Legal Observer training led by two experienced law student LOs from Kent Law School and John Marshall Law School.

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Slutwalk Marcher Lee Dewey Represented by Guild Lawyers Joey Mogul and Sara Garber

On Saturday, August 12, 2017, volunteers from the NLG Chicago Legal Observer Program observed five violent arrests at SlutWalk Chicago 2017. Four people were released that day, but Lee Dewey was held for bond.

As reported on Lee’s fundraiser page, toward the end of the march, Chicago police officers on the scene arrested three organizers and placed them in a police wagon. The dozens of remaining participants, including Lee, were waiting on the sidewalk and demanding police release their friends. Suddenly, police moved in and Lee fell to the ground. Lee’s bicycle fell on top of them, and police piled on. While Lee was on the ground, a CPD officer stepped on Lee’s head and ground it into the pavement. Lee was then arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the 18th District Police Station.

As a result of their rough arrest, Lee sustained several injuries, including an open cut across their thigh. At the station, Lee alerted several police officers to their cut and asked for bandages so they could tend to themselves. Out of an abundance of caution and care for the safety of everyone, Lee informed those CPD officers that they were HIV+.

After Lee shared their HIV status, they were forcibly taken to Rush Hospital—despite the fact they did not consent to or desire such medical treatment. At the hospital, Lee was confronted by a CPD officer and a medical professional who demanded that Lee consent to have their blood taken. They told Lee that a CPD officer was claiming Lee bit their ankle and that there was video footage of the incident. Lee denied then and continues to deny they bit anyone, but felt coerced to give their consent to having their blood withdrawn because of their HIV+ status.

Lee was then falsely charged with Aggravated Battery on a Police Officer for allegedly biting a Chicago Police Officer and falsely charged with Aggravated Assault on a Police Officer for attempting to bite a Chicago Police Commander.

Lee was subjected to similar transphobic and hostile attitudes from Cook County Sheriff’s staff both before and during bond court the next day. In bond court, the prosecutor unnecessarily revealed Lee’s HIV+ status as a way to stigmatize Lee in front of the judge, the public, and on the court record. Lee was given a $100,000 bond that was clearly intended to keep Lee in Cook County Jail. Luckily, Chicago Community Bond Fund immediately posted the $10,000 needed to free Lee, and they were released within a few hours. SlutWalk Chicago, Trans Liberation Collective, and SWOP-Chicago organized the court support event on September 11, 2017.

Lee is facing a Class 2 felony aggravated battery charge. If Lee were to be wrongfully convicted of this charge, they could be sentenced to serve three to seven years in prison. Lee is being represented by Joey Mogul of People’s Law Office (http://peopleslawoffice.com/) and Sara Garber of Thedford Garber Law.

The charges against Lee and Gary are part of a longstanding and disturbing pattern in which queer, gender non-conforming, and transgender people and people with HIV/AIDS are presumptively and falsely framed as malicious and vindictive spreaders of disease. In fact, Lee’s attorney Joey Mogul co-authored an entire book about the criminalization of LGBT people along with co-authors Andrea Ritchie and Kay Whitlock. Queer (In)Justice documents how homophobic and transphobic prejudice pervades law enforcement practice and leads to public stigmatization and false charges, prosecution, and punishment.

Please support Lee by sharing or contributing to this fundraiser for their legal defense and medical expenses!

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We Remember Debra Evenson – Celebrating 80 Years of Law for the People

Debra Evenson leafleting in Daley Plaza for women’s rights

A past president of the Guild, law professor, and one of the nation’s foremost authorities on the legal system and institutions of Cuba, Debra Evenson represented the finest tradition of a People’s lawyer.

Debra was an American legal expert on Cuba, a practicing lawyer, and an educator. She was president of the National Lawyers Guild from 1988 until 1991. During the McCarthy era, Guild membership dwindled to a few hundred. She was part of the generation of young lawyers and law students that revived it in the late 60s and early 70s, combining political passion to combat injustice and exploitation with outstanding legal skills.

Debra also was a founding board member of the Sugar Law Center and remained on the Board until her death. Her work as a board member was instrumental in helping the Sugar Law Center defend the rights of working people in plant closing cases and the Center’s other important work.

She left DePaul University in 1992, and joined the New York City law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman. With the firm, Evenson represented the Cuban government, supporting Cuban sovereignty. She was also licensed to practice law in Cuba, where she worked with high government officials and civilians. From 1996-2001, Evenson was president of the Latin American Institute for Alternative Legal Services (ILSA) headquartered in Bogota, Columbia. During her tenure as president, ILSA organized important conferences related to legal services and human rights in Latin America, Asia and Africa and expanded its collaboration with human rights lawyers in Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Debra died in Chicago on August 17, 2011, continuing to teach us through her grace and resilience confronting cancer. She was awarded the Kinoy Award for that year. She will be deeply missed.

With your help, we can build the next generation of people’s lawyers. For our 80th Anniversary, show your support for the Guild by buying a ticket!

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NLG Chi Proud to Present Kinoy Award to Bernardine Dohrn

This year the National Lawyers Guild is honoring Bernardine Dohrn for the Kinoy Award at our Annual Celebration. We are grateful for her steadfast and decades long commitment to the struggle for justice and global equality and her tireless mentorship of the next generation of people’s lawyers.

 
 
 

Here Bernardine Dohrn tells us of her work with the Guild, and shares a chapter from her book, Race Course: Against White Supremacy.
I moved to New York City to work as the first NLG law student organizer right out of law school, in June 1967.  We argued that law students and lawyers could and should be part of the Movement, as well as legal defenders of the movements: struggles against the imperialist war against Vietnam, against the draft and military injustice, in support of the Black Liberation movement including political prisoners, SNCC and the Black Panther Party.  We mobilized legal support for mass arrests at the Pentagon, demonstrations against Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, GI’s returning their medals, the demands of Black Student Unions for African American history, culture, faculty and open enrollment, for an end to secret university war-releated research and their occupation of neighboring Black communities. We urged support for living wages for university staff and employees, and the rights of Black workers in DRUM. As I travelled to law schools across the country, law students eagerly establish NLG chapters to focus their work, and the NLG took root among radical lawyers and flourished.

 

After a decade as a federal fugitive on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list I was subpoenaed and called before a federal grand jury investigating the Brinks robbery in Manhattan in 1982.  Two of the persons charged in the Brinks robbery were Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert.  Due to their imprisonment, their 14 month-old son, Chesa Boudin joined our family as our third son, and always visited and maintained his close relationships with his biological parents, Kathy and David.   The narrative below tells that story.

 

by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Third World Press, 2009
Chapter: The Modern Slave Ship, by Bernardine Dohrn

 
 

“I did time in the federal correction center while the {3} children were young, and they visited me separately each week.  With Zayd, who was five, I did elaborate homemade crossword puzzles, we read books, and then talked about why the other women in the visiting room were incarcerated, and who was visiting them.  He jumped into my arms to tell me about the long wait downstairs, the searches, and the ways in which guards shouted to waiting families about dress codes and contraband.  He sat on my lap for the whole visit, and when he left with the comforting friend who always brought him, he would wave to me from across the street until I flashed the lights in my cell as a final goodbye.

 

Visits from two-year-old Malik were excruciating but deeply satisfying.  He almost always went directly to sleep in my arms, so I could breathe in his toddler smell and nuzzle his cheeks and neck, examine his hands with impunity.  Although he was verbal and articulate, able to say that his suddenly new brother Chesa “can’t have my mommy,” he chose silence during our visits.  Chesa, already visiting his biological parents in prison as a one year old, visited me less often.

 

The Metropolitan Correctional Center is at the edge of Chinatown and across from the New York City Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan.  From certain cells, we could see the Brooklyn Bridge.  Only one floor of the tall, narrow pre-trial building housed women: we were some eighty women in a prison of more than a thousand men.  That made every venture away from our unit an unpredictable voyage: entry into a packed elevator of male prisoners and guards; processing in the lawyers’ visiting area with shouting male voices vying to hear each other; unexpected conversations in line waiting to see a medic.  Because none of us were yet convicted, we did not endure the routine strip searches and internal examination of bodily cavities that characterize women’s prisons, nor were we routinely subjected to sexualized violence.

 

The women on our unit were African American if they lived in New York City, or Latinas direct from Colombia or Mexico who spoke only Spanish.  The women from Latin America had seen only Kennedy Airport and the MCC in North America; they cried and said rosaries and were humorously willing to try to teach this ignorant gringa Spanish.  All were charged with  carrying drugs into the U.S. as “mules”; none were major or even regular drug dealers but each had taken one crazy, terrible risk, in the hopes of getting money to help their children have better lives.  The women were being prosecuted primarily to “flip” them, to give evidence against male higher-ups.  There was no word then for globalization but these women were an advanced wave of the so-called war on drugs and the escalating incarceration and criminalization of women.  At the current rates of incarcerating women, there will be more women in prison in 2010 than there were all prisoners in the U.S. in 1970.  Such is the taken-for-granted of what passes for crime control.

 

My closest friend was Cheryl, ten years older and able to beat me regularly at Scrabble.  Cheryl spent a good part of the day on the pay phone; she was openly proud that her craft (hotel boosting, or robbing hotel rooms) required wit and never violence.  Cheryl taught me to count to ten slowly whenever it appeared that a fight was jumping off between women prisoners, and she schooled me in the fact that women were likely to shout, to get in each other’s faces, but that if a punch had not been thrown by the number ten, it would stay verbal.  In fact, the women on the unit were generous and kind to one another, organizing efficiently to nurse a new prisoner who was detoxifying and miserably sick by sitting with her in shifts, sponging her face, offering clean sheets.  They knew how to get through holidays together.  We shared books and cosmetics.  We plotted how to get out along with the (all male) guards if there were a fire in the building.  Some were geniuses at sewing and making the miserable navy blue uniforms look tight.

 

My term in prison was indeterminate and bizarre.  I was jailed for refusing to obey the order of a judge to cooperate with a federal grand jury by giving samples of my handwriting.  I was held in civil contempt of court, although my lawyer and I argue that the government was in possession of rooms filled with my handwriting, since they had seized files and letters from my apartments during COINTELPRO, a secret and illegal FBI program), and I had subsequently been a federal fugitive for eleven years.  It was anguishing to be separated from our young children, but I saw resistance as a question of principle.  During our years outside the law, scores of people refused to cooperate with grand jury witch hunt, organized to try to find members of the Weather Underground.  The government grand jury strategy failed because ordinary people, innocent people, refused to cooperate.  I could not do differently, even in different circumstances.

 

The dilemma was that there is no sentence when you are held in contempt.  The idea of the prosecutor is to coerce your testimony, a relic from the British Star Chamber proceedings.  So we (there were fifteen women who defied the grand jury, all of us at MCC) were ordered to be held until we cooperated, or until the U.S. attorney decided to indict us, or until their interest moved on to other matters.  I had been back in ordinary life, above ground, for just a year, working as a waiter, then at a law firm, being a mom of three boys, and thinking about how to reinvent myself as an activist at the age of forty.  Bill visited me every single day, parented three small children, and tried to cope.

 

As it turned out, I served just seven months.  I was released on a motion that argued that since I would never cooperate, because I was willful and stubborn, the contempt sentence had become “punishment” instead of “coercion”.  The other grand jury women were similarly released, or were charged in huge RICO conspiracy indictments.  I thought I would never forget my prison number, never want to read another murder mystery, or do yoga again.  But back with my family, we began the prison visits with Kathy and David that would characterize the next twenty years.”
 

The National Lawyers Guild is proud to be presenting the Kinoy Award to Bernardine Dohrn. For our 80th Anniversary, show your support for the Guild by buying a ticket!

 

Contact

637 S. Dearborn St., 3rd Floor
Chicago, IL 60605

(773) 492-1405
chicago[@]nlg.org