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February 4, 2019 by Admin

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.

Filed Under: DisOrientation, Law Schools

May 16, 2018 by Admin

University of Chicago NLG Chapter Protests Trump’s Solicitor General

At the University of Chicago Law School, just months after the Edmund Burke debacle earlier this year, students members of the Federalist Society decided to honor Trump’s Solicitor General Noel Francisco. Francisco’s visit was following his cringe worthy oral arguments before the Supreme Court to defend the Muslim Ban. He struggled to indicate that Trump’s Muslim Ban was an informed and deliberately protective policy, rather than the animus-based and xenophobic mess that unfurled in airports across the country. In a lesson on how not to represent your client, Francisco uttered his last statement, “Islam is a Great Country,” indicating the level of precision and knowledge of the policy and legal decisions made within the administration.

The Federalist Society celebrated Francisco by awarding the Lee Otis Award for Public Service. Lee Otis is an alum, and founder of the Federalist Society at the University of Chicago. During the event’s introduction she spoke of how as a student she felt there was a need to represent the views of conservative libertarians, that they were a minority group and remain a minority group. At this point, Professor Otis began to list decades of professors at the Law School that precisely align with and espouse the views she finds so lacking within the field. As Otis spoke on the need for smaller government, at least four plainclothes bodyguards for Francisco were noted in the front and back of the courtroom, presumably paid for with federal funds. Twice Otis noted how embarrassing it is that the Federalist Society’s award is named for her. Students at the University of Chicago agree; we are also embarrassed by her attendance at the law school.

Prior to the event, students from the National Lawyers Guild worked to advertise the event to their fellow students:

Just two weeks before, the University of Chicago NLG chapter was featured by the law school for winning the first annual pro bono student organization award. The NLG continued their good works in the school, lining the hall to offer informative brochures to contextualize the event for attendees, and handing one to Francisco himself as he entered the corridor.

At the entrance, students held posters which greeted the guest speakers. Francisco spoke to the Muslim woman holding a poster by the door which read “A Complete and Total SHUTDOWN of Francisco until we figure out what is going on.”

He tried an exchange with her,

“How are you doing?”
“Disappointed by your presence here in the law school.”

Driving the student dissatisfaction were the events of the prior quarter. The Edmund Burke society, a conservative “debate” society existing at the law school for over two decades, released a whip sheet that finally caught the attention of the student body. Though the whip sheet comparing immigrants to literal trash was particularly notable, this was just one in a series which can be found here.

The Chairman of the Burke Society is now the new President of the Federalist Society, an unsurprising development given the almost complete overlap between these sets of student organizations. Other students saw this awards ceremony as another attack on the same targets: undocumented, Muslim, immigrant and LGBTQIA people who suffer as a result of Francisco’s insistence on defending the indefensible. However, the Federalist Society wanted to learn his tactics and normalize his advocacy. Upon the introduction of Francisco to the audience, approximately half of the students in the courtroom stood to turn their backs. Harried law school administrators asked students to lower their posters lest they obstruct the views of the audience. Some explained that they posed no obstruction, and remained standing.

Students had also prepared a card to show they were in compliance with University policy:

The audience was permitted to ask questions of the speaker via pre-submitted index cards. For a University obsessed with “Free Expression,” it is surprising that every question was filtered by the moderator Professor Todd Henderson. The remarks by Professors Otis and Henderson praised the federal official for his magnanimity in the face of the clear opposition before him. Likely this was one of the few venues in which he sees the faces of those who object to his work, from which even his bodyguards could not protect him.

Some students walked out of the talk, which consisted largely of anecdotes from his days at the Law School (Did you know Francisco once dropped a class? He also studied in the library). Among the most substantive praises of his actions were celebrations of his confidence when he casually dismissed opportunities to further develop his thinking as a law student.

Protest posters were used again to alter the school’s homogeneous string of white man portraits, helping re-contextualize the artwork in the law school and make it relevant to the needs of our time.

 

When the remaining attendees entered the courtroom hallway to pick up their lunches, they had the welcome of the artwork, with ambiance provided by the music of Nipsey Hussle’s FDT. Remaining brochures about the event accompanied each lunch box. As the main speaker exited with the esteemed Dean of the Law school , the students—with no prior planning—decided to escort them through the school hallway. Students trailed behind the prominent lawyers while the lyrics of Nipsey’s song captured our spirit:

“We the youth. We the people of this country. We got a voice too. We will be seen, and we will be heard.”

Eventually, the two officials and bodyguards entered the Dean’s corridor, beyond the reach of students. It was a funeral procession for old ideas and a broken world that the law students are committed to defying. What remained of the Federalist Society’s student members convened around the leftover food from the American Constitution Society’s talk that was concurrently held on pro bono work the world actually needs.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Articles, Law Schools, University of Chicago

April 25, 2018 by Admin

Chicago-Kent is our 2018 Phenomenal Student Chapter

Congratulations to our Phenomenal Student Chapter 2018!

As part of the festivities of this year’s Annual May Day Party, the NLG-Chicago board awarded the Chicago Kent College of Law Student Chapter the Phenomenal Student Chapter Award in recognition of their excellent work and organizing. Here are but a few things they did last year:

  • Hosted the 2017 NLG Midwest Conference
  • Hosted the city-wide 2017 DisOrientation
  • Held multiple Week Against Mass Incarceration events
  • Organized a panel on the Water Protector Legal Collective
  • Made holiday cards for young people behind bars
  • Built community and supported allies such as: FDLA, Black & Pink, CCBF, Community Justice Project, Critical Resistance, Students Against Incarceration, USW, Liberation Library, and many more

Thanks for all your hard work, Kent Students. You’re an inspiration!

Filed Under: Blog, Chicago-Kent, Events, Featured Articles, Law Schools

March 29, 2018 by Admin

JMLS Public Interest Career Panel

On March 27, the John Marshall National Lawyers Guild put together a panel of four attorneys from diverse public interest fields to discuss their practices and offer advice on navigating law school and developing a career as a people’s lawyer.

The speakers were:

Molly Armour

Criminal defense attorney at the Law Office of Molly Armour.

Emily Coffey

Housing justice attorney at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.

andre douglas pond cummings

Visiting professor at The John Marshall Law School.

Samoane Williams

Policy director at Raise the Floor Alliance.

Filed Under: Blog, Events, Featured Articles, John Marshall, Law Schools

March 29, 2018 by Admin

Week Against Mass Incarceration at Kent College of Law

Between March 5 and 7, the Kent NLG student chapter hosted three events for the NLG Week Against Mass Incarceration.

On March 5, Kent put together a panel discussion about the Chicago gang database and how ICE is using it for immigration enforcement. Officially known as the Strategic Subject List (SSL), the gang database is a “predictive policing” tool that CPD uses to surveil and target black and brown communities. The content of this deeply flawed database is being shared with ICE, leading to arrests, detention, and deportation actions against Chicago residents.

Activists and lawyers from Organized Communities Against Deportations,The Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center, and Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center, working in various capacities on this issue, shared their experience and insight.

For more background information on ICE’s use of the gang database (and the gang database in general), check out these articles:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/28/how-ice-uses-secret-police-databases-to-arrest-immigrants

http://blackyouthproject.com/chicago-gang-database-deportation/

https://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-politics/what-gets-people-on-watch-list-chicago-police-fought-to-keep-secret-watchdogs/

http://www.businessinsider.com/chicagos-experimental-policing-tool-is-hurting-people-2016-8

On March 6, Kent students organized a bake sale and raffle to raise $144 for Wilmer Catalan-Ramirez and his family. Mr. Catalan-Ramirez did not receive sufficient medical care for his gunshot wounds during his 10 months in detention following a warrant-less, and violent raid that left him with a broken shoulder on March 27, 2017. While he has been released after a long fight, he requires long-term medical care and therapy and cannot work to provide for his family. Mr. Catalan-Ramirez’s online fundraising is still active, if you didn’t get the chance to give please visit https://www.youcaring.com/wilmercatalanramirezandhisfamily-1075617

For March 7, Kent Students had First Defense Legal Aid give a training on station house defense. Law students and graduates eligible for a 711 license were trained to provide direct legal representation to clients in police custody all over Chicago for the period before a public defender is available.

Station house defense is a unique volunteer experience, and is part of the movement for police accountability, and helps protect Chicago residents from coercive police tactics. FDLA sponsored law students and graduates who are eligible for a 711 license, and applications were provided at the training.

Filed Under: Blog, Chicago-Kent, Events, Featured Articles, Law Schools

March 29, 2018 by Admin

JMLS Chapter Host Day Against Mass Incarceration and Deportation

On Saturday February 24, the John Marshall Law School chapter of the National Lawyers Guild hosted a day of panel discussions concerning the fight against mass incarceration and deportation. This event was part of the National Lawyers Guild’s Week Against Mass Incarceration, during which NLG law school and local chapters across the nation organize interactive workshops, community discussions, film screenings, tabling, letter writing campaigns, banner drops, visits to incarcerated youth, and panels on topics such as solitary confinement, school to prison pipeline, immigration detention, transformative justice, and alternatives to incarceration.

You can check out the schedule for JMLS’ event below:

The NLG platform calls for “the dismantling and abolition of all prisons and of all aspects of systems and institutions that support, condone, create, fill, or protect prisons.” The 2018 theme is the intersection of mass incarceration and immigration detention and deportation.

The Guild is currently engaged in unique and innovative efforts nationwide to alleviate some of the harm inflicted by the prison-industrial complex and immigration regime. The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG) is a national non-profit organization that provides technical assistance and support to community-based immigrant organizations, legal practitioners, and all advocates seeking and working to advance the rights of non-citizens. NIPNLG promotes justice and equality of treatment in all areas of immigration law, the criminal justice system, and policies related to immigration. For 46 years, the National Immigration Project has served as a progressive source of advocacy-oriented legal support on issues critical to immigrant rights.

Other NLG initiatives include the NLG-NYC Parole Preparation Project, the NLG Bay Area Prisoner Advocacy Network, the NLG NJ-DE Prisoner Legal Advocacy Network, and the Guild Notes column, “Beyond Bars: Voices from NLG Jailhouse Lawyers”.  NLG Mass Incarceration Committee and Prison Law Project volunteers respond to jailhouse lawyer members’ letters and send out our Jailhouse Lawyer Manual on an ongoing basis. The NLG Political Prisoner Support Committee provides legal support for and connects Guild members with political prisoners. NLG members are involved in various initiatives opposing policing, criminalization, solitary confinement, the drug war, capital punishment, and new prison construction. The Guild also supported the 2016 National Prison Strike and has been working to  investigate and challenge deplorable conditions in numerous Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison facilities in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

To learn more about incarcerated Guild members, their concerns, and more resources on prison litigation and organizing, please check out the NLG Jailhouse Lawyer website.

 

Resources

Punishment and Policing in the Trump Era

Immigration Guide to How Arrests and Convictions Separate Families

Immigration and Mass Incarceration

Immigration Policy and Planning in the Era of Mass Incarceration

Mass Incarceration and Immigrant Detention

Fact-sheet: Immigrant Detention and Mass Incarceration

Struggles of Using Legal Recourse as a Path Toward Better Prison Conditions

Following the Money of Mass Incarceration

Prison Abolition Syllabus

Are Prisons Obsolete?

Corrections Project PIC Poster

Transforming Carceral Logic

Reasons for Penal Abolition

Joint Statement of Incite! and Critical Resistance

Incarcerated Workers Take The Lead

Documentaries

Broken on All Sides

Visions of Abolition

The 13th

“Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.” -Angela Y. Davis

Filed Under: Blog, Events, Featured Articles, John Marshall, Law Schools

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