On October 26, 2016, The John Marshall Law School chapters of the National Lawyers Guild, the Black Law Students Association and the American Constitutional Society presented a panel discussion and Q&A on the intersection of activism and legal advocacy in the growing Movement for Black Lives.
The event featured speakers from Black Lives Matter Chicago, Black Youth Project 100, Cook County Bar Association and National Lawyers Guild Chicago.
On Friday, October 14th, 2016, Loyola NLG, the Uptown People’s Law Center, and People’s Law Office hosted a panel/discussion about Attica and the current prison struggle.
The panel members were: Heather Thompson (author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Rebellion of 1971 and its Legacy), Benny Lee (Pontiac Brother and community organizer), Alan Mills of the Uptown People’s Law Center and
Brian Nelson (Solitary Survivor and community organizer). The event was moderated by Michael Deutsch, Attica Brothers Lawyer.
Executive Director of the UPLC, Alan Mills says “It’s worse now than when I started.” after more than 35 years of work in prison reform.
The Attica brothers wanted to get the media in right away. Police came from all over New York state, weapons were passed out indiscriminately over 4 days at Attica before they went in. Prisoners’ demands were shockingly basic in the end, covering things like food & healthcare. You can read their manifesto here.
You can watch the entire panel/discussion here.
For more info check out:
American Prison Inmates, On Strike on WBUR
Obituary for Elizabeth Fink, attorney who represented the Attica Brothers
The Largest Prison Strike in U.S. History Enters Its Second Week
Dis-Orientation is an annual city-wide retreat for law students hosted by the National Lawyers Guild of Chicago. This year, Dis-Orientation was hosted by the Northwestern Law School NLG Chapter. The speakers included NLG Chicago activist and law professor Bernardine Dohrn, Juan F Perea of Loyola Law, Destiny Peery of Northwestern Law, and community organizer & recent law grad Quinn Kareem Rallins.
Prof Juan Perea introduced “the Epistemology of Ignorance” to a group of mostly 1st year law studentsat Dis-orientation, teaching them all the ways the constitution is pro-slavery. You can read Prof Perea’s law review article about the pro-slavery constitution here.
Bernardine Dohrn spoke about how lawyers & law students can support current social movements. Quinn Kareem Rallins discussed the question of whether change comes from the law or organizing people. He shared the story of using legal services at Boston Legal Aid to support organizing by Project No One Leaves in their fight against foreclosures.
Prof. Destiny Peery reminded us of the dangers of implicit bias in both teaching and the practice of law. The most important step in combating implicit bias is acknowledging it exists. You can take a test and explore your own biases here.
Finally, there was a panel of current law students shares their strategies for surviving & thriving in law school.
For more resources check out the Guerrilla Guides to Law Teaching.
(Dis)Orientation is an event for students to discuss surviving law school with our values and commitment to social justice intact. Come meet NLG law students, legal workers, and attorneys, while attending panels and trainings on how to become a people’s lawyer.
The NLG is dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system. We seek to unite 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.
Our aim is to bring together all those who recognize the importance of safeguarding and extending the rights of workers, women, farmers, people with disabilities and people of color, upon whom the welfare of the entire nation depends; who seek actively to eliminate racism; who work to maintain and protect our civil rights and liberties in the face of persistent attacks upon them; and who look upon the law as an instrument for the protection of the people, rather than for their repression.
Free food will be provided, with a happy hour to follow!
Leonard I. Weinglass (1933-2011) was a criminal defense attorney and constitutional law advocate. Over the course of his career, he represented political activists, government opponents, and criminal defendants— including Angela Davis, the Cuban Five, the Chicago Seven, the Pentagon Papers, and the death row appeals of Mumia Abu-Jamal—in a half century of politically significant cases. He was a longtime Guild member and served as Chair of the NLG International Committee.
Thanks to a generous bequest from the Weinglass estate, the NLG has established a fellowship for recent law graduates. Each year, one fellow will receive a stipend to work for the Guild on a specific civil rights or civil liberties project.
Max Suchan is a Chicago NLG member who will be spending 10 weeks working with the Chicago Community Bond Fund to increase volunteer capacity and help develop organizational strategies to end money bond. Max is a long-time abolitionist activist and first year lawyer. Since the age of 13, Max was involved in organizing against the second Iraq invasion in both grammar school and high school. In 2007, Max attended Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank, where he studied Arabic and politics while supporting Palestinian-led direct action against the occupation. After spending more than a year and a half in Palestine over several trips, Max was also a passenger on the U.S. Boat to Gaza as part of Freedom Flotilla II, which sought to challenge the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. In Fall 2011 and Spring 2012, Max worked with the Palestine Solidarity Project to co-organize a national U.S. speaking tour to highlight the cases of hundreds of Palestinian minors in Israeli military prisons and jails.
As an undergrad at Beloit College in Wisconsin, Max founded Beloit Books Behind Bars to send books and match student pen-pals with people in state prisons. He decided to go to law school in order to obtain a concrete skill-set to support liberation movements both here and abroad, and more effectively work for an end to mass incarceration. Max attended DePaul University School of Law, where he played a key role in NLG organizing on campus. In August 2014, Max traveled to Ferguson to support the uprising in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown. There he was arrested as an NLG legal observer and he still faces municipal charges of interfering with a police officer.
Upon returning to Chicago, Max supported the family members of the DeSean Vigil 5, a group of Black residents who were beaten and arrested after Chicago police aggressively disrupted a community vigil following the police killing of 17-year-old DeSean Pittman. Max helped fundraise tens of thousands of dollars to bond everyone out of jail and match all arrestees with attorneys. These relationships and organizing gave birth to the Chicago Community Bond Fund, a nonprofit collective which works to abolish cash bond in Illinois, while simultaneously bonding individuals out of Cook County Jail to mitigate the severe harm of pre-trial detention. Since December 2015, CCBF has posted bond to free 27 people from jail or house arrest.
Max remains heavily involved with the Chicago NLG chapter as the local mass defense coordinator, a co-coordinator of the legal observer program, and a member of the Chicago board.
On Tuesday May 3, in the Schmitt Academic Center at DePaul, Jeff Frank (of the
National Lawyers Guild, Friends of MST (Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement)), Vicki Cervantes (of the Honduras Solidarity Network), Juan David Lopera (of the Congreso de los Pueblos Colombia), and Jesus Rodriguez Espinosa (Consulate of Venezuela in Chicago) hosted a panel sponsored by DePaul University Department of Peace, Justice, & Conflict Studies, Friends of the MST, Congreso de los Pueblos Colombia, La Voz de los de Abajo, Chicago ALBA Solidarity, and Consulate of Venezuela in Chicago.
Brazil’s right wing opposition voted to begin impeachment against progressive President Dilma Rousseff, even though she is not accused of having committed a crime. The majority who voted to impeach her are themselves under investigation for corruption and other crimes. On March 31, 700,000 marched in support of Rousseff.
Brazil is the latest example of U.S. backed right-wing neoliberal resurgence in Latin America. The events in Brazil follow the U.S. supported coups against democracy in Honduras (2009) and Paraguay (2012), failed coup attempts in Ecuador (2010, 2015), Bolivia (2009), repeated stealing of elections in Haiti, and the ongoing attempt to overthrow President Maduro of Venezuela. Jeff Frank will report on his recent trip to Brazil, including the killing of peasant leaders; other short reports will address the increase in death squad activity in other countries and the role of the U.S.
Full video here:
