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August 15, 2017 by Admin

Continuing the Fight Against White Supremacy After Charlottesville

August 14, 2017

Contact: Pooja Gehi, Executive Director
212-679-5100,ext. 11 | director@nlg.org

or Tasha Moro, Communications Director
212-679-5100, ext. 15 | communications@nlg.org

NEW YORK—The National Lawyers Guild (NLG), founded in 1937 as the first racially-integrated, human rights bar association, is committed to ending white supremacy in all its forms.  Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Heather Heyer, who was murdered was while standing up to racism and fascism, as well as the 19 additional counter-protesters injured at the “Unite the Right Free Speech Rally” in Charlottesville, VA this weekend.

Primarily through local NLG chapters, the NLG provides mass defense legal support for anti-racist community organizers participating in protest actions and other demonstrations.  In Charlottesville, this support included:

  • Know Your Rights trainings
  • NLG Legal Observers
  • Legal representation and jail support for arrestees
  • Legal support hotline (see full list of local hotline numbers)

As an organization committed to human rights, the NLG categorically refuses to provide legal support to white supremacists or other hate groups.

“The Charlottesville community experienced multiple waves of horror this weekend. NLG trained Legal Observers were on the ground watching as those who terrorized our community by fulfilling their promises to enact violence. Our hearts our broken but our chapter is united and resolute in our determination to provide legal support to organizers who will continue to protect Charlottesville,” said Andrew Mahler, NLG Central VA Chapter Chair.

While the hateful rhetoric and policies of President Donald Trump and his administration have emboldened racists to assert their “right” to hate speech and violence, the United States was founded in white supremacy—it is nothing new. It is in the spirit of dismantling this oppression that we move forward in the struggle to liberate our institutions, society, and culture.

Photo: NLG Legal Observers in Charlottesville, VA, August 12, 2017.

Filed Under: Blog, Events, Featured Articles, Legal Observers, Media

July 3, 2017 by Admin

The Case of Palestinian Community Leader Rasmea Odeh

After a three year fight to oppose a politically motivated federal indictment charging her with failing to disclose her 1969 arrest and imprisonment by Israeli military authorities in her naturalization citizenship application,  Rasmea Odeh plead guilty, in return for no time in prison or immigration custody. As a result, following her sentencing on August 17th, she will lose her citizenship and be required to leave her adopted home and beloved community.

Rasmea’s story, like most other Palestinians, is one of dispossession and repression. She was born in 1947 in Lifta, a Palestinian village outside Jerusalem. In 1948, as a result of Israeli aggression and “ethnic cleansing,” Rasmea and her family, along with 750,000 other Palestinians, were forced out of their homes by Zionist militias. The Odeh’s lost their home and all their possessions.

The family resettled on the West Bank of the Jordan River, then under the control of Jordan, when in 1967 the Israeli Army invaded and began its military occupation which continues to this day. Hundreds were arrested resisting the Occupation, and many were tortured and forced to sign false confessions. Rasmea, a college student, who was refused permission to return to school in Lebanon, was arrested in 1969. While in Israeli custody, she confessed to involvement in two bombings after she was tortured: sleep deprivation, beatings, sexual assault, rape and electro-shock.  Following her arrest, her parents’ West Bank home was demolished – a form of collective punishment that continues – and an Israeli military tribunal sentenced her to life in prison. Ten years later, Rasmea and other Palestinian woman prisoners were released in a prisoner exchange.

After living and working on behalf of refugees in Jordan, Rasmea came to the U.S. in 1995 to take care of her ailing father, and then relocated to Chicago in 2004, after obtaining her naturalized citizenship. In Chicago she joined the Arab-American Action Network (AAAN) where she founded a project supporting women’s empowerment, the Arab Women’s Committee.  Her work has become the model for other Arab women’s organizations across the country and she has received many awards recognizing her as an inspirational community leader.

Despite the final outcome, Rasmea’s legal fight raised important issues of Israeli torture and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused to Palestinian detainees, the kangaroo Israeli military courts, and how the government targeted Rasmea because of Palestine solidarity work.   Hundreds of supporters filled her court hearings and many more were educated about the Palestinian fight for justice.  We will miss Rasmea, but are confident wherever she is; she will be a strong voice for the human rights of the Palestinian people.

Written by Michael Deutsch and Jim Fennerty

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Articles, Media

March 22, 2017 by Admin

Save the Date! 2017 NLG Midwest Regional Conference April 7-9

Join us April 7 to April 9, 2017 as the NLG Chicago Chapter hosts the NLG Midwest Regional Conference! For more information, including how to register, click here. 

**Access the annotated agenda here.**

Filed Under: Blog, Events, Featured Articles, Media

March 16, 2017 by Admin

Legal Community Strikes Back on 2/17

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) organized a day of action for the legal community to express our solidarity with the growing movements against the new regime and its white supremacist agenda. On February 17 at noon, lawyers, legal workers, law students, and law professors gathered in front of the US District Court in Federal Plaza along with other actions around the country in coordination with the nationwide #GeneralStrike planned for the same day.

“We are facing unprecedented attacks on our most fundamental human rights and are seeing the unfolding of authoritarianism before our eyes. The legal community has no choice but to show up, to defend our communities and to fight back by holding our institutions accountable,” said NLG President and LatinoJustice PRLDEF Associate Counsel Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan.

In the three weeks since Donald Trump has taken office, we have seen a flurry of executive orders targeting immigrants and intensifying law enforcement; racist, unqualified millionaires appointed to the nation’s highest positions; assaults on the press, and “alternative facts” presented as truth. However, we have also witnessed communities engaging in profound organizing and direct action—from the streets to airports and schools—to reject the current administration and disrupt business as usual. On February 17, we’re taking the resistance to courthouses.

“It is crucial for the legal community to come together to provide support for resistance movements against the current administration. We must fight back against the legitimization of racial and religious bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia and misogyny that violate the core principles of democracy,” said NLG Executive Director Pooja Gehi.

The speakers at the rally were:
Dima Khalidi, Palestine Legal
Joey Mogul, People’s Law Office
Max Suchan, NLG Chicago’s Mass Defense Committee
Nieves Bolanos, Potter Bolanos
Vickie Casanova Willis, FDLA
Ben Meyer, FDLA
MiAngel Cody, The Decarceration Collective
Diane O’Connell, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless
Megan Davis, Northern Illinois Justice for our Neighbors
Lam Nguyen Ho – CALA

 

.@FirstDefense606: the most important words you need to know! #LawStrikesBack pic.twitter.com/ryHYLzy4D3

— Palestine Legal (@pal_legal) February 17, 2017

 

Dima Khalidi speaking truth to power #LawStrikesBack pic.twitter.com/coZegrmhjE

— Palestine Legal (@pal_legal) February 17, 2017


The Chicago rally was co-sponsored by:

People’s Law Office
Palestine Legal
Thedford Garber Law
CALA (Community Activism Law Alliance)
Uptown People’s Law Center
American Constitution Society JMLS Student Chapter
Potter Bolaños LLC
Northern Illinois Justice For Our Neighbors
Chicago Coalition for the Homeless
First Defense Legal Aid
The Decarceration Collective
National Conference of Black Lawyers – Chicago Chapter

For more photos check out: https://www.facebook.com/events/1915782851969046/

For more info, read the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin article on the event here.

Filed Under: Blog, Events, Featured Articles, Media, Next Gen

March 2, 2017 by Admin

Federal Suit Challenges Chicago Police Use of “Stingray” Spying Devices

Attorneys for long-time National Lawyers Guild legal observer Jerry Boyle filed suit in federal court today to challenge the sweeping use of “Stingray” cell phone spying devices by Chicago Police.

The suit, which aims to be certified as a class action, alleges that the stingray devices are frequently used without warrants or any official guidance, indiscriminately sweeping up cell phone data from innocent people, including attendees at political rallies, demonstrations and other 1st Amendment-protected activities.

Stingrays have the power to obtain identifying information about cell phones, access the content of phone calls and texts made on the phone, reveal website browsing histories, and track a phone’s cumulative movements.

According to the suit, “CPD owns and operates an arsenal of cell site simulators with these intrusive capabilities,” spending over a half million dollars between 2005 and 2010 to obtain them. The devices typically can access cell phones located more than a mile away from them, and capture data from up to 60,000 phones simultaneously.

The suit alleges that the Chicago Police Department’s use of cell site simulators “is secretive and widespread…and [CPD] has long refused to disclose information about its use of cell site simulators to the public and fought attempts to obtain such records in the courts, choosing to conceal its use of the technology.”

“The City does not even maintain any policies or procedures on what its officers may do with the personal information seized from thousands of individual cell phones without a warrant. The City has also, as a matter of practice, refused to train its officers about constitutional issues associated with officers’ use of cell site simulators. In addition, the City has maintained a widespread practice of permitting its police officers to deploy cell site simulators without a warrant specific to each phone that is searched in the process, and has frequently failed to obtain warrants even for the phone of the target in question.”

The suit cites as an example of the illegal surveillance a January 15, 2015 “Reclaim Martin Luther King, Jr. Day” demonstration organized by Black Lives Matter protesters at which Boyle’s and hundreds of others’ cell phones were illegally surveilled.

“The people of Chicago should be able to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, association, and assembly without being spied upon by police,” said Boyle. “Government spying on its citizens without appropriate judicial oversight is inconsistent with the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.”

“The Chicago Police Department can’t give its officers weapons that have the power to search and seize our most personal information without any instructions about how to use them,” said Craig Futterman, a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and one of the lawyers representing Mr. Boyle. “That’s like giving officers guns and telling them to go get the bad guys, without even teaching them how to shoot. We’ve recently seen how this lack of surveillance oversight has played out at the NSA, where employees abused surveillance tools to spy on their spouses.”

“Any surveillance of political groups is particularly troubling,” said Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law, another of Boyle’s attorneys, “but there is no dispute that even when CPD has a valid basis to track a legitimate suspect, the technology results in a search of every other phone in the area to find the suspect. This is a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent bystanders every time it is used.”

Defendants named in the suit include former Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and current Superintendent Eddie Johnson.

Besides Futterman and Topic, Mr. Boyle is also represented by Mike Kanovitz, Ruth Brown and Josh Burday of Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law.

Loevy & Loevy is one of the nation’s largest civil rights law firms, and over the past decade has won more multi-million dollar jury verdicts than any other civil rights law firm in the entire country. Last November, Loevy & Loevy successfully obtained the release of the dashcam video of Laquan McDonald’s shooting death at the hands of Chicago police.

The University of Chicago Law School’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project is one of the nation’s leading civil rights clinics focusing on issues of criminal justice. The mission of the Law School’s clinical programs is to teach students effective advocacy skills, professional ethics, and the effect of legal institutions on the poor; to examine and apply legal theory while serving as advocates for people typically denied access to justice; and to reform legal education and the legal system to be more responsive to the interests of the poor.

For further reading see:

Cell Phone Surveillance at Peaceful Protest Draws Lawsuit Against Chicago Police

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Articles, Media

August 12, 2016 by Admin

Jerry Boyle featured on WBEZ

Chicago NLG member, Jerry Boyle was interviewed for WBEZ for his participation in the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Check out the story here:

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/the-chicagoan-who-traveled-to-cleveland-to-watch-the-protests/4e0295ac-edba-4a39-baf5-1da9348d0c60

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Articles, Legal Observers, Media

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