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.
NLG Chi Proud to Present NextGen Award to #ExpandSanctuary Campaign
The #ExpandSanctuary Campaign is the joint venture of Mijente, BYP100, and OCAD. These three Black, Latinx, and migrant organizations came together in the wake of Donald Trump’s attack on “sanctuary” cities to push Chicago to stand in defiance of the President, defend the constitution, and promote policies that offer real safety to all residents. Their campaign is focused on four major goals:
- The decriminalization and alternative processing of crimes of survival, DUIs disproportionately policed in Black and Latinx neighborhoods, incidents at schools, drug related offenses, and more.
- Elimination of the flawed gang database.
- Reallocation of city resources from law enforcement to community institutions that provide long-term safety such as schools, clinics, and hospitals.
- Amendments to the Welcoming City ordinance to prevent collusion with federal deportation agents.
For another overview of the #ExpandSanctuary Campaign, you can watch this video with Tania Unzueta, the Legal and Policy Director for Mijente; and Janaé Bonsu, National Public Policy Chair of BYP100.
Expand Sanctuary from Sensitive Visuals on Vimeo.
Mijente is a new hub for social justice organizing both online and on the ground. They are meant to be the political home for Latinx and Chicanx people, helping develop the next generation of leadership for social change. The folks behind Mijente understand that in order to dismantle systems of oppression, Latinx leaders, advocates, organizers, cultural workers, media-makers, writers and theorists must come together to make the culture and policy changes their community needs.
Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) is a community based organization in Illinois that organizes against unfair and inhumane immigration enforcement practices that impact immigrant communities. We fight case by case, person by person, at the same time that we work to change the implementation and enforcement practices that criminalize our community.
BYP100 is an activist member-based organization of Black 18-35 year olds, dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. They do this by building a collective focused on transformative leadership development, direct action organizing, advocacy and education using a Black queer feminist lens. Their work includes training young black activists in organizing and tactics, mobilizing young black leaders on issues of dismantling the prison industrial complex and securing LGBT and women’s rights, and running campaigns against the criminalization of Black youth, racial profiling, and police brutality.
The #ExpandSanctuary Campaign was launched in Chicago in a press conference on January 26, in which Mijente, OCAD and BYP100 called on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to do more to committing to keeping Chicago a sanctuary city.
Since then, the campaign has also highlighted the effects of the gang database on Black and Brown residents of Chicago. In the case of Luis Vicente Pedrote-Salinas, his lawyers say he is not and never has been a gang member, but was falsely labeled as one after being arrested six years ago for allegedly having an unopened can of beer in his truck. Pedrote would qualify for DACA were he not erroneously listed in the database. To read more on the case, check out:
Chicago Sun Times: Unopened beer can, gang database errors fuel deportation case
Chicago Tribune: Immigrant sues Chicago, police for placing his name in gang database
On October 10, the #ExpandSanctuary Campaign, held an action against the proposed $95 million police academy by blocking a section of Randolph Street with three life-size representations of statistics that show how Chicago and Mayor Emanuel have failed to live up to the claim of being a “Sanctuary” city.
The National Lawyers Guild is proud to be presenting the NextGen award to the #ExpandSanctuary campaign. Mijente, BYP100, and OCAD represent some of the most innovative and outstanding organizing in Chicago.
For our 80th Anniversary, show your support for the Guild by buying a ticket!
We Remember Arthur Kinoy – Celebrating 80 Years of Law for the People
Arthur Kinoy (September 20, 1920 – September 19, 2003), was an American attorney and progressive civil rights leader. He served as a professor of law at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark from 1964 to 1991.
Kinoy took an active part in the defense of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg from 1951, who were convicted of atomic espionage. During the 1950s and 1960s, Kinoy represented persons called to hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities; in 1966 he was officially removed from a hearing by Senator Eastland, its chair, and subsequently convicted of disorderly conduct. In 1968, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the conviction. In 1964, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement activities in the South to end disenfranchisement and segregation, he participated in a conference sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild’s Committee for Legal Assistance in the South. It briefed attorneys on legal problems confronting civil rights demonstrators in Mississippi, where state and local governments resisted change. He and his partner, William Kunstler, were two of the most prominent attorneys during the 1960s to handle civil rights cases in the South.
Mr. Kinoy was involved in a number of landmark legal verdicts. In 1965, he successfully argued the case of Dombrowski v. Pfister before the Supreme Court, which empowered federal district court judges to stop enforcement of laws that had ‘a chilling effect’ on free speech. In a subsequent case, Dombrowski v. Senator Eastland, he established that the Counsel of the Senate Internal Security Committee was not immune from suits for violations of citizens’ civil rights. In 1972, the Supreme Court upheld his contention that President Richard M. Nixon had no ‘inherent power’ to wiretap domestic political organizations.
You can also watch an excellent interview of Kinoy, hosted by the Film Archive.
We honor and remember Arthur Kinoy for his visionary leadership. His stalwart defense of free speech, and his commitment to the rights of oppressed people, is an inspiration to all of us in the Guild. We thank him for passing on the torch to a whole new generation of people’s lawyers during his years as a professor.
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 and becoming a sponsor!
NLG Lawyers Fight Against the Prison Industrial Complex for Over 46 Years
After returning from the 1971 Attica Prison Uprising in upstate New York, Jeff Haas spoke at a rally at the Cook County Jail to pass on the stories of the men inside. Their message was a call to prisoners to stand up against brutality and inhumane conditions, and for people on the outside to support their struggle.
You can read an article about the rally published at the time by the Notre Dame & St. Mary’s Observer.
PLO lawyers took the lead in the legal representation of the Attica prisoners. Following the suppression of the uprising and the killing by law enforcement of 39 guards and prisoners, the PLO lawyers were some of the first outsiders to enter the prison. They worked on several cases in which prisoners sought relief from maltreatment and abuse by guards following the riot. PLO lawyers joined with other attorneys to file a civil case for damages on behalf of the prisoners and against the state correctional system. This case continued for years, and eventually resulted in a settlement for the prisoners of $12 million.
On October 14th, last year, Loyola NLG, the Uptown People’s Law Center, and People’s Law Office hosted a panel/discussion about Attica and the prison strike of Summer 2016.
https://nlgchicago.org/blog/loyola-nlg-the-attica-prison-rebellion-its-legacy-and-the-prison-struggle-today/
For our 80th Anniversary, show your support for the Guild by buying a ticket and becoming a sponsor!
NLG Chicago Condemns Trump Decision to Terminate DACA
The National Lawyers’ Guild of Chicago stands with all immigrants and for immigrant rights.
We stand in solidarity with over 800,000 DACA recipients in the United States in calling for the Trump administration and our congress to withdraw all threats to remove the current protections afforded these young people and instead to move forward in developing an immediate path to citizenship for these Americans. Under the current “phase out” of the DACA protections, anyone whose status expires by March 5, 2018, has until October 5, 2017 to apply for a new permit. This means that almost a quarter of all DACA recipients must reapply.
As lawsuits across the US have stated, including the one joined by the Illinois Attorney General filed on September 7, 2017, the DACA phase-out demonstrates a racial animus. It violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution as well as the Due Process Clause. Devoid of any attempt to create a better and more sustainable way forward for all DACA recipients, the phase-out puts hundreds of thousands of people in danger. This action yet again demonstrates the structural racism and pervasive inequality that dehumanizes, threatens, and degrades members of our community. This inhumane, racist, and illegal action is just one in a long line of recent actions by the administration against immigrants. As movement lawyers, we cannot and will not watch these actions tear apart our communities.
Due to the impossible timeline and obscene expense placed on thousands of DACA recipients to renew their DACA card in the coming weeks, the NLG urges our membership to act now. Please consider volunteering with The Resurrection Project, the National Immigrant Justice Center, or the ICIRR, or donating to You Caring – an organization that helps people pay the $495 filing fee required by the US government.
Finally, NLG urges you to consider joining the NLG Legal Observers. Our Legal Observers, by documenting arrests made at protests, support those protesting this administration’s ongoing war on marginalized communities.
NLG Mobilizes Legal Support as St. Louis Police Make Brutal Mass Arrests Following Stockley Acquittal
September 21, 2017
Contact: King Downing, Mass Defense Director
massdef@nlg.org
Tasha Moro, Communications Director
communications@nlg.org | 212-679-5100, ext. 15
ST. LOUIS—The NLG is on the ground in St. Louis, MO coordinating legal support following thousands-strong protests that have emerged since the Friday acquittal of former St. Louis Metropolitan Police (STLMPD) Officer Jason Stockley, in the 2011 murder of Anthony Lamar Smith. Using tactics reminiscent of Ferguson, STLMPD have arrested at least 170 people— including protesters, three Legal Observers, journalists, and bystanders—since demonstrations began Friday. A few have been released on their own recognizance, and a number are being charged with felonies. The St. Louis NLG Chapter has been leading legal support efforts, operating a legal support hotline and St. Louis Legal Fund, and providing Legal Observers and defense attorneys with the help of ArchCity Defenders and ACLU of Missouri.
The community is charging that STLMPD violated protesters’ rights—arresting people en masse without probable cause—and used excessive force during arrests, with indiscriminate and inappropriate use of tear gas and chemical projectiles.
“These arrests were more like a general ‘sweep the streets’ action than arrests for criminal violations,” said Steven Hoffmann, member of the St. Louis NLG Chapter. “Law enforcement is being carried out in a way that doesn’t protect public safety, but endangers it.”
“The police took people trying to get into their houses, tourists, people out with their children, knocking people off their bicycles, reporters, Legal Observers,” said Kat “Mama Kat” Daniels, a classically trained chef who has been cooking for and feeding protesters. “Thank you, Metropolitan Police Department—what you did was gain us more support. The people are now seeing what we’ve been saying for a long time.”
Disturbing footage of STLMPD tactics immediately circulated on social media. On Friday, police trampled an elderly woman who had been attempting to disperse before arresting her for “interference.” Sundaynight, STLMPD “kettled”—a tactic in which law enforcement encircles a large group before arresting them for failure to disperse—about 100 people, while attacking them with chemical weapons. Shortly thereafter, a group of police chanted, “Whose streets? Our streets!” in a chilling display of intimidation.
This brutal treatment of anti-racist protesters by law enforcement in St. Louis stands in stark contrast to the laissez-faire attitude of Charlottesville PD toward armed, white supremacist demonstrators during the deadly “Unite the Right” rally last month. Such hypocrisy that casts doubt over the violent intentions of the white supremacist far right, while criminalizing and demonizing the anti-racists who resist them, fuels the toxic “many sides” myth championed by President Trump and his following. Even evidence as blatant as Stockley’s declaration that he was “going to kill this mother****r” before the shooting was not enough to convince Judge Timothy Wilson of the officer’s intent to kill. It is this systemic racism that permeates our institutions and routinely fails people of color like Anthony Lamar Smith.
The National Lawyers Guild was formed in 1937 as the nation’s first racially integrated bar association to advocate for the protection of constitutional, human and civil rights.
Photo: Anthony Lamar Smith with his daughter in a family photo.
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.
Oscar Lopez Rivera is Free
I have come home with my head high, and my honor, my dignity and my spirit stronger than the day I was sent to prison
– Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Oscar López Rivera
On May 17, after almost 36 years in U.S. custody for his commitment to the independence and self-determination of Puerto Rico, Oscar López Rivera walked in to the waiting arms of the Puerto Rican people, his sentence commuted in the last days of Barack Obama’s presidency. Greeted with an early morning serenade by the chorus of the University of Puerto Rico, flowers, embraces, tears and media from all over the world, Oscar emerged with a message of unity, grateful for the consensus that resulted in the presidential commutation of his sentence.
Thousands of cheering people of all ages packed the plaza in San Juan to welcome him home. As the country’s finest musicians performed a concert in his honor, families passed their small children over and through the crowd, so they could be photographed with Oscar. His message was firm and loving: We must act together to save Puerto Rico from the U.S. imposed “junta” [Fiscal Control Board] which is ravaging our country; We must support the students whose strike at the University of Puerto Rico has galvanized the movement to stop the draconian economic measures being imposed on the island and to focus on the necessity to decolonize our country.
Oscar is perhaps the most recognized Puerto Rican on the island. When he walks down the street, traffic stops, as people jump out of their cars, rush to his side to hug him, thank him, and take a selfie. When he eats in a restaurant, the wait staff, the chef, the patrons, all embrace him and take a selfie.
Each day of freedom has led him to another welcome event, from the Ecumenical Coalition where he was embraced by the Archbishop of San Juan and bishops from several denominations, to the 36 Women for Oscar who for four years had demonstrated the last Sunday of every month, to the striking UPR students, to the pro-statehood mayor of San Sebastián’s reception in his hometown, to the pro-commonwealth mayor of San Juan’s sponsorship of his art exhibit in the city’s art gallery.
Oscar López Rivera at the Puerto Rican Day Parade and #PuertoRico’s anti-colonial struggle @nyricanscholar #PRDP https://t.co/FoGC4Bx5NQ pic.twitter.com/gmWGBgvefP
— NACLA Report (@NACLA) June 16, 2017
His travels have taken him to Chicago’s Puerto Rican community, the Bay Area, and New York City, Holyoke and Springfield, MA, and Bridgeport, CT where he has been regaled by civic and community leaders, with cultural presentations, and with much love. In New York City, in addition to leading the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, he was honored by the United Nations Decolonization Committee, where, during its annual hearings on Puerto Rico he received standing ovations. He told the Committee:
I have spent five decades serving what I believe is the most just and noble cause any Puerto Rican citizen can serve. Doing it has been an act of love and fulfilling my duty as a citizen. And because I believe that when one serves a just and noble cause, it is never a sacrifice, even if it means giving one’s life doing it. I say this to let people know that for me, serving a just and noble cause has been the most liberating experience I have had, and that in spite of all the horrible things done to me during the years I spent in prison, I have come home with my head high, and my honor, my dignity and my spirit stronger than the day I was sent to prison.
In UN five minutes ago, today June 19, 2017: chant of “independencia para Puerto Rico” pic.twitter.com/31mualNgnS
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) June 19, 2017
During his trips to Chicago, his home for many years, among the many activities he took part in, he spoke at the honorary naming of Oscar López Rivera Way in Humboldt Park and at a diverse welcome home celebration; he was grand marshal of the Puerto Rican Day Parade; and he led a walking tour of institutions in the Puerto Rican community which he helped found more than 40 years ago, which continue to thrive and offer much needed services to the community.
After three decades in prison, Chicago welcomes home Oscar Lopez Rivera with a parade through Humboldt Park pic.twitter.com/G8QrGur8qY
— agitator in chief (@soit_goes) May 18, 2017
His travels will take him to the 2017 NLG #Law4thePeople Convention in Washington, D.C. this August, where he will receive the Arthur Kinoy Award and speak on a panel about political prisoners.
Come celebrate with the NLG’s Puerto Rico Subcommittee, which has for years held the Guild’s laboring oar advocating for his release and the noble cause which led to his imprisonment – the independence and self-determination of Puerto Rico, sponsoring resolutions, workshops and panels – even the NLG’s 2013 convention on the island! Join us in celebrating Oscar this summer: this is an opportunity you won’t want to miss!
Written by Jan Susler
Some more info on Oscar Lopez Rivera’s ongoing work:
Ecumenical group hosts welcome at Puerto Rico church for freed prisoner
Oscar Lopez Rivera Urges UN to Put an End to US Colonialism in Puerto Rico
Here’s the full video of Oscar Lopez Rivera’s Hearing at the UN Special Committee on Decolonization:
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
Chi NLG Welcomes Skye Allen as our LO Coordinator & Matt McLoughlin as our MDC Coordinator
We are excited to announce that Skye Allen is our new Legal Observers Coordinator and Matt McLoughlin is our new local NLG Mass Defense Coordinator in Chicago! Matt will be responsible for responding to requests for criminal representation for activists who are arrested at political actions and pairing them with attorneys. Skye will be making sure that activists get the LO’s they request for their actions and help train new LO’s.
People facing criminal charges as a result of their political activity, including participating in demonstrations or direct actions, should call the NLG Mass Defense Coordinator at 773-309-1198 and leave a message with their name, phone number, charge(s), and date of next court appearance, or email nlg.chi.crimdefense@gmail.com. Matt will follow up with you to explain the next steps for representation. To request a Legal Observer for your next action, or to inquire how you can help the LO Program, contact Skye at chicago.lo.program@gmail.com
Matt is an activist and legal worker who was a main organizer with Occupy Chicago. A former mass defense client of NLG, he also worked in conjunction with NLG attorneys on the NATO 3 support committee. As a co-founder of the Chicago Community Bond Fund, Matt is currently one of the main volunteer coordinators and he plays a significant role within each of the organization’s four committees. Matt has extensive social media, volunteer management, and organizing skills, and he already possesses strong foundational knowledge about Chicago’s court system which are all skills that will make mass defense committee (MDC) work more effective. For the last few years, Matt has often coordinated with MDC’s legal observer teams to track arrestees and organize jail support.
Skye Allen moved to Chicago in 2002 to attend grad school. She was very active in the anti-war movement at the time. She started Law school in 2011 and immediately joined the NLG and became a Legal Observer. She was very active in the Mental Health Movement and protecting the Woodlawn Encampment. She helped professionalize the LO program in anticipation of NATO and became a coordinator of the program. When not LO-ing, she runs a solo practice defending parents against DCFS.
We wouldn’t be able to hire Matt and Skye to do this important work without your support. We also want to thank all of those who came to our May Day Party this year, all of the proceeds went to fund our Mass Defense Committee and Legal Observers Program. Since May 2015, NLG mass defense attorneys have represented over 500 activists facing city ordinance, misdemeanor, and felony charges. Be sure to keep your eye out for next years party, you see us on the streets and in the courts, we want you to join us on the dance floor!
Welcome Skye and Matt! We are grateful to have you!
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