Despite High-Profile Crackdowns, Occupy Camps Hold Fast with Legal Help

In the face of ongoing police attacks on Occupy encampments, many occupations persist with the continued legal support of National Lawyers Guild members nationwide. In Boston Thursday, a Superior Court judge extended the two-week-old temporary restraining order (TRO) obtained by the NLG, barring the city from evicting Occupy Boston. Urszula Masny-Latos, Executive Director of the NLG’s Massachusetts Chapter, said of the decision: “If the main issue that the City of Boston has regarding Occupy Boston is ’safety,’ then the City should work with Occupy and create an acceptable and workable plan for addressing all health and safety-related issues, rather than seeking the ultimate closure of the Dewey Square encampment.” Boston members of the Guild’s Mass Defense Committee saw the need for legal action when the occupation, having survived a massive raid and two months of increasing cold, faced a wave of brutal evictions and revelations of national coordination by city officials and possibly federal law enforcement. Elsewhere, occupations continue outside of the national media spotlight having successfully avoided or challenged police confrontations, often with the help of the NLG. In addition to affirmative constitutional rights challenges, the NLG is coordinating legal activists to provide Occupy protests with Legal Observers^®, criminal defense, legal briefing, legal research, and often, around-the-clock legal advice. In Florida, NLG attorneys will argue for a TRO on behalf of Occupy Pensacola in a federal court hearing this afternoon. In Augusta, Maine a judge has upheld an TRO filed by NLG members on November 28. The TRO gives Occupy Augusta an additional week of legal protection from eviction. Another hearing is scheduled for Monday, December 5. In Nashville, Tennessee Guild members were victorious in convincing a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction after filing a TRO. Further, the judge found that no probable cause existed in 55 protest arrests and ordered that all the charges be dropped and all records relating to the arrests expunged. In Albany, New York, arrested occupiers came to court with NLG representation and the chief district attorney dropped all charges. The following is a partial list of other locations where NLG members are providing legal support to ongoing Occupy protests:

Phoenix, Arizona; Tucson, Arizona; Sacramento, California; Hartford, Connecticut; New Haven, Connecticut; Washington, D.C.; Orlando, Florida; West Palm Beach, Florida; Bosie, Idaho; Pocatello, Idaho; Des Moines, Iowa; Bloomington, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Bangor, Maine; Portland, Maine; Lansing, Michigan; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Buffalo, New York; Raleigh, North Carolina; Cleveland, Ohio; Houston, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; Olympia, Washington.

The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 and is the oldest and largest public interest bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has members in every state.