On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, thousands of people converged on Washington, D.C. to see Barack Obama sworn in for his second term as president. Some of those people were celebrating the inauguration. Some of them were protesters.
A report analyzing the policing of demonstrations at the 2012 Republican and Democratic national conventions.
This year’s RNC and DNC presented a demanding set of circumstances for NLG protest support efforts. Both conventions were held in cities with no NLG chapter and with few or no NLG members. Drawing on the expertise, time, and passion of members across the country, as well as a phenomenal group of new student members from Charlotte Law School, Mass Defense Coordinator Abi Hassen and a team of volunteers provided Legal Observers® at every major protest and 24-hour legal support hotlines in both Tampa and
Charlotte.
Tampa
Four members of Occupy Cleveland have been sentenced over the past two weeks [3] after pleading guilty to terrorism-related charges for their involvement in an FBI-concocted plan to bomb the city’s Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge on April 30 in advance of planned May Day demonstrations across the country.
"We are under the impression that the whole country is a free speech zone," said Michael Zytkow, a 26-year-old organizer for Occupy Charlotte. "We were bothered by the idea of any government-designated playground."
Carol Sobel, a lawyer from Santa Monica, California, who co-chairs the Mass Defense Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, asked, "Who'd want to use it? You're talking to yourself."
Her group works to push back against what it views as government attempts to stifle dissent.
Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, reveals the dark tactics at both conventions to quiet protests outside, including the use of “free speech zones”.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) will be providing legal support to protesters throughout the course of the Republican and Democratic national conventions. Undoubtedly the most visible part of this effort will be our teams of trained Legal Observers® (LOs), who will attend demonstrations across Tampa and Charlotte carrying notebooks and sporting bright green caps. These observers have become a common sight at protests over the past few decades, but we often hear questions about their role, so we figured we'd explain the basics here.
What LOs are for:
