2021 NLG Leonard Weinglass Fellowship Recipient: Z Williams

The National Lawyers Guild Foundation and NLG National Office are excited to announce the recipient of the 2021 Leonard I. Weinglass Memorial Fellowship, Z Williams from the NLG Colorado Chapter!

The Weinglass Fellowship is awarded annually to a NLG member and recent law school graduate to spend 10 weeks working on a project in line with the mission of the NLG. As a Weinglass Fellow, Z will be collaborating with the NLG Federal Repression Task Force to develop a Federal Repression Toolkit for NLG Chapters. The toolkit will be a resource for Guild members and will include popular education-based content on the history and threat of federal repression, frameworks for Guild chapters to disseminate information about federal repression including know your rights and movement security, and tools for lawyers and legal workers to identify, track, and challenge repression efforts.

Z (they/them) is a recent graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Prior to law school, Z spent 20 years as a grassroots organizer working at the intersection of racial, gender, disability, and economic justice. They have operated legal hotlines, done solidarity work with political prisoners, and supported activists facing criminal charges for their resistance efforts.They are an active organizer with the Colorado chapter of the NLG and the current Southwest Regional Representative on the NLG National Executive Committee. Z is a working parent to four small children.

Please join us in congratulating Z!

Thanks to a generous bequest from the Weinglass estate, the NLG Foundation has established a fellowship for recent law graduates to work for the NLG on a specific civil rights or civil liberties project. Previous fellows have created projects to develop an environmental justice legal defense plan, assist with parole and sponsorship for LGBTQ+ migrants, reunite American citizen-children with undocumented parents, support community bond funds, and fight a new maximum security prison planned for construction on a former coal mining site.

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