The EJC is a forum to discuss anything and all the work our members do around protecting the rights of individuals and movements to defend the environment.
The Guild has provided legal support for environmental and animal rights movements for decades. When the FBI began investigating these activists in the late 1990s, the NLG provided lawyers, created the Know Your Rights resource Operation Backfire, and set up a national Green Scare hotline. Our legal support for environmental activism continued through the many years of resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline, as well as from the earliest days of the #NoDAPL demonstrations at Standing Rock. Guild members traveled to North Dakota to assist Water Protectors and Indigenous legal workers, eventually forming the Water Protector Legal Collective. NLG members have also been actively involved in the resistance to oil and gas pipelines across the country, including Louisiana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
The Guild is a member of Protect the Protest, a coalition of environmental and legal organizations dedicated to challenging the repressive tactics used against environmental movements, specifically Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). We have analyzed the legal trends in environmental struggles, both those that repress these movements and the strategies used by movements to address climate change.
