Member Recap, March 11, 2021

 


Welcome to the rebranded Member Recap, formerly known as the Member News Digest, where you can catch up on NLG news from the last two weeks.

Be sure to keep up with us in real time on social media, on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook


 

Upcoming & Recorded Events, Programs, & Campaigns

Week Against Mass Incarceration (WAMI2021) Student Organizing Recap

Keep an eye out for our upcoming WAMI2021 recap, where you’ll be able to find a comprehensive summary of the work our law school chapters did for their WAMI programming around the theme “Abolition and Beyond,” along with any links to resources, recordings, and articles put together by the students.

National Office ACTION ALERTS: Support Mumia-Abu Jamal and Steve Martinez

Political prisoner and jailhouse lawyer Mumia-Abu Jamal has tested positive for COVID-19, and water protector Steve Martinez has been jailed for a second time after resisting a grand jury. The National Office, alongside the Free Mumia campaign, the Water Protector Legal Collective, and the Support Steve Martinez campaign, released the following action guide for things you can do to demand justice for Steve and Mumia: CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ALERT.

WED, MAR. 17, 12:45 PM EST: Abolishing ACS: Pushing Child Welfare Beyond Reform

Join the Brooklyn Law School NLG chapter in a panel featuring speakers from the Parent Legislative Action NetworkBronx Defenders, and the Movement for Family Power. Email NLG@Brooklaw.edu for more information.

 


 

National, Committee, and Chapter Statements and News

NLG Detroit and Michigan Chapter and Detroit Will Breathe Get City of Detroit to Dismiss Baseless Counter-Suit Against BLM Protesters

The Michigan NLG Chapter played a critical role in getting the City of Detroit to DISMISS their baseless counter-suit (that would have cost taxpayers $200,000) against protesters with Detroit Will Breathe during the uprisings for Black lives over last summer.

NLG International Committee, Loyola Chicago Chapter, and National Office Sign Onto Palestinian Student Solidarity Campaign

The National Office is joined by the International Committee and Loyola Chicago Chapter in a “global call to urge the immediate freedom of imprisoned Palestinian students and the protection of Palestinian students’ right to education, right to political expression and involvement and right to determine their own futures.”

Read the full list of demands and co-signed organizations here.

NLG Supports Jailhouse Lawyers Speak’s August and September Shut ‘Em Down Demonstrations

The NLG is proud to support the upcoming Shut ‘Em Down demonstrations at jails and prisons, organizing around the horrendous impact that COVID-19 has had on incarcerated people. In the words of the JLS press release: “Lives could have been saved if America was on the path of Abolition. We must struggle harder to close prisons, jails and to free people from the grips of American prison slavery. This is all stated while recognizing that we must develop effective strategies to have the billions of taxpayers dollars used to grow the prison industrial slave complex (PISC) redirected to the communities.”

Read more about the demonstrations, and find ways to support JLS, here.

From the NLG blog: The Case for Abolition, for Skeptics

The final piece in the policing blog series is written by Kira Kelley, NLG Anti-Racism Committee Co-Chair and one of the proponents of the 2020 policing resolution. The piece makes the case for the abolition of policing and offers examples of individuals and projects taking power and resources away from police and prisons to create non-carceral, non-punitive alternatives.

You can find the whole article here.

From the NLG blog: People’s Tribunals, Holding Power to Account

For the NLG blog, former NLG President (and current Legal and Advocacy Director at Project South) Azadeh Shahshahani writes about people’s tribunals, “forums of justice set up by social justice movements and organizations to adjudicate cases often against states and state-backed corporations.” The full article can be found here.


NLG In The News

3/11/21 | Capital & Main Commission Considers Freedom From Police Brutality a Human Right

Read this great coverage about the recent the recent International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence against People of African Descent in the US held by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the NLG, and the NLG International Committee:

“It’s almost impossible to hold the United States accountable,” says international human rights attorney Kerry McLean. “It won’t submit to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, for example, and there’s only so far you can take matters against the U.S. in the Inter-American system. Though the U.N. as a structure is problematic, you use it in the ways that could potentially benefit you as an activist.”

2/2/21 | Clark County Bar Anti-Blackness and Immigration Law

NLG Las Vegas member Martha Menendez writes: “Immigration law is by nature a practice of exclusion; its very premise based on elastic borders that, though they may change over time, exist for the sole purpose of separating one predefined category of human being from another.”


Jobs

Members-Only Job Board

Are you searching for a movement-related legal or organizing job OR internship?

A reminder that all current NLG members have access to our Members-Only job board! This resource includes open positions for attorneys, paralegals, organizers, legal workers and law students.

Check it out at nlg.org/job-board (NOTE: you must be logged in with your nlg.org account to view this page). Have a job or internship listing you’d like to share with fellow Guild members? Send it to jobboard@nlg.org.

Posted in Member Recap, News.