Bruce is a criminal defense and immigration attorney in Minneapolis, MN. He has been involved with the NLG since 1992 as a law student and was past national president of the NLG from 2000-2003. Bruce’s political work focuses on immigration justice issues, mass defense work representing political activists, and international solidarity work.
Jeff is a retired Pro Bono Attorney who practiced law in a small public interest civil law firm in Boston, MA for over 43 years. He was a founding member while in law school in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s of a revived chapter of the National Lawyers Guild in Cambridge, MA. He has been an active member of the Massachusetts Chapter since then, serving as Co- Treasurer of the Chapter for over 20 years, and has become an active participant in its litigation committee for the last 7 years working on police accountability issues and public record requests. He joined the NLG Foundation over 10 years ago, and has been its Co- Treasurer, and is glad to participate in its continued financial growth and support of the NLG’s activities.
Judy is a retired community-based attorney in the Boston area who has been an active Guild member since she entered law school in 1973. She was on the board of the Mass Chapter for many years and served as co-chair. She’s also been a regional and national NLG vice president. Judy is a long-time member of the NLG International Committee and has organized numerous human rights, solidarity, and election monitoring delegations to Latin America.
Barbara joined the Guild in 1967. After graduation from law school she went with four others to establish the NLG Military Law Office in Southeast Asia, defending GI’s who were resisting the war in VietNam. She later represented tenants and “displaced homemakers” in the Bay Area, and farmworkers in Salinas and El Centro, California. In 1983 she was elected President of the Guild and moved to NYC to serve as President and then Executive Director until 1987. Since then she has been Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, and Assistant Director for Strategic Campaigns with the AFL-CIO. She now lives in Oregon and serves on the national board of the Working Families Party and the Sunrise Movement.
David joined the Guild in 1969 when in law school. He worked for the Guild’s Military Law Office in Japan in 1973 and 1974 and, on his return, was a founding member of the Military Law Task Force. He has been on the editorial board of the NLG Review (formerly Guild Practitioner) for many years and was the editor in chief for several. He has been a member of the advisory board of the National Police Accountability Project since its founding and is a past president of the Guild. He has practiced law in Alabama since 1978 and is vainly trying to retire. He is presently co-chair of the Alabama NLG chapter and was, for two years, chair of the board of CAIR Alabama.
Tim is a mostly retired attorney practicing in Amarillo, Texas and Denver, Colorado. He escaped Amarillo before Trump sent us Kacsmaryc to end civil rights cases in the Texas panhandle. He now spends his time reviewing medical malpractice files. He was a naive country boy when he went to law school and the NLG found him at the Norman, Oklahoma convention in 1975. He has remained a member ever since. He has served as a National Vice President and Regional Vice President for both the Southwest Region and Texhoma. He is most grateful for the many friends he has made as a member of the Guild.
Rebecca discovered the Guild in college when taking a human rights course from long-time member and Professor Ann Fagan Ginger. In 1999, she revived a long-dormant student chapter at USF Law School and has continued her commitment to the Guild ever since. After graduating law school, Rebecca worked for Human Rights First in New York where she advocated for civil and human rights post-9/11. She then opened her own practice in Los Angeles litigating civil rights cases and defending tenants against eviction. She currently holds a position as the Senior Litigation Attorney for the City of Santa Monica’s Rent Control Board. She has served the Guild as a Law Student Organizer, Legal Observer, Board Member (and Co-President) of the Los Angeles Chapter, Far West Regional VP, Member of the NEC, and currently the NLG Foundation. She lives with her husband, three kids and two dogs in West Los Angeles, California.
Bobby Shukla is an employee rights lawyer in San Francisco. She has been a Guild member since law school in the early 2000s. She has served on the Board of the Bay Area Chapter for over a decade collectively (in two separate terms). She currently serves as the Vice President of the Bay Area Chapter.
Ría Thompson-Washington (she/they/elle) is an anti-racist activist, Afro-Latine, nonbinary Queer feminist living on unceded Nacotchtank known as Washington, DC. They have spent the last twenty years, organizing and training Black and Latine people working on various campaigns in the Labor movement to Occupy Wall Street, and more recently, providing legal support to the Movement for Black Lives.
In 2015, Ría joined the National Lawyers Guild as a law student member. As a member of the DC NLG chapter, Ría is a legal observer, coordinator, and trainer. Currently, they serve on the NLG’s Mass Defense Steering Committee, as senior co-chair of The United People of Color Caucus, and on the Executive Council of the NLG. In 2021, Ría was awarded Legal Worker of the Year by the National Lawyers Guild for their work training legal observers across the country during the Uprisings of 2020 that erupted after the murder of George Floyd and Hulu made a short documentary about Ría’s work as a legal support organizer and trainer.
Ría founded Rialistic Strategies, a boutique consulting firm that develops creative and strategic campaign plans and provides organizing strategies with training curricula for base-building organizations and their members. Before starting their consulting firm, Ría worked at the Redress Movement (Digital Organizing Director), Center for Popular Democracy (Senior Manager, Voting Rights & Democracy Campaigns), Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Senior National Organizer, Voting Rights Project), and NAACP Legal Defense Fund (Paralegal/Litigation Assistant).
Sandra became a Guild member during law school in 2008 and currently works in attorney training and development. Formerly an NLG Chicago board member from 2012-2018, Sandra served as the chapter’s Treasurer from 2015-2018, and also held roles as co-chair of the Next Gen and CLE Committees, Mentorship Program Administrator, and member of the Annual Dinner/Fundraising Committee. She has served as an NLG Foundation board member since 2017.
Suzanne is the first Arab-American president of the National Lawyers Guild, co-chair of the International Committee and member of the bureau of the IADL. She has worked as an organizer & human rights and labor advocate in New York, Chicago, Egypt, India and elsewhere.
Joelle (they/she) is an immigration attorney based out of unceded Lenape land aka Jersey City, NJ. They have been involved in the NLG since 2014 as a law student and currently serves as its Treasurer. Joelle has previously served as a Student National Vice President and a National Vice President of the NLG. Their political work focuses on intersectional immigrant justice, international solidarity work, and liberation-rooted shadow work and child-rearing.
