Announcing the People of Color Travel Stipend for the Seattle Convention

The annual NLG Law for the People Convention is coming up in October. The Seattle Chapter welcomes Guilders back to the sites of the 1999 WTO protests -- and now, as then, it's important for people of color to be there in numbers that truly represent our collective role in social movements. For that reason, the NLG and TUPOCC are happy to begin the application process for the 2009 POC Travel Stipend for the Seattle convention.

You can find the online application at http://bit.ly/travelstipend09 -- please share the link with anyone who might be interested. Every year we meet folks who had no idea there was a stipend available to help them attend the convention. Let's get the word out!

The stipend covers transportation costs only and is open to legal workers of color, law students of color and recent law grads of color. Is that unfair to white people who need funding, too? The NLG has recognized that it is problematic that, historically, so few people of color participate in the convention. The stipend is one way of changing that problem and plays a significant role in the NLG's commitment to ending institutionalized racism in this organization.

First plans for NLG Convention in Seattle

The annual National Lawyers Guild Law for the People Convention will be held in Seattle October 14-18, 2009. We just received a tentative schedule, including two workshops co-sponsored by TUPOCC. We are working with our comrades to present Deportation Defense: Representing Immigrant Detainees in Bond Hearings (co-sponsored by TUPOCC, NLG San Francisco Immigration Committee, and National Immigration Project of the NLG) and Women and Migration (co-sponsored by TUPOCC and the Anti-Sexism Committee).

Here are some highlights of the tentative schedule:

FRI October 16

8:30-9:45AM Workshops I

• Comprehensive Immigration Reform
• Out of Africa
• Counter Recruitment Strategies

1:30-2:45PM Workshops II

• Representing Immigrant Detainees in Bond Hearings

SAT October 17

1:00-2:15PM Workshops III

• Immigrants and the Military
• Transgendered and Incarcerated

2:30-4:00PM Major Panels

• Mass Defense: Police Occupation of Communities of Color

SUN October 18

10:45AM-12:00PM Workshops IV

• Responding to Immigration Law Enforcement Abuse
• Gaza
• Women and Migration
• Enhancing Right of Workers to Organize

Facing Race

Responding to a call by TUPOCC founding co-chair Renée Sánchez, and organized by USF 3L and NLG-SF Student Vice President, Aliya Karmali, about ten TUPOCC members and our friends attended the Applied Research Center's Facing Race: A National Conference in downtown Oakland, California this past weekend.

Attending plenary panels and workshops from Thursday's opening keynote by Sherman Alexie to Saturday's closing plenary on Race and the Global Economy, TUPOCC was present and representing radical "queer, colored" legal activism, as we connected with our friends and allies from other organizations dedicated to interracial justice, as a critical dimension of the people's intergenerational movement toward social justice.

While there were many interesting panels and workshops, I found two workshops particularly helpful to my interests in helping us build TUPOCC and creating community in Oakland.  

BYOB: Build Your Own Blog was led by Liza Sabater of CultureKitchen.com and Chris Rabb of Afro-Netizen.  Beyond an introduction to blogs and blogging, Liza and Chris provided great information about technologies that could substantially help us represent our racial justice work like Utterli (mobile audio/video sharing) Shoebox (photo management) and Drupal.

That last software, an open source package (as in GNU and the free software movement) seems particularly promising in helping us build TUPOCC's infrastructure beyond our previous and present attempts with Yahoo! Groups, the TUPOCC website and our Legal Activists of Color blog.  Liza particularly indicated that Drupal has a module that can realize my idea of literally mapping TUPOCC's membership, by integrating Google Maps with a membership database that we could create based on the 141 folks in our Y! group.

While I have yet to download Drupal and likely won't start learning it until mid-December, I am very excited about its potential for TUPOCC and the several other organizations for which I volunteer, e.g., Latina & Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc., the East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association, the Berkeley Law Foundation and the National Latina/Latino Law Student Association (NLLSA).

It's been a while since I've focused my energies on non-law and non-text learning and culture making, and I miss photography and film-making a great deal.

The second workshop I attended, Creating a Culture of Racial Justice, was powerfully synergistic.  Moderated by Melanie Cervantes of Dignidad Rebelde and Taller Tupac Amaru, this workshop also featured Favianna Rodriguez, co-founder del mismo taller, Tumi's Design and the Eastside Arts Alliance; and DJ Phatrick and Samantha Chanse -- popular educators, community builders and radical cultural workers of color who are (or in the recent past were) based in the SF Bay Area.

Melanie's prompts and questions were particularly stimulating and merit mentioning three of the most memorable:

• How do people create a racial justice culture to support social justice movement(s)?
• How do folks who have become artists inspire and materially support others who desire to make art but feel unable to do so vis-a-vis their racial subordination and other forms of oppression? 
• How can artists serve as visionaries for the racially just world we want to create?

By themselves these questions may not seem revolutionary to some, but witnessing Favianna, Melanie, Patrick and Samantha share how they have made their lives and their art into living visions of racial, immigrant, gender and sexual justice was deeply inspiring.

I have lived, loved and worked hard to develop mi conciencia (a radical racial, political, sexual and spiritual awareness of my place in people's history), but to study law I stopped making photographs and films, dancing, journaling and writing poesía.  While I tried to remain aware of the importance of "in xochitl, in cuicatl, flor y canto, flower-and-song" (art, poetry, dance, singing), my daily practice of making art basically stopped, as I focused on learning the law, reading critical legal scholarship and organizing students.

Witnessing Favianna, Melanie, Patrick and Samantha, reminded me of the crucial necessity to make soul and face as our elder compañera Gloria Anzaldúa and other radical lesbian Chicana poetas, artistas, scholars y filósofas have written.

While directly serving the people as a community lawyer in West Oakland's Homeless Action Center is a powerful practice of transgression against class norms and teaches me daily about solidarity across the many dimensions of power and identity (especially interracial and gender justice), Creating a Culture of Racial Justice reminded me that I also need to regularly practice love-inspired art-making -- in order to feel joyful and strong enough to serve nuestra lucha por justicia para el pobre (our struggle for justice for the poor), as the old La Raza Law Students Association slogan goes.

I have a lot more to write but more has already been reported.

I will end by mentioning four mujeres with whom I spoke briefly on the last day of Facing Race.

First, I briefly saw Tiny, aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, the fierce and fearless poverty scholar and co-founder of San Francisco-based POOR Magazine / Poor News Network.  Tiny mentioned that POOR is on the move to the Mission District, after having resisted its threatened eviction, naming "development" for the 21st century colonization that it recapitulates and organizing the people to take back the land by holding a ceremony that calls upon the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

I also caught a glimpse of Evelyn Sanchez of the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (BAIRC), whom I spoken with briefly at Friday afternoon's plenary on The Race Debate: Challenging Colorblindness with Race Conscious Solutions.

Next, I took the opportunity to speak with Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez, who was book-signing at the AK Press table and whose sixth book, 500 Years of Chicana Women's History / 500 Años de la Mujer Chicana, was recently published.  

I first read Betita's work while surviving law school: as I did at least once a semester, I left campus and got lost until I found myself in a bookstore, seeking words to nurture my spirit against the profound alienation of formal legal education.  

In San Francisco's Mission District, I came across De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century, which introduced me to Betita's profound writings on mujerista and youth activism from New Mexico a California and across much of the twentieth century.  I had most recently seen Betita across the table during La Raza Centro Legal's 35th anniversary dinner earlier this year, and when I mentioned it, she told me that she recalled how I was sitting to her right and asked about my work in West Oakland and the meaning of my middle name, Tizoc.

As she carefully composed the brief inscription she wrote on the book's frontispiece, I waited, kneeling before the table and feeling ever more deeply the significance of our brief momento conjuntos.  I thought of my dad y abuelitas and my mom y tías and knew I was exactly where I should be.  

Afterwards, thanking her and moving on, I was pleased to share the book con alguna de nuestras compañeras, Teague Briscoe (an El Paso homegirl and president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild - San Francisco Bay Area Chapter).

Finally, I had the fortune of seeing Tommy Escarcega, another El Paso Tejana and long time community activist who was organizing in support of the voting rights of people in county jails this past election.  

We first met four or five years ago when she knocked on the door of La Raza Law Students Association at the UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), saying she had heard there were Raza law students and asking for our support of her work in Proyecto Common Touch, which she founded to protect the due process rights of convicted women on parole or in custody.   

Since then I've seen La Tommy a few times over the years, like when her project was based at Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland's Fruitvale District.  We spoke briefly about her recent work on the voting rights of people in jail, and I introduced her to other TUPOCC xicanas as the conference ended.

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As I've tried to show, the ARC's Facing Race was a powerful meeting of what Liepollo L. Pheko, of The Trade Collective, dubbed "the manys" who remain committed to the compact for racial justice.  I encourage you to read more reporting on Facing Race.

Muchismas gracias a Renée y Aliya for motivating and organizing TUPOCC to represent at Facing Race.  We did good outreach work in identifying allies and nurtured relationships con nuestr@s compañer@s across the law / non-law divide.

As Betita wrote, "Thank you for your good work, ¡Adelante juntos!"

NLG-LA, ACLU, NILC Sue for Release of Government Documents Related to Local Immigration Raid

National Immigration Law Center v. Dept. of Homeland Security: Groups Sue for Release of Government Documents Related to Local Immigration Raid

LOS ANGELES — A coalition of civil rights lawyers is suing federal immigration officials who have illegally failed to release information about reported racial profiling, intimidation and denial of access to counsel by workers detained during a huge workplace raid in Los Angeles.

On Tuesday, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the ACLU of Southern California and the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles filed a federal lawsuit asserting that the government’s lack of response violates the Freedom of Information Act. The three groups first requested basic information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security nearly seven months ago. The government has failed to release a single document.

“The government has squandered an opportunity to allay community concerns about the manner in which it is conducting immigration raids. If the government truly believes that it is conducting these raids in a humane and lawful manner, it should release the documents this lawsuit seeks,” said NILC staff attorney Karen Tumlin.

NLG ISSUES WHITE PAPER ON TORTURE LIABILITY

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CALLS FOR SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO INVESTIGATE BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS AND LAWYERS WHO WROTE TORTURE MEMOS



ISSUES WHITE PAPER ON TORTURE LIABILITY



Contacts:

Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, marjorie@tjsl.edu; 858-204-3565

Jeanne Mirer, NLG International Committee, mirerfam@earthlink.net; 313-515-2046



New York. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) calls on Congress to appoint a Special Prosecutor, independent of the Department of Justice, to investigate and prosecute high Bush officials and lawyers including John Yoo for their role in the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.



The NLG has issued a White Paper explaining why the memos, which purported to give objective legal advice, subject all those involved to prosecution under international and U.S. domestic law. This includes people who ordered the torture, approved it or gave advice to justify it.



Guild President Marjorie Cohn testified on May 6 before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the House Judiciary Committee, that some lawyers in the Department of Justice were "part of a common plan to violate U.S. and international laws outlawing torture."



The 14-page White Paper details the ways in which the lawyers, including Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, and William Haynes, counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes. The lawyers said that the Department of Justice would not enforce federal laws against torture, maiming, assault and stalking. "Just because the statute says," John Yoo explained in a recent Esquire interview, "that doesn't mean you have to do it."



Professor Cohn told the congressmen it was "reasonably foreseeable" the lawyers' advice "would result in great physical and mental harm or death to many detainees"; more than 100 have died, many from torture. Torture, like genocide, slavery and wars of aggression, is absolutely prohibited at all times. No country can ever pass a law that would allow them.



Professor Philippe Sands, a British international litigator and author of the new book, "Torture Team," also testified at the congressional hearing. He said that after his extensive interviews with many Bush officials, including John Yoo, "it became clear to me that the Administration has spun a narrative that is false, claiming that the impetus for the new interrogation techniques came from the bottom-up. That is not true; the abuse was a result of pressure and actions driven from the highest levels of government."



It was recently revealed that Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft met in the White House and personally oversaw and approved the torture by authorizing specific torture techniques including waterboarding. President Bush admitted he knew and approved of their actions.



"They are all liable under the War Crimes Act and the Torture Statute," Professor Cohn testified. "Under the doctrine of command responsibility, commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief, are liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them, and they did nothing to stop or prevent it. The Bush officials ordered the torture after seeking legal cover from their lawyers."



The National Lawyers Guild calls on Congress to appoint a Special Prosecutor, independent of the Department of Justice, to investigate and prosecute the high officials of the Bush administration and the lawyers who advised them, for their roles in misusing the rule of law and legal analysis to justify torture and other crimes.



The White Paper can be read at www.nlg.org/news/statements/White Paper - Yoo hearing.doc





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NLG chapter censored at DePaul University over forum discussing

*Please circulate widely*

Defend Free Speech in Chicago!
DePaul College of Law Cancels Chicago Forum on Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq
Forum to be held tomorrow, Friday, Sept. 15 -- act now!

Succumbing to the pressure of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism in the U.S., the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago cancelled an ANSWER Coalition forum scheduled for tomorrow night, Friday, September 15. The room for the forum was reserved by the National Lawyers Guild chapter at DePaul. The National Lawyers Guild and ANSWER-Chicago were informed of the cancellation this afternoon, a little over 24 hours before the event.

Your help is needed to make DePaul abide by the right to free speech. Act now. Flood the Dean of DePaul University Law School, Glen Weissenberger, with phone calls and e-mails. Click here to send a letter to the Dean of the Law School. His phone number is 312-362-5146.

The title of the forum is "Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq: U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and the forces resisting it." Prominent Arab-American activist, Suzanne Adely, and the Western Regional Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, Richard Becker, are scheduled to speak at the forum.

The university used three different excuses in its attempt to shut down the forum, claiming that the room was not big enough, that they would have to hire extra security and that there was an error on ANSWER's leaflet for the event. These excuses are hollow at best. Clearly, the cancellation was politically motivated and directed at silencing the subject matter of the forum.

Come to DePaul regardless

The ANSWER Coalition calls on all antiwar forces in the Chicago area to be at the Downtown DePaul campus at 25 East Jackson at 7pm -- no matter what.

By canceling the forum, the law school is attacking the free speech rights of people in Chicago and around the country and giving in to the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hysteria propagated by the Bush Administration, the right-wing and the ruling elite in this country. Supporters of the U.S.-Israeli war seek to attack, mute and drown out any voice that speaks the truth about the brutality of the Israeli war, apartheid and occupation.

Demand that the cancellation of the forum be rescinded. Demand that the DePaul University College of Law honor the free speech rights of Arabs, Muslims and everyone. Help make sure that the voices of struggle and justice continue to be heard. Below is the information to the Dean of Law School. You can also send a letter to him through the ANSWER Coalition website by clicking here.

Dean of Law School
Glen Weissenberger
(312) 362-5146
gweissen@depaul.edu

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