National Lawyers Guild
From Wikinfo
- See also: Critical Views of National Lawyers Guild
The National Lawyers Guild is a progressive Bar Association in the United States "dedicated to the need for basic and progressive change in the structure of our political and economic system."[1] Its members include lawyers, law students, paralegals, legal secretaries, "jailhouse lawyers", and other legal workers. It was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association and has several local chapters across the country as well as a number of Committees and Projects. The NLG web site lists the following aims:
- to eliminate racism;
- to safeguard and strengthen the rights of workers, women, farmers and minority groups, upon whom the welfare of the entire nation depends;
- to maintain and protect our civil rights and liberties in the face of persistent attacks upon them;
- to use the law as an instrument for the protection of the people, rather than for their repression.
Since its inception, the NLG has been noted for its support of liberal and left-wing causes. Currently, the NLG opposes the PATRIOT Act, corporate globalization, the World Trade Organization, and has called for the adoption of "the Plan of Action from the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance." The NLG also helps to train and provide legal observers for political demonstrations. On the international front, the NLG has supported Palestinian rights and a number of other causes.
Marjorie Cohn, a law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is President of the NLG as of October 2006.
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History
At its founding in 1937, the National Lawyers Guild was the nation's first racially integrated bar association. Among the NLG's first causes was its support of President Roosevelt?s New Deal, which was opposed by the American Bar Association. NLG assisted the emerging labor movement, and opposed the racial segregation policies in the American Bar Association and in society in general.[2]
During the McCarthy era, it was alleged to be a Communist front organization. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly tried to get successive Attorneys General to declare the NLG a "subversive organization," but without success.[3]
The NLG was also involved in the American Civil Rights Movement from an early date, organizing a 1947 conference on the subject of lynching. This continued into the 1960s with the creation of the Guild's Committee for Legal Assistance. This era also saw NLG involvement in anti-war (including draft resistance) and anti-poverty efforts.
Membership
Full membership in the NLG is open to lawyers, law students, and legal workers (including legal secretaries, legal investigators, paralegals, and jailhouse lawyers). Prior to the 1960s, membership was only open to lawyers. Members of the Guild now include labor organizers, tribal sovereignty activists, civil liberties advocates, civil rights advocates, environmentalists, and many other progressive cause advocates involved in some aspect of legal work.
According to journalist Chip Berlet, a paralegal member of the NLG:
- In the 1950s the National Lawyers Guild refused to purge its members who were members of the Communist Party. Today there are Guild members who are cadres in a variety of communist groups along with a majority of unaffiliated members. As a paralegal investigator, I joined the Guild in the 1970s. I found an example of an organization that tried hard to incorporate the participation of cadres within a democratic structure. [...] The cacophony at some meetings makes Star Wars seem like a minimalist film. I have chaired committee meetings with debates featuring cadres from Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist, and Maoist groups, along with Marxists, anarchists, libertarians, and progressive independents interacting with a preponderance of reluctant Democrats all intertwined with multiple alternate identities as lawyers, legal workers, labor organizers, tribal sovereignty activists, civil liberties and civil rights advocates, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and people of color.[4]
Funding
The NLG is a dues-paying mebership organization, and various projects have also received funding from the Open Society Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and other funders.
Notes
- ^ "National Lawyers Guild web site". http://www.nlg.org/.
- ^ Erlinder, Peter. "National Lawyers Guild; History". National Lawyers Guild. http://www.nlg.org/about/aboutus.htm.
- ^ Schrecker, Ellen (1998). Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Little, Brown, pg. 224. ISBN 0-316-77470-7.
- ^ Berlet, Chip. "Abstaining from Bad Sects: Understanding Sects, Cadres, and Mass Movement Organizations". Resist, Inc.. http://www.resistinc.org/newsletter/issues/1999/12/berlet.html.
External links
- National Lawyers Guild web site
- NLG National Immigration Project
- NLG Center for Democratic Communications
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "National_Lawyers_Guild" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lawyers_Guild, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
