I Heart the National Lawyers Guild!

[G_j]

:loveya: >Green Hats!


http://www.nlg.org /

“We, as lawyers, are fighting to keep the First Amendment alive in the legal arena; the people are fighting to keep the First Amendment alive in the streets, in their homes, in the factories, in the legislative halls, in the political arena.”

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Lawyers Guild plays key role in ‘Occupy’ movement

http://www.downtownexpress.com/?p=3974

BY ALINE REYNOLDS | Throughout Occupy Wall Street’s more than five weeks of demonstration, legal witnesses have been monitoring the activity of both the NYPD and O.W.S. to keep tabs on who might be violating the law.

The men and women, sporting bright green caps, are known as legal observers. They are volunteers for the National Lawyers Guild charged with observing O.W.S. activity in hopes of deterring police violence.

“Whatever happens, there’s a neutral witness,” explained N.L.G. volunteer Moira Meltzer-Cohen, a law student at the City University of New York School of Law.

“We document it, but we don’t get involved.”

While it’s important to preserve their neutrality, Meltzer-Cohen and the other observers are also supposed to interact with arrestees so that N.L.G. can offer free legal services to the protestors once they’re released from jail.

“It’s kind of a paradox — we have to not get arrested, but we sort of have to head toward the chaos when it happens, because we have to get arrestees’ names,” said another legal observer who requested anonymity.

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Meet The Lawyers Keeping an Eye on Occupy Wall Street

http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/PubArticleTAL.jsp?id=1202519324836&Meet_The_Lawyers_Keeping_an_Eye_on_Occupy_Wall_Street&slreturn=1
"Someone needs to get over to Bank of America."

The shout—aimed at a handful of National Lawyers Guild members gathered around a folding table—came from a group of some 200 people bunched together in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, a grassless plaza that is the headquarters of the month-old, anti-corporate demonstration known as Occupy Wall Street.

"I'll go," said Zainab Akbar.

Clad in a gray pantsuit and neon-green baseball cap emblazoned with the words "Legal Observer: National Lawyers Guild," Akbar hustled toward the intersection of Liberty Street and Broadway, where dozens of chanting, placard-waving protesters lined the sidewalk in front of the bank branch. A pack of New York City police officers stood nearby. As more demonstrators joined the throng, the number of police officers on the scene also increased.

By the time Akbar, an unemployed lawyer who recently completed a fellowship with an American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Michigan, crossed the busy intersection, the marchers had begun to disperse and make their way back to the park. What might have turned into a tense standoff had ended before ever really starting.

"Whenever there’s interaction between police and protesters," she said, "we need to see what's going on."

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[patrice]

1. K&R

[G_j]

2. k

:bounce: