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By admin,

(Download a PDF of the letter.)

May 9, 2012

Village Voice
36 Cooper Square
New York, New York 10003

Re: April 25, 2012 “Bail is Busted: How Jail Really Works”

To the Editors,

The National Lawyers Guild – New York City Chapter (“NLG-NYC”) welcomes The Village Voice’s coverage of the daily injustices of the NYC bail system, especially for poor and working class people of color. However, your article contains several factual errors and misconceptions about the work of the NLG-NYC and the invaluable contributions of the Legal Aid Society both in representing Occupy Wall Street arrestees and in the day-to-day efforts to represent indigent arrestees.

First, the NLG-NYC has been working collaboratively with the Legal Aid Society to represent Occupy demonstrators in criminal proceedings almost since Occupy began last fall. Attorneys from the Legal Aid Society have been working tirelessly on defending Occupy arrestees. While the NLG-NYC is proud of our own work, we are equally proud of our colleagues at the Legal Aid Society who have also represented Occupy arrestees while at the same time continuing their great work on behalf of the many hundreds of people arrested each day in New York City. They go above and beyond the call of duty every single day on behalf of all of their clients, most of whom are targets of a racist NYPD that engages in predatory policing against African-American, Latino, Asian, and Arab communities through its unconstitutional stop-and-frisk program. It was erroneously reported that indigent criminal defendants are not provided with legal counsel, when in fact, indigent persons are constitutionally guaranteed a right to counsel in most criminal cases and are indeed provided with counsel through the Legal Aid Society and other institutional providers.

Second, NLG-NYC attorneys, legal workers, law students, and jailhouse lawyers work in virtually every field of law, not only the mass defense of demonstrators. Our over 800 members work in day-to-day criminal defense (both in private practice and within institutional providers such as the Legal Aid Society), civil rights, disability rights, police misconduct, and family, housing, public benefits, immigration, military, environmental, and labor and employment law. We also engage in public education. The NLG-NYC’s Street Law program has facilitated dozens of “Know Your Rights” workshops to youth of color and provided to them information and resources on handling encounters with the police. Since the revelations last October by the Associated Press about the NYPD’s illegal domestic surveillance program against Muslim communities, the NLG-NYC’s Muslim Defense Project has conducted similar workshops in mosques and masjids throughout the city. NLG-NYC members are also fighting for the freedom of Black Liberation Movement political prisoners incarcerated for decades in New York prisons (including Sundiata Acoli, Jalil Muntaquim, Herman Bell, Robert Seth Hayes, and David Gilbert) and for the freedom of all political prisoners (including our organization’s national Jailhouse Lawyer Vice-President, Mumia Abu Jamal). As an organization dedicated to the principle that “human rights are more sacred than property interests,” the NLG-NYC stands in solidarity with and in support of all movements for racial, social, and economic justice in NYC and beyond.

Sincerely,

National Lawyers Guild – New York City Chapter Executive Committee

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By Chapter Coordinator,

March 19, 2012

The Mass Defense Coordination Committee (MDCC) of the National Lawyers Guild – New York City Chapter condemns the violent mass arrest of over 90 peaceful protesters in Zuccotti Park on March 17th, 2012. Over 1,000 people lawfully assembled in Zuccotti Park as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement’s six-month anniversary celebration. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) surrounded the park, declared the park closed, cleared the park of all demonstrators, and again surrounded it entirely with barricades. The park remained closed through early Monday afternoon.

Witnesses consistently described the clearing of the park as a “police riot.” Photographs by news journalists reveal scores of people being beaten, many while in handcuffs. Video footage on Twitter and elsewhere shows police smashing a medic’s head into a glass door with such force that the plate glass fractures. At least 6 people were hospitalized. In a now internationally publicized incident, a young woman had an epileptic seizure as she was being arrested, and was further injured by police as she lay handcuffed and convulsing in the street. Many protesters were released in the middle of the night, after having been held for over 20 hours without being given any food. Many were held for over 24 hours, and then released without being charged, while others had all charges entirely dismissed. Many were still waiting to be arraigned more than 40 hours later.

The MDCC calls for a broader recognition of NYPD’s policies and practices, which routinely subject many residents to excessive force and spurious arrest. Communities of color, transgender people, the homeless, those with physical and mental health disabilities, and religious minorities continue to be subject to indiscriminate arrest and hostile policing by the NYPD. That policing, which includes the NYPD’s stop and frisk practices and the infiltration, surveillance, and entrapment of Muslim communities, is less frequently witnessed by the media, but is a constant reality for the most vulnerable residents of New York City. The NYPD’s egregious behavior toward protesters this weekend is merely one highly visible instance of their larger program of the arbitrary and brutal behavior that disrupts the health and welfare of communities city-wide. Such alarming behavior on the part of law enforcement must end.

We demand attention to these repressive, hostile and violent practices, including a federal investigation into the policies and practices of the NYPD under the auspices of Commissioner Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg. Without critical scrutiny of NYPD policy and practice, the safety of New York City’s residents is more compromised than protected by the police.

The National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.

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By admin,

The vitality of the NLG-NYC Street Law Team depends on donations made by supporters like you! We are currently raising funds to keep our Street Law Team Coordinator position funded for the next 12 months. Help us reach our goal of $2,750 to ensure we are able to respond to requests by schools, community groups, churches and other organizations to facilitate Know Your Rights workshops for young people!

Learn more about what we do in this video we created with students from BronxConnect‘s Alternative to Incarceration Program and filmmaker Todd Chandler:

Please support us by donating online below or via mail:

Learn more about the Street Law Team and how to request a Know Your Rights workshop for your group!