NLG Commemorates 50 Years Since Anti-HUAC Protests
Summer 2010
By NLGSF Board Member Matthew Rinaldi
May 1960. The culture of McCarthyism lived
on, the Cold War continued. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee (“HUAC”)
came to town, scheduling hearings in San
Francisco to ferret out communist influence
in the schools, the local media and the labor
unions.
The hearings were held on the second floor of
S.F. City Hall. Over 30 “unfriendly” witnesses,
suspected of being reds or “red” dupes, were
subpoenaed to testify. HUAC issued 150
“white passes” allowing the bearer and a guest
to attend the “public” hearings. Since the
hearing room could only seat 200, the many
hundreds of students and activists who came
to see HUAC in action were left in the hallway,
blocked behind a wooden barrier near the
Rotunda steps.
Inside, in contrast to the fear and cooperation
prevalent at McCarthyite hearings in the 50s,
witnesses like Archie Brown and KPFA’s William Mandell
were openly defiant. Shouts of “open the doors” erupted from
unfriendly witnesses, while outside demonstrators chanted
and sang, insisting on admission. When the police began
unrolling fire hoses to clear the corridor, demonstrators sat
down, singing the song of the emerging civil rights movement,
We Shall Not Be Moved.
What followed was called a “riot.” Police claimed student
Robert Meisenbach seized a policeman’s club and began
beating him with it. Demonstrators were swept by water from
the hoses, seized by police and dragged down the rotunda
steps to paddy wagons. Over 60 were arrested, charged with
inciting to riot, disturbing the peace, and resisting arrest.
Meisenbach was further charged with felonious assault.
Refusing a plea bargain, he was represented at a jury trail
by an NLG team, which included Charles Garry. The jury
promptly acquitted him of all charges.
HUAC took the extraordinary step of making a film about
the demonstrations, Operation Abolition, meant to warn
the country about the communist plot to abolish HUAC.
Headline, San Francisco Chronicle May 14, 1960
Complete with footage of soaking wet students being dragged
down the City Hall steps, it had the opposite effect. Widely
shown by the John Birch Society and other right wing groups,
it was met by hostile questions from the emerging student
left. It was called “raucous” and “boffo” by Time Magazine
on 5/17/61, which added, “Operation Abolition stirs up some
kind of trouble nearly everywhere it goes.”
May 13th 2010. Over 150 people marked the 50th anniversary
of the anti-HUAC “riot.” Sponsored by the NLG, the ACLU,
the California Federation of Teachers, and the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union, demonstrators gathered at
City Hall, as the SF Chronicle put it, “to remember the day
the police turned fire hoses on them, clubbed them and drove
them down the building’s grand marble staircase.”
That evening NLGSF screened Operation Abolition at
Hastings Law School,
followed by a panel
IN THIS ISSUE
discussion titled The
May Day
US Government and
Military Mom
the FBI’s History
Salena Copeland
of Attacks on Civil
Free Peter Erlinder
Liberties: From
Meet the Intern
Continues on p.7
p.2
p.3
p.4
p.5
p.7
2 | NLGSF News
May Day, Immigrant Rights and the Work Ahead For the NLG
by Marc-Tizoc González, TUPOCC Co-Chair, NLGSF Board Member
Gathering around noon at 24th and Mission, hundreds of people
came together on May Day 2010 to march down Mission Street and
rally before San Francisco City Hall. Growing well over a thousand
strong by the time we crossed Market, the people celebrated our
solidarity across the differences that so often divide working people
in the US.
Originally commemorating the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in
Chicago, where state violence confronted workers striking nationally
for the eight-hour workday, since 2006 the new immigrant rights
movement has renewed the significance of International Workers’
Day in the US. For students of labor history, the past four years have
also reminded us of the importance of immigrants from diverse
European countries to the labor struggles of the late 19th and early
20th centuries—men like August Spies and Harry Bridges—along
with the vitality of women of color like Haymarket survivor and
Industrial Workers of the World co-founder, Lucy Ella Gonzales
Parsons, an indigenous, African and Mexican woman.
While recent May Day demonstrations seem to have reached a zenith
in 2006, May Day 2010 demonstrated the enduring vitality of the
immigrant rights movement and working people’s multidimensional
sense of solidarity and justice, with spirited “Out 4 Immigration”
(http://www.out4immigration.org) contingents festooning the march
with musical performances, street dancing and their ubiquitous pink
triangle “O4I” stickers. While musical performances and numerous
speakers representing myriad organizations rocked the mike onstage, KPFA broadcast various interview-conversations and NLGSF
attorneys legal observed. A small counter-demonstration of nativists
stood across the street behind police barricades.
poetically and powerfully, to declaim and to inspire. Yet, the people
to whom I spoke most directly were those who predominantly
speak Spanish—Latina and Latino working people of a certain age
who might be my cousins, aunts or uncles—parents of relatively
young children. And yet I hoped and prayed that my words would
touch the hearts of all who listened, of those who understood
immediately and those whose understanding increased as they heard
an interpretation from the person standing next to them.
I told them that we are here, that legally educated, socially active
women and men of color, de colores, exist—and that we are
organized at TUPOCC, as The United People of Color Caucus of
the National Lawyers Guild. I asked them to understand that we
are here today because of the work and countless sacrifices of so
many people like them, of our family and friends, of all our elders.
I told them that we are present and ready to work with them, to
collaborate in service of the people, and that we are dedicated to
ensuring that both they and their children flourish and that their
children (should they so desire) also have the opportunity to become
legally educated activists, lawyers for the people.
As we turn toward the second half of 2010 with the ongoing
struggles over sanctuary city policies in SF, Oakland and other
Bay Area cities, it is critical for us to make good on this promise.
Arizona’s recent SB 1070 is easy to decry, and the burgeoning
boycott movement should be implemented completely, so that
we educate ourselves and each other about the corporations
headquartered in that state, along with the myriad corporations that
equally offend our principles—that manifest bureaucratically the
“property interests” which the NLG holds must be understood as
profane before the sacredness of human rights.
Marching amidst the people and then waiting patiently for a turn
atop the stage, it was a day to see the diverse people who make “the
movement” that the NLG desires to serve. Hearing many powerful
voices calling for justice against the many federal, state and local
law enforcement agencies that routinely deploy immigration law to
target families racialized as “Mexican” and criminalized as “illegal,”
I found it significant to hear so many Spanish speakers and equally
significant that so few of the speeches were translated bilingually.
However, with the new “Secure Communities” program of US
Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), our work is cut out for
us at home. The NLG-SF must work hard to link our analyses of the
criminalization, racialization and economic exploitation of today’s
immigration enforcement, and to present a compelling vision for
challenging and remedying this injustice in all the dimensions of
being, including sex, sexuality and disability.
As the grandchild of immigrants who left México in the early 20th
century during the years of the Mexican Revolution, and one who
is not fluent in Spanish but conversant in Spanglish, I kept my eyes
and ears open, imagining how I could contribute meaningfully to
the event, as a legally-educated activist of color, a Chican@ lawyer
and queer/colored/feminist able-bodied man, as an executive board
member of the NLG-SF and a co-chair of TUPOCC, the NLG’s
United People of Color Caucus.
We must braid together our legal knowledge with the people’s
understandings of the oppressions they suffer under color of
law, and together we must break the anti-immigrant movement’s
retrenchment of racism-veiled-as-nativism, its attempted sleight of
hand regarding race and immigration in order that we “safeguard
and extend the rights of workers, women, farmers, and minority
groups upon whom the welfare of the entire nation depends,” as the
NLG constitution holds.
What I ultimately said was predominantly in English because that
is the language in which I am most confident in my ability to speak
NLGSF News | 3
Sussman Defends Military Mom
by NLGSF Intern Tamara Otten
benefits through Veterans Affairs.
Sussman is happy with the outcome: “I feel good about how the case
went. It was frustrating to be dealing with a military command that
was trying to punish my client at any cost. Remember, although there
were Army regulations which would have solved this situation better
for both the Army and Alexis, the Army seemed to downplay that
the way they dealt with the situation involved removing a very young
infant from his mother.”
Alexis Hutchinson and Kamani
Alexis Hutchinson, a single parent of a ten month old infant, Kamani,
and a cook in the U.S. Army, was scheduled to deploy for Afghanistan
this past November. With little choice, she never went and faced
military charges as a result. With the help of NLG board member
Rai Sue Sussman, Hutchinson was able to resolve the matter with
minimal consequences. Though the story received a fair amount of
media attention, there was still a lot the media missed.
Hutchinson had initially prepared for the necessary childcare.
Her mother, Angelique Hughes, initially agreed to take care of
Kamani while Hutchinson completed her one year tour of duty
in Afghanistan. Days prior to deployment, Hughes informed
Hutchinson that she would not be able to follow through because she
was feeling too distressed.
After being threatened with a court martial, and with a day to go
before deployment, she contacted Courage to Resist (an organization
that supports war resisters within the military). Aware of the legal
help the NLG can provide through the Bay Area Military Law Panel,
Courage to Resist contacted Sussman and explained Hutchinson’s
situation. Sussman felt so compelled by Hutchinson’s story that
she started to work with Hutchinson an hour before her scheduled
departure. Since Hutchinson was not able to provide a caretaker for
her son while she served a one-year tour in Afghanistan, Hutchinson
deliberately missed her flight. As a result, Hutchinson was arrested
under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and charged with
Article 86 (Absence without Leave), Article 87 (Missing Movement),
Article 91 (Insubordinate Conduct Toward Warrant Office,
Noncommissioned Officer, or Petty Officer), and Article 92 (Failure
to Obey Order or Regulation).
On February 11th, Hutchinson was given an “other than
honorable” discharge and a reduction to private entailing a
cut in some of her Army benefits; but she will not be incarcerated.
Hutchinson could seek an appeal for a discharge upgrade or for
According to the army commander, Hutchinson was offered
alternative child care through a veterans group, but Hutchinson
declined. Sussman and Hutchinson disagreed with the offer because
that was never Hutchinson’s intention, and they were concerned
about Kamani being placed in foster care after Alexis deployed.
Sussman acknowledged that most media outlets ignored many
possible implications. For example, it might have been difficult
for Hutchinson to regain her son after returning from Afghanistan.
On the other hand, the possibility of criminal consequences for
the commander, if the child had been placed in foster care against
Hutchinson’s wishes, might seem less likely but ought to be an open
question.
Despite these omissions, there was still a lot of attention given to
the Hutchinson case, including stories in the New York Times and
major television news media. “One thing that still intrigues me is
that the situation touched off a flurry of debate, nationwide, about
how mothers are treated in the military, and how single parents in
the military are treated,” said Sussman. “I was focused on helping
my client, but I also had the opportunity to communicate valuable
statistics to the nation, and pose questions that had not been
previously addressed by the mainstream press.”
Rai Sue Sussman
first became a Guild
member in 2003, at
Lewis & Clark Law
School, in Portland.
She was part of the
student chapter that
in 2004 founded the
Lewis & Clark GI
Counseling Project,
when she became
involved in the
Military Law Task
Force. She recently
joined the MLTF
Rai Sue Sussman. Photo by Megan Books.
steering committee.
She is also on the
legal defense team for the San Francisco 8 case and has been on the
board of the San Francisco NLG chapter since 2008.
4 | NLGSF News
Being Creative and Fostering Community
An Interview with NLGSF Board Member Salena Copeland
I would say the best part about my job is the fact that I am
encouraged to think creatively every single day about the
struggles and barriers that legal services attorneys face. There’s
a metaphor about an eagle and a mouse—that the eagle can see
far and wide, but can’t see details on the ground very well, and
the mouse sees every blade of grass that she walks by. I feel that
my job is a bit of both, and I love switching between the two.
NLGSF Board Member Salena Copeland (and Kitty Kitty)
Tell us about the LAAC. What is your position there? What do
they do? Why are they important?
The Legal Aid Association of California was formed about
25 years ago to be the unified voice for legal services
organizations—to advocate on their behalf for better laws
(for the organizations and their clients) and better funding, to
provide training for legal services attorneys around the state,
and to coordinate many statewide efforts.
I’m the Program Attorney at LAAC. I lead most of our
programmatic work, though our organization is very teamfocused, so I’m almost never the only person on a project. Right
now I am working with other members of our staff to plan a
statewide meeting for senior legal services providers.
I’ve led a webinar for law students on how to interview clients.
Webinars are online-seminars that folks can sign on at the
beginning, get their MCLE, and sign off. My training is just
a basic “how to interview clients” for those students who
might have never interviewed a client. But, again, that work is
important, to train students how to put their low-income clients
at ease, how to work with interpreters, and how to get a relevant
story that can support a legal argument.
Another recent project that takes a lot of my time relates to a
Recruitment and Retention study that we published this May.
Many people leave legal services purely for financial reasons.
They love the work, but can’t afford to raise a family, pay off
education debt, buy a house, or support their parents. Because
now is not the best time to ask to raise legal services attorneys,
we’ve been looking at the other recommendations from the
report dealing with work-life balance and burn-out.
My background, before coming to LAAC, was very varied. I
worked exclusively for public defenders and Prisoner Legal
Services while in law school, but also spent a year at the
Stanford Community Law Clinic, serving low-income folks in
employment, housing, and criminal records clearance matters.
After law school, I worked with the Stanford Criminal Justice
Center on an evaluation of Fresno County’s Juvenile Behavioral
Health Court, interviewing youth, their parents and guardians,
mental health professionals, lawyers, and probation officers
about their court. That led me to do a rural fellowship with
the Public Interest Clearinghouse, taking law students and
lawyers into rural communities to provide free legal clinics in
partnership with the local legal services org. And that led me to
want to do more statewide work to have a bigger impact.
Also, interestingly, LAAC has had a lot of NLG law students as
interns over the years. I have a Guild-affiliated intern now, and
am happy to hire more in the future.
I take it you don’t practice law there. What advice do you have
for law students or recent grads who may be facing a difficult
job market for legal careers?
I don’t have clients here at LAAC, but I think of all legal services
attorneys as my clients. I’m their advocate at multiple levels, so I
ultimately serve all low-income Californians seeking legal aid.
I wanted to be a public defender, and I graduated at the exactly
wrong time to do that. No one was hiring, and budget cuts just
kept coming. Instead, I found a different path, and I absolutely
love my job.
I spoke at Progressive Law Day last year about how to get a
fellowship, and I am always happy to talk to NLG students
about how to do that. I didn’t have a packaged idea ready for
the traditional Skadden/EJW round, so after I finished my time
at Stanford, I applied to the Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps
Legal Fellowship for the rural project at PIC. There are a lot
of fellowships out there if people are willing to move or try a
different area of law for a few years. I have to admit that mine
had horrible pay because it was tied to the AmeriCorps pay
system, but my organization put in a lot of matching funds
Continues on pg. 6
NLGSF News | 5
Free Peter Erlinder!
Peter Erlinder,
a former NLG
President, current
Professor of
Law at William
Mitchell College
of Law in St. Paul,
MN, and lead
defense counsel at
the International
Criminal Tribunal
for Rwanda
(ICTR) was
arrested in Kigali,
Rwanda on May 28, 2010. On June 7, 2010, his application for
bail was denied, and he was transferred to Kigali Central Prison
until his release on medical bail on June 17th.
On May 23rd, 2010, Professor Erlinder traveled to Rwanda to
defend leading opposition party presidential candidate, Victoire
Ingabire Umuhoza. Accused of “genocide ideology” Victoire
Ingabire Umuhoza, was jailed for a speech she gave at Rwanda’s
genocide memorial where she called for the remembrance of
all victims (despite ethnicity). She was later released on bail.
Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza also called for accountability of all
criminal perpetrators of genocide crimes and crimes against
humanity as well as justice for all victims during Rwanda’s 1994
genocide period. In the course of his representation of Victoire
Ingabire Umuhoza, Professor Erlinder was arrested by Rwandan
authorities on May 28th, 2010, five days after he began working
on the case.
Although no indictment has been issued, the bail decision
indicates that Erlinder will be charged with genocide ideology
under a unique Rwandan law that frames criticism of the
government as genocide minimization, ideology, denial, and
“spreading rumors capable of endangering the security of the
Rwandan people”, crimes punishable by up to twenty years in
prison. Professor Erlinder has never denied the genocide of
over eight million people in Rwanda in 1994.
The imprisonment of international human rights attorneys
arrested in the course of legal duties bears dangerous
implications for the Rwandan courts. The U.S. State
Department waited a full week before calling for Professor
Erlinder’s release, while U.S. And international organizations
rallied behind him.
As of Monday, June 21, Professor Erlinder has been released on
medical bail and has left Rwanda. He is scheduled to return to
Minnesota on Tuesday, June 22nd. While this appears to be a
positive development, the charges still stand. Our work has not
ended, so please stay informed and continue to offer support.
To learn more or to donate to Erlinder’s legal defense fund,
please visit:
www.nlg.org/news/free-peter-erlinder and
www.freepeternow.org
Radical History Bike Ride
Over 20 participants joined NLGSF board members Rai Sue
Sussman and Michael Flynn on our first Radical History Bike
Ride, on June 13th. The group learned about the radical history
of San Francisco from the 1800s through the more recent
past, visiting sites of protest and dissent relating to workers’
rights, immigrant rights, civil rights, women’s rights, and
environmental struggles. Among many sites the group stopped
at Misson and Steuart streets, the site of “Bloody Thursday”
(the 1934 General Strike turned bloody when the SFPD attacked
the striking workers) ; 50 Fulton, one of the longest occupations
of a federal building; Montgomery and California Streets the
site of the first labor strike in San Francisco where a group of
Chinese masons organized for higher wages in 1852. Please
check our website for future events.
Radical History Bike Ride Photos by Megan Books
6 | NLGSF News
Being Creative and Fostering Community
(continued from page 4)
to increase the pay, and my law school has a great LRAP
program.
That’s related to one of the big pieces of news in the past
few years for people who want to serve low-income clients
at legal services organizations. The College Cost Reduction
and Access Act (CCRAA) provides for loan forgiveness and a
lower payment plan for legal services attorneys. Many schools
have great programs now, and some organizations also have
LRAP. Before someone writes off legal services in favor of
high-paying law firm jobs, she should really consider what
makes her happy, how she can use her law degree to help fight
injustices rather than making corporations richer, and what
she really needs to live.
Do you consider yourself an activist, and if so, what issues are
you most passionate about?
Yes, I am an activist. I am passionate about many issues, and
I try to live my life in a way that doesn’t compromise those
beliefs. I try not to consume too much, buy as much fair
trade as I can, buy organic and local to decrease toxins in the
earth and decrease fossil fuels needed to transport food to
me, I don’t patronize places I know have bad labor practices,
I don’t buy products I know or suspect were produced in
sweatshops... If you consider yourself an activist, you just try
to be consistent in decreasing suffering and injustice. For me,
that means I may spend extra to buy from ethical companies
that don’t exploit humans and non-human animals.
I’m passionate about all areas of legal services because I think
that every low-income person in California should have
access to a system that constantly shuts them out. I’m also
passionate about animal rights issues.
How do you think animal rights fits into the work of an
organization that is explicitly committed to “human rights”?
In law school, I was the Co-President of Women of Stanford
Law, a Co-Chair of Stanford Animal Legal Defense Fund,
Speakers Co-Chair of the Environmental Law group, and CoChair of Stanford NLG. I was also very active in a number of
other groups, but those were the three for which I served as
leadership. I see all that as work very connected. I planned
a lot of events that multiple groups would co-sponsor. As a
law student, I looked at ways that animals, the environment,
women, and poor people or people of color were constantly
exploited and abused by certain dominant systems.
You went to Stanford. What was that experience like and
what advice do you have for NLG affiliated students there?
My experience at Stanford was so affected by my classmates
and the professors I had that it’s really hard for me to
generalize for students there now. I’m still very close with
my two best friends, whom I bullied into re-starting an NLG
chapter there in 2004 after the election. They and a handful
of others helped me survive law school, and I feel a lifelong
connection to some of the people whom I relied on every day.
I had some classmates whom I truly despised, and I couldn’t
understand how their privilege and education had blinded
them to what happens in the real world. I was a public
school latch-key kid, attended a public university (Hook ‘em
Horns!), and only chose Stanford because of their amazing
LRAP and promising public interest program. I don’t regret
that decision, but some days were really hard, and I cried in
the office (or on the shoulder) of Diane Chin, now the first
Associate Dean for Public Service and Public Interest Law
multiple times. I joined Bob Weisberg’s “Downwardly Mobile”
club, as he called the students he thought would be going to
do good, rather than make money, until he realized I didn’t
come from a place to be downwardly mobile from. There
were other professors and clinical instructors whom I loved
and still love.
My advice to Stanford students is the same as my advice to
any student—make real friends, find professors with whom
you can connect, take clinics, do externships, SHARE NOTES,
act like a real person, and take classes you are interested in
taking, not classes that people say you “have to take for the
bar.” I emphasize the sharing notes because that is what makes
a community—the willingness to share. I have a friend whose
computer crashed in our 1L year. She sent out a panicked
email right before exam time, begging for notes. I barely knew
her at the time, but shared my notes with her, not caring that
we were supposed to be in some sort of competition when
classes are graded on a curve. She recently told me that she
always remembered that I was the first to respond.
So survive the three years intact by always choosing the
happy, healthy, and ethical path.
NLGSF News | 7
NLG Commemorates 50 Years Since Anti-HUAC Protests
Continued from pg. 1
HUAC to Islamophobia.”
The panel was moderated by NLG Executive Board
member Rai Sue Sussman. It included
demonstrators Becky Jenkins, Marshall Krause (now with
the ACLU), Irving Hall and NLG member Zahra Billoo of
CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Becky Jenkins discussed what brought her to the
demonstration in 1960 - parents who struggled for
workers’ rights and against racism, who along with
Becky herself were members of the Communist Party.
She expressed the need to openly state that part of the
struggle against HUAC was a struggle to support the
right of the U.S. Communist Party to exist and function
without constant fear.
Marshall Krause was a research attorney for the California
Supreme Court when he went to the demonstration
during a lunch break. He recalled being arrested by the
police for no apparent reason. Until that point in his life
he “had no idea these representatives of the law could be
so lawless,” an insight which changed his politics and his
life.
U.S. society has always needed and used an “enemy” to
mobilize patriotism and conformity, whether that enemy
was “reds” in the past or Muslims today.
Zahra Billoo brought the question of fear to the present
day, and discussed how over 3 million Muslims have lived
in fear in the United States since the 9/11 attacks. She
pointed out that Muslims are now profiled and targeted
in almost every aspect of their lives, are interrogated
frequently without lawyers because “they are even afraid
to have a lawyer.” She compared the Muslim community
in the U.S. today to the experience of Japanese-Americans
during WW II, profoundly distrusted but “not yet”
interned.
A lively discussion period concluded with Victor Garlin
noting that the 1960 demonstration succeeded because it
unified many different groups with the call to defend the
civil rights of everyone.
Irving Hall also addressed the issue of fear, and noted that
Meet Law for The People Intern Zahra Mojtahedi
I recently graduated from UC
Berkeley with a B.A. in Political
Science. As a student, I created and
facilitated an undergraduate course
on Iranian music and I was active
with an Iranian student organization
and the table tennis club on campus.
My continued involvement as an
adult literacy tutor through the
Berkeley Public Library has also
been one of my most rewarding
experiences.
Initially, I became interested in the
NLG because of the organization’s
commitment to making legal
resources available to those in need.
I am truly grateful for the hands-on
experience I am gaining working on
legal issues and learning from the
legal community here.
I eagerly look forward to further
engaging with the various
committees and projects at the
NLGSF.
Save The Date!
Far West Regional
Meeting
Meet other progressive law students, attorneys
and legal
workers from the left coast.
Saturday, August 28
2010
9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Location to be announced. For more information
contact Renee Sanchez [email protected]
National Lawyers Guild
San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
558 Capp Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
PRST
STD
US Postage Paid
Oakland, CA
Permit #2508