The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) was founded in 1937 as an association of progressive lawyers and jurists who believed that they had a major role to play in the reconstruction of legal values to emphasize human rights over property rights. Website HERE
The National Lawyers Guild strongly condemns the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designation of Samidoun as “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization,” and the listing of long-time Palestinian-Canadian activist Khaled Barakat “as associated with terrorism.”
Done in coordination with the government of Canada, this designation will have a broad chilling effect on Palestine solidarity work in North America. Above all, it is designed to disrupt the unprecedented global tidal wave of support for the liberation of Palestine. The crack down on our constitutionally protected speech is a worrisome development at any moment in time but in particular right now as social movements confront the US- backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, the Israeli war on Lebanon, and the general global trend toward fascism.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) has a proud legacy of defending first amendment rights, standing against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Cold War repression during the McCarthy era. From representing the Hollywood Ten and the Rosenbergs to supporting the Black Liberation Movement and Landback struggles waged by Indigenous peoples, the NLG has fought tirelessly against government repression—an effort we continue today as we confront the latest iteration of McCarthyism with claims of terrorism being the new anti-communism. Established in 1937, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is the nation’s oldest and largest progressive bar association and was the first one in the US to be racially integrated. Our mission is to use law for the people, uniting lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people by valuing human rights and the rights of ecosystems over property interests.
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