The National Lawyers Guild (NLG-SFBA) Human Civil Rights Committee (HCRC)
Human Civil Rights Committee Exploratory Meeting
Please contact our colleague Abdul Jalil al-Hakim (legal@amwftrust.org) if you are interested in joining us for an exploratory meeting to assess the idea of initiating a new committee focused on an integral approach to issues related to human rights and civil rights, in the tradition of the NLG’s long standing work as a space for the strategic convergence of movements in defense of our most fundamental rights.
Camilo Pérez-Bustillo
Executive Director
(510) 394-4101
In doing so we are engaging in a membership drive aimed specifically to increase the membership in that Committee to include Civil Rights Lawyers, Groups and Organizations; Multi Cultural/Interfaith Religious Institutions; Unions and union members; advocates/activist; educators/students; and concerned Community members vested in the betterment of the lives of those whose Civil Rights are being compromised the greatest. Potential new associate members would apply to ALL the NATIONAL movements: Federal, State and Local, Political and Legislative, Senate and House members advocacy; Constitutional, Human and Civil rights organizations; Black Lives Matter; Defund the Police Reform; Social Justice Reform; Anti-Systemic Racism organizations; Voters Rights organizations; Immigration; Climate Justice; Healthcare; Wealth Inequality; Education; Gun Violence; Hunger and Food Insecurity; Abortion-Pro Choice Rights; LGBTQIA; School-to-Prison Pipeline; Homelessness; Abuse movements; Color of Change, James Rucker, Van Jones, Colin Kaepernick, Malcolm Jenkins, Anquan Bolden, AND ALL community-based organizations, activist, advocates, service providers, donors, volunteers, nonprofit groups, in collaboration with ALL hunger, health care, housing, violence, abuse, counseling, senior, youth, women, children, civil rights, employment, and education response agencies- to thousands of men, women and children living in San Francisco/ Oakland Bay Area in California to help transform NOT JUST the lives of people in need, BUT ALL PEOPLE.
There was once a time back in the late 1960’s and 1970’s where the NLG, specifically in the Bay Area, LEAD THE WORLD in the fight for Civil Rights with so many GREAT lawyers whose strategy, tactics and style was not only imitated, but taught as a tool for success!
With Roe v Wade Women’s Rights overturned; George Floyd Police Reform Bill stalled; John Lewis Voter Rights Bill locked out with counter laws to deny equal voting rights surging across the country; LGBTQ rights headed for reversal; Immigration Bills ended; DACA Act denied; Enviornmental, Criminal, Prison and Social Justice reforms disbanded; WITH ALL HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER ATTACK, WHEREIN AMERICAN SOCIETY HAS BEEN SET BACK OVER 100 YEARS, URGENCY IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT.
This illustrates that ALL CIVIL RIGHTS are under sever threat of being rolled back 100 years!, Unless and until there is complete Judicial Reform revoking immunity for Judges, Police and Prosecutors to END Grand Systemic and Endemic Corruption, that maintains and continues the Jim Crow administration of justice serving White Class and Privileged Bias, YOUR LIVES, BLACK LIVES, ALL LIVES DON’T MATTER!
The dramatic long standing effects of the Jim Crow administration of justice is characterized by tyrannical Federal, State, and Local Governments; Corrupt Federal, State, and Local Government Judicial and Law Enforcement Agencies; Rampant Fraud and Corruption; Class, Race and Caste Societal Wars; Dehumanization of the Minority and Poor Masses; Financial Collapse; Famine, Disease; Food Insecurity; Affordable Housing Drought; Sky Rocketing Unemployment; Social Unrest; Environmental Disaster; other characteristics representative of a Cataclysmic Decline in Society as the Rich Top 2% Just Get Richer at everyone else’s expense!!
With the WHOLE WORLD protesting the reversal of Roe v Wade and the integrity, or lack thereof, of the Supreme and lower Courts, this is a HUMAN concern that will only grow in importance everyday!
Pro-Democracy Human Civil Rights policy leaders around the world, have a very difficult challenge.
This is not a regular challenge, nor traditional contest of the kind you and I have ever had in the past, deciding whether we should have this kind of legal Human Civil Rights policy for a movement or that kind of Human Civil Rights policy for a movement. Our society has become increasingly a contest between liberal democracy — continued and expanded liberal democracy against fascism, political violence, illiberalism.
We are fighting against forces that want to and are increasingly gaining control over our ability to have a Human Civil Rights policy be something that can be thrown out with elections if they don’t like the results or answer they get.
If you are in the position of being in the pro-democracy, Human Civil Rights movement, here is your challenge. On the one hand, you have to call out those threats to pro-democracy, to Human Civil Rights, because it’s incredibly important to do so. You have to be outraged because you should be outraged. But if that is all you are offering, you are NOT effectively providing Human Civil Rights policy for any effective solutions, much less a movement! YOU ARE NOT meeting those MOST in need, nor voters where they are in the concerns that they have in the lived terrain of their lives.
The challenge for pro-democracy forces effectively providing Human Civil Rights policy with any effective solutions, and a movement is, how can our pro-democracy forces beat back this threat of authoritarianism- fascism, political violence, illiberalism? Not simply by condemning it, which people have gotten very good at, but actually, outcompeting it.
Outcompeting it for hearts and minds. Outcompeting it so that those MOST in need feel their cause is more immediate to ALL peoples’ lives than fascism and authoritarianism does. Those MOST in need FEEL more exuberant and transcendent than fascism and authoritarianism does. Offers more belonging than fascism and authoritarianism does. It offers more of effective ANSWERS, SOLUTIONS, RESOLUTIONS of their legal Human Civil Rights bewilderment and confusion in a confusing age than fascism and authoritarianism does.
Right now, the pro-democracy movement is not succeeding, I would even argue LOSING GROUND, at outcompeting fascism. I am making a plea having spent the last 50 years studying, working on the ground developing a formula that we learn from the Bay Area’s glorious past being LEADERS in the pro-democracy, Human Civil Rights policy movement to beat back this authoritarian tide.
The American midterms had two very distinct systems of democracy and illiberal competing against each other. And I’m not just throwing that out. The majority of the Republican candidates ran on the platform are all election deniers, democracy deniers. That’s an actual fact.
As the election neared, we saw that the latest polls showed in the congressional ballot that the average support for both Democratic candidates and Republican candidates was at about 46 percent. In other words, they’re just about tied in this point. Which is a little different than what we heard a couple of months ago. We heard a couple of months ago that the stories of hope, the stories of democracy working, the stories of legislation were beginning to show up for the Democrats. But that faded out.
Where do WE go from here?
YOU CAN LEAD THE WAY!!
Respectfully,
Abdul-Jalil
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