As we look at the state of the world today, we as Guild members know that it is not just fate that has dealt a mean blow to some people of the world more than others, but rather specific political, economic, and development policies that have favored the rich over the poor.

In Haiti, it was not just a devastating earthquake that caused hundreds of thousands to die, but also a history of neoliberal policies (which are also reflected in current US relief efforts) that caused such immense consequences.  Blaine Bookey, Development Director for the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and an attorney with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, Haiti, details this history and goes on to describe an initiative of Guild lawyers to coordinate a just legal response.

Mass Chapter member Brook Baker, from Northeast-ern University School of Law and Health GAP (Global Access Project), who has been active in campaigns for universal access to treatment, prevention, and care for people living with HIV/AIDS, explains how International Monetary Fund policies have intensified the global health crisis in general and the AIDS pandemic in particular.

Turning to the plight of Palestinians, NLG Vermont member James Marc Leas documents that Israel’s massive attack in Gaza a little over a year ago – Operation Cast Lead – was not needed to stop Hamas rocket fire, as the rocket fire had ended months earlier as a result of a negotiated ceasefire.  Instead, he argues, it was a war of aggression.

Looking at ways to address some of these policies, Susan Scott, co-chair of the NLG International Committee and board president of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute (of which Ann Fagan Ginger is director emeritus), describes two ways that Guild members and others can use international human rights treaties to address inequities here in the US, first by undertaking campaigns to get the US to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and second, by participating in the Universal Periodic Review process.

Lastly, Mass Chapter board member Bonnie Tenneriello profiles board member Jeff Feuer as part of our continuing series on Mass Chapter sustainers.

-      Judy Somberg     -

(l-r) Newly elected NLG Board Members Thom Cincotta and Chrissy Foot with Tony Benningfield.

At the March Annual Meeting, the Massachusetts Chapter of NLG elected its new Officers and Board of Directors.  Barb Dougan and Neil Berman were re-elected to serve as Chapter Co-Chairs;  Patricial Cantor and Jeff Petrucelly were re-elected as Treasurers.  In addition to re-elected members (Laura Alfring, Tony Benningfield, Hillary Farber, Jeff Feuer, David Kelston, Mary Lu Mendonça, Halim Moris, Judy Somberg, Bonnie Tenneriello, and Carl Williams), the Board is thrilled to welcome its new members: Thom Cincotta (Political Research Associates), Christine Foot (federal attorney), and Stephen Hrones (Hrones & Garrity).

Our guest speaker, Jerry Tisme (sitting right) of GBLS discusses with us "Haiti's Long Road to Recovery."

We would like to thank Ilana Greenstein, Myong Joun, Eleanor Newhoff, and Carl Williams, who stepped down from the Board, for their invaluable service and contribution to the Guild.  The Chapter has benefited enormously from their service on the Board.  Thank you.

And in case you missed the March event…

“Free Speech For People, Not Corporations”

John Bonifaz (center) speaks at the March “NLG Presents ...” event.

Jeff Clements (left) continues conversation during the Happy Hour with (l-r) Jeff Petrucelly, Judy Somberg, and Bonnie Tenneriello.

To the full room at Kennedy’s Midtown, JOHN BONIFAZ, of Voter Action and Director of the Free Speech For People Campaign  and JEFF Clements, General Counsel of the Campaign, addressed the US Supreme Court’s ruling that allows unlimited corporate spending in elections and talked about a campaign to return the Fist Amendment to the people. (To learn more about  the campaign, visit www.freespeechforpeople.org.)

(Photos by Sara DeConde).

By Brook Baker

The IMF is deeply implicated in the intensification of the AIDS pandemic and in the weakness of health systems to respond to it. The IMF imposed structural violence on developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s through neoliberal and macroeconomic reforms that exacerbated individual and communal vulnerability to infection and dismantled already weak health systems. Those same policies, now repackaged but fundamentally the same, continue to prioritize low inflation, constricted government spending, robust currency reserves, and prompt repayment of debt at the expense of needed investments in health and more expansionary, pro-growth, and job-creation economic policies.

Although this is not the place to document the entire story of failed post-colonial “development,” it is appropriate to trace some of the key impacts of neoliberal and macroeconomic policies promoted by the IMF that have intensified the global health crisis in general and the AIDS pandemic in particular. These impacts include: (a) maintaining colonial patterns of ownership; (b) consolidating control of a crushing debt burden; (c) deforming economies and trade toward exploitation of natural resources, production of low-cost exports, and importation of high-cost finished goods; (d) liberalizing capital controls, currency exchanges, and financial markets, resulting in currency devaluations, market volatility, and net outflows of capital; and (e) enforcing structural adjustment programs, including (i) fiscal austerity and reduced government spending, particularly in health and education, and (ii) privatization of public resources, goods, and services.  The resulting political economy destabilized rural economies, increased male migration, and further feminized poverty – all of which contribute to the virulence of a sexually transmitted disease.

More recently, there is proof that the IMF’s macroeconomic policies continued to constrain spending on health and education even before the global financial crisis. The IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office examined IMF loan programs in 29 sub-Saharan African countries between 1999 and 2005 and found that 37 percent of all annual aid increases was diverted to building currency reserves and that another 37 percent was devoted to domestic debt repayment. That left only 27 percent of annual aid increases for actual spending on health, education, infrastructure, or other pro-development needs.

The Center for Global Development assessed the IMF’s macroeconomic restraint policies during this same time period and their impact on developing countries’ health spending. It found that the IMF had not done enough to explore more expansionary, but still feasible options for increased public spending, that it had overused wage-bill ceilings that restricted the size of the public workforce and/or its overall compensation, and that empirical evidence did not justify reducing inflation to the 5 percent level in low-income countries.  The CGD assessment also concluded that the IMF should consider the pro-growth benefits of more expansionary spending on health, education, and infrastructure, spending that would increase production of underutilized capacity and that would expand employment.

One might hope that the deepening global recession would have caused the IMF to rethink its policies, especially in Africa, so that Africa, too, might be able to pursue more expansionary fiscal policies to offset precipitous declines in export earnings and aggregate demand and to address additional demands for social spending. However, an early 2009 report from the IMF on the impact of the financial crisis on Africa continued to prioritize macroeconomic fundamentalism. Although a few countries with low debt and no financing constraints might be permitted to spend more, the IMF said that most African countries must “preserve hard-won gains in economic fundamentals” by avoiding excessive borrowing that crowds out the private sector or fiscal measures that might exacerbate the loss of foreign exchange reserves. Indeed, the IMF suggested that “to support growth and create fiscal space, all countries would be well-advised to persevere with structural fiscal reforms.” The IMF paper also prioritized efforts to prevent inflation.

Multiple reviews of the most recent evidence show that the IMF continues to prioritize mid-term “macroeconomic stability” over other development and health needs. Assumptions that the IMF had turned in new directions because of food, fuel, and recessionary shocks imported into developing countries have proven illusory at best. The IMF’s recent short-term adjustments allowing higher inflation rates and larger fiscal deficits were only after-the-fact accommodations to the external shocks of 2008 and 2009.  However, the IMF’s policy advice that countries quickly return to pre-crisis targets by 2010 or 2011 shows that the IMF’s temporary accommodations do not evidence even a modest reform of the IMF’s persistent macroeconomic fundamentalism.

Global health activists are pursuing new channels of domestic and donor resources for health so that Millennium Development and other health goals might be reached.  On the domestic front, development and health activists are urging that expansion and diversification of formal sector business activity, increased investments in health, education, and infrastructure, and improved revenue collection will all help to expand the public resource envelope.  On the global scale, development and health activists are advocating for adequate and sustained donor financing for health and other development needs by enforcement of donor country promises to commit .7% of GDP to foreign aid and to tap innovative financing mechanism such as a proposed financial speculation tax of .05% that could raise hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

AIDS activists, in particular, are campaigning for the tens of billions of dollars needed to fulfill the promise of universal access to AIDS treatment and prevention, now postponed from 2010 to 2015, and perhaps derailed entirely. If the IMF persists in constraining increased fiscal expenditures, then developing countries will continue to undermine expansion of donor health financing via substitution (decreasing domestic health funding as donor funding increases), by refusing to invest in recurrent costs for medicines and health workers, and by neglecting needed investments in health infrastructure and health system strengthening.  If flat-funding and constrained spending persist, life-saving AIDS treatment will stagnate at 30% of those in need, and 2-3 million people living with HIV will die needlessly each year.

Brook K. Baker is a Professor at Northeastern University School of Law and is co-chair of and policy analyst for Health GAP (Global Access Project).  He is also a long-time Guild member.

By James Marc Leas

On December 27, 2008 Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead,” its massive attack on Gaza. The date has a huge bearing on Israel’s claim of self-defense and whether the war was actually about ending Hamas rocket fire, as Israel claims. Israel had first attacked Gaza 53 days earlier, on November 4. That day, when the entire world’s attention was riveted on the election of Barack Obama in the US, Israel’s ground troops invaded Gaza and its planes bombed, killing six Hamas members. Because of the election, Israel hoped its attack would be little noticed by the world media.

A November 4 New York Times article, “Israeli Strike is First in Gaza Since Start of Cease Fire,” by Isabel Kershner, noted that the attack came four and one half months after Israel had successfully stopped Hamas rocket fire via an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

The website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs notes that the June 19 ceasefire brought “calm” and that “signs of normal life can be seen in towns on both sides of the Israel-Gaza Strip border.” The ceasefire was so successful that the Israeli government lauded Hamas: “Publicly, Hamas leaders have stated time and again that the lull is a Palestinian national interest. On several occasions, Hamas members have arrested Fatah operatives who were involved in firing at Israel and confiscated their arms.”

All that changed with Israel’s November 4 attack. On November 20, Ynet News, published by Israel’s largest circulation daily, quoted Defense Minister Ehud Barak saying, “the recent waves of rocket attacks are a result of our operations, which have resulted in the killing of 20 Hamas gunmen.”

According to the Palestine Center for Human Rights, Israel sent troops into Gaza nine times in the 53 days before its massive December 27 escalation; Hamas responded with rockets. Even so, Israel had the chance to restore the successful ceasefire, but it rejected that Hamas offer.

The fact that Israel had initiated the fighting in violation of a ceasefire agreement and the fact that it rejected a peaceful resolution did not stop Israel’s UN ambassador from declaring in a December 27 letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon that Israel was acting in self-defense against rocket fire.

One of the central features of this war was Israel’s public relations success at persuading mainstream media and world public opinion that “the operation was meant to stop years of rocket attacks from Gaza,” as reported without challenge in The Washington Post on December 27, 2009, the anniversary of Operation Cast Lead. Such mainstream media failed to recognize that Israel first attacked when Hamas rocket fire was zero and Hamas was successfully policing other groups.

While the UN’s Goldstone Report received much notice for its conclusion that Israeli military and political leaders committed war crimes and, possibly, crimes against humanity, it also alluded to a purpose for the war other than defending against rocket fire. The report concluded:

While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self-defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.(Goldstone Report, paragraph 1883)

A report by a National Lawyers Guild delegation to Gaza also found that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Within the UN General Assembly, Israel’s self-defense claim did not prevail: 114 nations voted to endorse the Goldstone Report, while only 18 nations — including the US — voted against.

In December 2009 the evidence of criminal acts by Israeli government officials was sufficient to persuade a judge in the UK to issue an arrest warrant for former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Livni could be seen to have admitted during the height of the war on January 12, 2009, that Israel’s targeting of civilians was a deliberate policy: Livni said, “[Israel] is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild — and this is a good thing.”

Central to the law of self-defense is the prohibition against targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. Because Israeli forces violated that prohibition and because Israel was the party that broke the ceasefire, its self-defense claim would likely be held ineffective in a court of law.

But Israel has one more defense. Let’s call it the US-defense: The US government blocks UN Security Council action to uphold international law and applies pressure on its allies to let Israeli transgressions slide. And the US supplies Israel with bombs and money to conduct such wars. Israeli impunity depends as much on the US-defense as on its flawed self-defense claim.

Public action, including protests, boycotts, and divestment campaigns are all the more necessary to end the ongoing siege of Gaza and to counter the real threat of renewed attack by Israel.

Just as important, as provided in article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, courts in countries outside the US and Israel are required to make themselves available to prosecute those responsible for grave breaches of the convention, including the war crimes and (possibly) crimes against humanity described in the Goldstone Report. Consideration should also be given to prosecuting Israeli officials for starting a war of aggression when, on November 4, 2008, Israeli forces broke the cease fire that had already successfully put a halt to Hamas rocket fire.

James Marc Leas is a Jewish-American lawyer in S. Burlington, VT.  He participated in an NLG delegation to Gaza from 2/1 to 2/8, 2009.  The delegation’s report is at www.nlg.org/NLGGazaDelegationReport.pdf.

By Blain Bookey

The Haitian Proverb, dèyè mòn gen mòn, meaning, “beyond mountains, there are mountains,” has taken on new meaning since January 12, 2010. With 230,000 and counting dead, thousands more injured or maimed, and millions pushed into further poverty and despair, Haiti faces enormous challenges. Developing a long-term legal response that advocates for the human rights of earthquake victims and reduces Haiti’s vulnerability to the next environmental, economic or political disaster will play a central role in overcoming those challenges.

Haiti’s devastation exposed the disastrous effects of decades-old policies that systematically undermine the Haitian government and ignore the needs of the majority of its people. The earthquake itself was a natural phenomenon, but its horrible toll is largely the product of manmade factors. The international community, including the United States, implemented neoliberal “adjustments” and austerity measures that flooded Haitian markets with low-cost agricultural products, driving large numbers of Haitian farmers to leave the countryside and move into densely crowded urban slums. In these “bidonvilles,” the government failed to prevent shoddy construction on precarious slopes or to provide safer housing. As a result, victims of these austerity measures – the poor – were some of the hardest hit victims of the earthquake.

To date, relief efforts have fallen short for several reasons. Primary among them, the US-led efforts have adopted a military-based strategy, prioritizing security over the victims’ immediate needs and the long-term welfare of the Haitian state. At a time when there is an unprecedented opportunity to increase Haiti’s capacity, private firms are jockeying for lucrative reconstruction contracts and policymakers are singing the praises of sweatshop factories as the key to Haiti’s economic salvation without paying heed to lessons learned.

Only one cent of every US aid dollar makes its way to the Haitian government that remains unable to provide basic services to its citizens, compared to 33 cents that pays for the military presence. Factors, such as Haiti’s lack of infrastructure and notorious corruption should be good reason for investing in infrastructure and good governance, not for bypassing Haiti’s government altogether. Excluding the government now might expedite aid and relief in the short term, but it will also expedite the return of disaster when Haiti is unable to handle the next inevitable environmental stress.

Guild members Brian Concannon, Bill Quigley, Ira Kurzban, Joel Kupferman, Blaine Bookey and others are coordinating a legal response through the Lawyers’ Earthquake Response Network (LERN). LERN lawyers have issued statements urging international donors to follow rights-based approaches to humanitarian and long-term assistance, advocated for more generous humanitarian parole into the U.S. of Haitians who need medical care or have family here, and distributed thousands of fliers (in Haitian Creole) outlining the rights of internally displaced people through our grassroots networks in Haiti. Future projects include fighting for safe housing and minimum labor and environmental standards while developing replicable models for international legal response to large-scale natural disasters.

As it becomes more feasible, the Guild will work with LERN to send a fact-finding delegation to investigate the distribution of aid and the role of the US, among other human rights concerns. Guild lawyers have a long history of bringing attention to injustice in Haiti at times when the media has been absent or negligent in its reporting. In 2004, the Guild sent two delegations to Haiti to investigate human rights violations in the wake of the US-led ouster of President Aristide. Many of the victims of the bloody coup, those living in the poor and densely packed slums of the capital, came from the same neighborhoods that housed the majority of victims of the current tragedy. Their bodies share a final resting place in mass graves in Titanyen outside the capital, a sobering reminder of the pervasive inequality that continues to claim lives and stifle Haiti’s growth.

The people of Haiti have rebounded time and again from catastrophes, giving the world lessons in courage and tenacity. Those of us watching from afar can find hope and comfort in Haitians’ resilience. But we should also get to work to make sure that next time Haitians do not need to rebound from so far down.

Blaine Bookey is the Development Director for the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and an attorney with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, Haiti.

By Susan Scott

NLG members know well how far we are from “the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests”.  From racial profiling to immigrant raids and detention, to retaliatory firing, to homelessness, evictions and foreclosures, it is hard to believe that our government ever signed on to (and helped draft!) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) back in 1948. Our constitutional tradition favoring property rights and political and civil rights over economic and social rights makes us truly “exceptional” among nations and goes a long way toward explaining why the US is the only industrialized country that has no universal health care and has failed to ratify the one core treaty emanating from the UDHR that obligates government to guarantee and protect the rights to health care, housing, food, jobs and a decent standard of living – the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

In fact, the US has ratified only three of the nine major human rights treaties and may soon stand alone as the only country that has failed to ratify the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) –assuming Somalia ratifies in the coming months.

Unless a nation has ratified a human rights treaty, it is not obligated to report to the UN committees charged with overseeing compliance.  Although US NGOs such as the US Human Rights Network and Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute have been filing “shadow reports” to UN committees for the three treaties the US has ratified, the US government is under no obligation to consult with civil society on its treaty reports.  And the US has had no obligation to report on its treatment of economic and social rights because it has not ratified the treaties that cover them.

In 2007, the General Assembly approved a new and much more comprehensive reporting and review mechanism, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).  Now, each of the 192 member states undergoes review by the UN Human Rights Council every four years for compliance with the UDHR and all human rights treaties it has signed or ratified.  Three times a year, the UN Human Rights Council holds hearings in Geneva to review 16 countries.  The US debut review comes up at the end of this year, and reports are due this spring from the government and “civil society”.  NGOs are invited to submit a 5-page individual report or 10-page “cluster” reports with other organizations.  The reports will be posted on the UN’s UPR website and reviewed by the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights for inclusion in its 10-page “civil society” report to the Human Rights Council.

The Guild is participating in the UPR in a number of ways. I’m working with several other human rights organizations, through the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers Network, to draft a “cluster report” on the US failure to ratify core human rights treaties, especially those addressing economic and social rights.  The Labor and Employment Committee is preparing a report on the lack of statutory protection for labor organizing and collective bargaining for certain sectors of the workforce.

The UPR process has the potential to do a better job of “mobilizing shame” for US human rights deficiencies than the periodic reporting process for ratified treaties.  For one thing, it is far more political:  the review is undertaken by the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council, rather than the committees of experts and academics that perform the individual treaty reviews.  For another, the invitation to civil society will presumably open up the process to grassroots groups and could further the US public’s understanding of international human rights obligations in a way that is unprecedented in this country – and at a time when Americans’  lack of economic and social rights has surfaced as never before since the signing of the UDHR.

Under the auspices of the International Committee, I put together a “toolkit” to help local activists press their local governments to pass a resolution calling on Obama and the Senate to ratify the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, signed by Jimmy Carter in 1977 but never submitted to the Senate for ratification.  The ICESCR, ratified by 162 nations, including all industrialized nations and all US allies, would require the US government to recognize health care, housing, food, employment and social security as basic human rights. The toolkit, which includes a model resolution, guidance on how to get a local resolution passed, and information on the ICESCR, was approved at the 2009 NLG Convention in Seattle and can be found at the IC website (www.nlginternational.org).

Susan Scott is co-chair of the NLG International Committee and board president of the  Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in Berkeley, CA.

His law partner Lee Goldstein came up with their firm’s slogan, but it aptly describes Jeff Feuer’s life work: “We fight evil.  Always have, always will.”   Often unpaid but always ready for the struggle, Jeff has been at the forefront of the Massachusetts Chapter’s defense of protest and protesters .  He’s had a great impact on our legal and political landscape.

His training began in the womb – “my family’s always been progressive,” he says – and by the time he finished high school he had committed civil disobedience.  During college he went to Chicago to organize welfare recipients in the Poor People’s Campaign, and became active in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).   His first career was in social work, first a drug rehabilitation counselor in New York City and then, for 15 years, with youthful offenders in Watertown.

Anyone who knows this gentle giant of a man can easily imagine him working well with addicts and troubled teens.   And his charms were not lost on Millie Drew, the head nurse of the psychiatric ward where he worked as an aide when the two met in 1971 and fell in love.   (One’s mind reels at the romantic possibilities.  Who will play Jeff in the movie?)  The couple has been together ever since; Drew is now a faculty member and the Director of the Academic Support Program of Northeastern University School of Law.

Eventually Jeff grew dissatisfied with what social work could achieve and entered law school.  “I kept seeing the same problems over and over again and I thought law would give me some additional tools to help bring about systemic change,” he says.  Plus, he admits, “I like arguing.”  Though an idealist, Jeff had a good business plan to finance law school.  He and a partner opened Rockit Records in Saugus in 1980.  The plan paid off and also satisfied Jeff’s passion for music, which is still manifested through his periodic peddling of Springsteen tickets to friends and associates.

Early in his legal career, Jeff represented children poisoned by lead paint and helped extend the protection of state lead paint laws to poor people living in federally subsidized housing.  This was Jeff’s first appellate case, and he admits to being “nervous at hell” at his first Supreme Judicial Court argument, where he prevailed.    He then continued his lead paint cases at Stern and Shapiro (as it was then called), but grew tired of litigating “the same cases over and over again” and in 1995 teamed up with Lee Goldstein to form a political law partnership that’s still going.   Goldstein & Feuer earn their bread and butter helping non-profits with incorporation, governance and taxes, and with landlord –tenant, employment discrimination and wrongful termination cases.  This finances their legal activism, most notably the defense of protesters committing civil disobedience.

Think of any time a group in the Boston area has protested to demand change, and Jeff has been present.  Before the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was part of the NLG team who negotiated permits and parade routs for demonstrators.  When protests were confined to a small caged-in area, he was on the NLG legal team suing (unsuccessfully) to allow demonstrators within sight and sound of conventioneers.   He coordinated legal support for those arrested in the 2005 Justice for Janitors campaign and did the same for climate change activists who last year set up camp on the Boston Common.  He also continues to defend protesters blocking evictions under the auspices of City Life / Vida Urbana.

His seat at the front lines has given Jeff an interesting perspective on how the Boston Police Department treats protesters.   He believes the Quinn bill, which rewards officers for pursuing higher education, combined with a strong union presence in Boston, has created a climate of relative police tolerance, so that the kinds of beatings and mass arrests of protesters we have seen elsewhere in the country haven’t happened here.   He recalls that the police were “incredibly supportive” of the Justice for Janitors protesters; when they issued citations, police were careful to note, “these people were sitting down and blocking traffic in order to obtain better working conditions and higher wages for janitors.”  These words ensured that the charges would all be thrown out at arraignment, since a “disorderly conduct” conviction requires that there be “no legitimate purpose” to a defendant’s actions.   When 200 climate change activists slept on the Boston Common for 30 days last year, the police came only on five occasions — and they issued summonses rather than making a single arrest.   Jeff notes a similar dynamic with eviction blockades. “They hate arresting people, and they’re apologetic about it.”

Hobnobbing with protesters is all very fun, but Jeff also puts in many hours behind the scenes to strengthen the Massachusetts Chapter and advance its programs.  He has been on the Board of Directors for over 15 years, active on the Finance and Personnel committees.  He is very active in the Street Law clinics, training lawyers and students and offering clinics himself at community organizations on topics such as landlord-tenant law, legal observing of demonstrations, and civil disobedience.  He trained the Boston Commons protesters and is a leader of the Foreclosure Prevention Task Force.   Jeff’s work is a model for private lawyers who want to make a difference.

-      Bonnie Tenneriello      -

BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Reported by Marianne Tassone

Though no official Guild chapter exists on BU campus, there is a group of us who are members of the NLG and who are involved in planning several Guild events this spring.  In February, members of the NLG Mentorship Program participated in a social event to meet their mentors.  In March, we took part in a series of NLG-sponsored presentations by the Venezuelan legislator Modesto Ruiz who discussed policies, participation, rights and duties of Afro-Venezuelans.

We’ve been also working with BU’s Immigration Law & Policy Society & LALSA on several events we would like to organize this semester.

An NLG general interest meeting is scheduled for later this semester.

NORTHEASTERN
Reported by Jillian Tuck

NLG has been quiet this past month, given the end of the winter quarter and spring break.  Members that signed up for the NLG Mentorship Program met with their mentors and look forward to building relationships with them.  We also organized a speaker event with Venezuelan Legislator Modesto Ruiz, who spoke about Social Inclusion and Political Rights of Afro-Venezuelans.

SUFFOLK
Reported by Margaret Aylward

Our student chapter was involved in the NLG series with Modesto Ruiz and  we hosted his lecture on race relations and race-related issues in Venezuela.

• The NLG Massachusetts Chapter’s Happy Hour—for Guild members and non-Guild members—takes place on the 2nd Wednesday of every month, 6:30 – 8:00pm, at Kennedy’s Mid-Town Pub (44 Province St., 2nd Fl., Boston, close to Suffolk Law School), and will follow the NLG Presents… event.  This month we will talk with Mark Brodin, a longtime Guild member, about his new book on the life of Bill Homans, a legendary Boston civil rights lawyer and a Guild member.
  Next Happy Hour will be on April 14, 2010.  Please join us.

• The Annual Dinner will be held on Friday, May 7, at the Colonnade Hotel.  We will start at 6:00pm with a reception and continue with the program until 9:00pm, after which we will have a dance with a DJ.  This year, the Chapter is honoring Howard Cooper, Soffiyah Elijah, Dan Kesselbrenner, and students Charlotte Noss and Josh Raisler Cohn.  To reserve tickets and buy ads, please visit nlgmass.org.

• Are you a Lawyer for Transgender Rights?
  If you support equal rights, dignity, and justice for transgender people, please attend a Guild-sponsored community event organized by Mass Transgender Political Coalition.
  COCKTAIL RECEPTION
  Thursday, April 15, 2010, 5:30 pm
  Club Café, 209 Columbus Ave., Boston.
  For more information, please call 617-778-0519.