Michael Berdan ‘22
Staff Editor
When protests for racial justice broke out across the nation after the lynching of George Floyd, lawyers and law students played a critical supporting role in protecting the rights to protest and public action. Lawyers also assisted in organizing and educating. Now, going on five months later, as this uprising continues to surge and resurge in various parts of the United States, protestors and activists are too often restricted, targeted, and arrested, and the glaring need for support from the legal community has not waned.
National Lawyers Guild (NLG), established in 1937, is one of the longest-tenured groups that organizes law students to lend support in moments like these. We are best known for the neon-green hats worn by our Legal Observers, who are seemingly omnipresent at the front lines of protest actions. Legal Observers do exactly that: observe. They keep track of the actions of protestors and law enforcement agents, particularly who is arrested, when, where, and under what circumstances. That way, each individual can be connected with bail and defense resources as quickly as possible.
NLG at UVA provides Legal Observer training to prepare students to serve under NLG of Central Virginia. We also present events and discussions around issues of protest, social justice, racial justice, immigrant justice, housing justice, and education. During the pandemic, NLG at UVA has used its voice, resources, and student activism in support of movements to protect the housing of vulnerable populations and to release detainees from the Farmville ICE detention center.
Last year, NLG sponsored a panel at PILA’s Shaping Justice conference, called Technology and the Criminalization of Sex Work, which gathered academics and sex worker activists to discuss the intersection of technology, surveillance, freedom, and sex work, and the movement for decriminalization. NLG will also be sponsoring a panel this year, on a topic to be announced later in the year. Last November, NLG also presented—with the support of Women of Color, IRAP at UVA Law, and LALO—an event addressing the mobilization of ICE agents in Central Virginia and the impacts on the community. Activists representing several dimensions of the problem convened to share stories and ideas, and galvanize support for the immigrant community of our region.
The mission statement laid out in the Preamble of the NLG Constitution guides our work: “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 ecosystems over property interests.” We have seen the tension between human rights and property rights very clearly over the past few months. Some of you may be among those law students who jumped in to help, in one way or another. Some of you wanted to, and didn’t know how—we invite you to join us in the National Lawyers Guild.
In Solidarity,
The Executive Board of NLG at UVA
Ida Abhari - Michael Berdan - Kunchok Dolma - Dominique Fenton - Emily Hockett - Zach Kuster - Nooreen Reza - Eliza Schultz - Wes Williams
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mwb4pk@virginia.edu