The panel will examine developing strategies within the labor movement that are generating opportunities for labor renewal, explore initiatives within AFL-CIO and Change To Win unions and discuss opportunities for building broader worker solidarity in the United States in the face of ongoing national and global attacks against organized labor. Invited speakers include Bill Fletcher, Cindy Estrada, and Sandy Pope.
The development of the prison-industrial complex and the racism, classism, and other problems associated with it have been a major issue for the National Lawyers Guild and other progressive organizations. What are the alternatives to putting people in prison? This panel will feature three speakers on the following subjects: drug courts as an alternative, harm reduction, and strategies to shift spending to public services.
The nature of support for Palestine, and the movement to condemn Zionism as a form of racism, has been at the center of many NLG discussions. This panel seeks to build on that work, particularly in light of the 60 year anniversary of the Nakba, and propose concrete legal strategies for dismantling the Zionist occupation and ending the genocide. In addition, many NLG members are looking for concrete ways to support Palestine solidarity work. This panel helps provide strategies, such as legal support for a comprehensive boycott of Israel, expelling Israel from the United Nations and other measures in the international arena, litigating against Israel and Israeli officials for genocide, use of Israel’s human rights violations to aid asylum seekers in the U.S., addressing movement building in the U.S., dealing with internalized Zionism and prioritizing the voices of Palestinians, litigation in Israel’s courts by Palestinian organizations.
This panel will focus on the different legal and non-legal tactics that are being used around the country to help ensure that all people are able to have their legal documents reflect their gender identity. Depending on what state a person resides in or is born in, this can be accomplished through a court order, a legal change on a birth certificate or other measures. Most of these measures require some form of a surgical standard to allow for a legal change in gender. Lawyers, legal workers and organizers have been working in different ways to try and change standards that often create barriers for people to legally change their gender. From campaigns to change surgical standards required for gender changes on birth certificate to court room battles to obtain court orders changing a person’s gender, different strategies are being utilized all over the country to accomplish common goals. This panel will explore the successes and setbacks that have occurred as well as the pros and cons of the different tactics that lawyers, organizers and legal workers have used when assisting people and working to change policies around the legalization of gender.
People living in inner-cities areas are being squeezed out. With “white flight” in reverse, poor people and people of color are forced out of desirable downtown city-areas. This panel will explore the ways that city and county governments are working with private developers, business interests, and the police to achieve these ends. The panel will also explore the legal tools attorneys and activists are using to combat these forces.
Metro Detroit has the largest Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern population in the U.S. The 2008 NLG convention in Detroit provides a unique opportunity for Guild members to learn about the issues of concern to these communities and how we can support activists working to address those problems. Since 9/11 Middle Easterners have been heavily targeted by law enforcement agencies at all levels. These largely ineffective efforts have had devastating effects on these communities including secret detentions, disrupted families, frustration of religious obligations (e.g. annual contribution to Islamic charity) and weakening of social bonds. Speakers include activist lawyer Nabih Ayad, ADC National Board Member and the MI Advisory Board Chairman, Shahid Buttar of Muslim Advocates and the Pakistan Justice Coalition and others.
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