115 Empire Street
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The Rhode Island & Southcoast Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild invites you to join us for a talk about how to exercise our First Amendment Rights, and how to build our movement’s capacity for resistance locally
WHAT: Building Radical Resistance
WHEN: Saturday, August 31st, 2019 at 2:00pm
WHERE: AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, R.I.
panelists:
Ashanti Omowali Alston, former U.S. held political prisoner – Black Panther Party
Attorney Lipou Laliemthavisay, N.L.G., New Bedford, Mass.
Attorney John Karwashan, N.L.G., Warwick, R.I.
Attorney Allyson Quay, N.L.G., Tiverton R.I.
Sherrie Anne Andre, The FANG Collective, Pawtucket, R.I.
Attorney Jim Vita, N.L.G., New Bedford, Mass.
This event is co-sponsored by FANG, AMOR, PrYSM, DARE, Coyote RI, and
Sierra Club of Rhode Island
More info: rhode.island.nlg@gmail.
The National Lawyers Guild has represented progressive organizers and activists branded as “terrorists” and “extremists” since 1937. The NLG has represented Black Lives Matter demonstrators in Ferguson, Water Protectors at Standing Rock, tree sitters in Burrillville, and anti-ICE activists in Dartmouth, Mass.
Can we turn criminal charges into an opportunity to educate others? Does the First Amendment provide a legal defense to charges such as trespassing? What is “civil disobedience”? What is a “necessity defense”?
Attorneys and activists will speak about what one may expect when arrested at a demonstration or protest in Rhode Island and Bristol County Massachusetts.
Recently, on July 2, 2019, 18 people were arrested outside the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I. and charged with misdemeanor trespass. Their charges were dismissed on their first court date. Meanwhile, in the New Bedford District Court, judges have rejected plea agreements between defendants and prosecutors and demanded jail time for those who protested outside the Bristol County Jail in Dartmouth, Mass. Both facilities imprison immigrants for ICE and have been sites of multiple protests.
More:
https://upriseri.com/2018-08-
https://upriseri.com/2019-06-
https://upriseri.com/2019-07-
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to keep political prisoners locked up
after decades:
https://www.
Some of the longest locked up are Black and New Afrikan organizers
like Sundiata Acoli (Assata Shakur’s co-defendant):
https://www.theguardian.com/
One political prisoner who needs our support is Delbert Africa:
https://www.
President Obama released Puerto Rican Independentista Oscar Lopez Rivera
https://www.theguardian.com/
But not American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier:
https://www.theguardian.com/
And Chelsea Manning, whose sentence was commuted by President Obama,
is back in jail for refusing to incriminate others:
https://www.theguardian.com/