Part One: The National Lawyers Guild: The Legal Arm of Basically Every Social Movement in the US

Margaret talks to Joelle Monique about the almost 90 year history of the organization for progressive and radical lawyers

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People, Cool Stuff.
You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening,
there's people trying to make the bad things not happen
as much or as badly. I'm your host, Margaret kilj
and this week I have a guest, Juan Monique, who
is a podcast producer of Filmmaker.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
How are you hey, Margaret, I am okay. It's been
a lot out here in Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Oh yeah, I believe.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
It, And so we are trying to be both realistic
and positive, which is proving to be quite the challenge
right now.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, those are two things. That's actually what I try
to do with the show, and it's one of the
hardest needles to thread, is realistic and positive. I see
people describing what's happening in LA right now as the
US is trying to manufacture a war zone there. That's
the way I've seen people talk about it.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
I mean, it's exactly how it feels. It's wild to
roam the streets that used to be really. I mean,
I live in the valley which is very immigrant heavy.
A lot of first generation American friends who are very
nervous about their families right now, the ghost carts of
just rout vendors on all their stuff left behind are

(01:15):
the folks who sell flowers alongside the highway. You're seeing
buckets and no people like it's very surreal. But I
also think, you know, shout out La Taco, who's been
doing really great on the ground news coverage of this stuff.
It's beautiful to see our communities fighting back and trying
to figure out ways not to actively engage in what

(01:36):
could be considered warfare or violence because we know that
tends to ramp them up and give them more of
an excuse, but also to aggressively protect people who need protecting.
It's a lot of fine lines being walked. But I've
never been more in love with my community. I really
feel that everyone's doing their best to try to preserve

(01:57):
and protect our community. As challenging as it is, but
it's really beautiful to see that it's thriving.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Still.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, that's cool, that's I mean, it's awful, and yeah,
the ghost carts thing sounds yeah, yeah, awful, And it's like,
I don't know. One of the things that you run
across all the time is that you're just like watching
people come together in the worst moments, you're still having
the worst moments. Yeah, you also have this weird it's
like shot through with this hope or or something. I

(02:23):
don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, it was connectedness.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
You're like, oh, we're not alone, and I think our
society is pretty good at convincing us you're an individual
and you're doing this alone.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, it's nice to be reminded that you don't have to.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah. Well that ties in really well into today's subject,
because today's subject is a group of people that make
sure some of the people who would otherwise be the
most alone or not alone. And they are also the
single group that I have ever covered who, for about
ninety years now, has been part of literally every progressive

(02:55):
movement that's happened. Ooh, because today I'm going to talk
about the National Lawyer's Guild.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh my god, I'm so okay. Can I tell you
why I'm so happy? Whenever people are like very down,
I'm like, but are you watching the courts? Okay, people
are working, and that's let's say, it's the last place
really that we have protected. I don't believe in our
House or our Senate. And if we're really looking at
our highest court. It's scary, but our lawyers and our
judges on lower levels, they are fighting for your humanities.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
I'm really excited to talk about this.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
I was trying to figure out exactly what I was
going to cover this week. For the past few months,
I've been trying to cover like the bits and pieces
of a lot of the modern protest movement. Specifically, I've
been covering the alter globalization movement of like the late
nineties and early aughts and all of the different pieces
that came together to make that possible. And so we've
talked about like the Zapatistas, We've talked about the Black Block,

(03:51):
We've talked about the Battle of Seattle in nineteen ninety nine,
and I want to talk about lawyers because it's a
weirdly invisible labor mm hmm. And even though it's like
one of the fanciest jobs available in like activism, when
it's working, you ignore it. You're like, oh, that's just
taken care of, you know, And the thing that takes

(04:14):
care of you as an activist if you go out
and get arrested doing activism is an incredible amount of
volunteer work by an incredible number of people. Yeah, So
have you run across NLG stuff before.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Or I'm not familiar with the National is your National
Layer skilled?

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah totally yeah, No, not as familiar as I like
to be. Okay, Well, if you ever at our protest
and you see people wearing like a neon green hat,
this is legal observer.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
I've seen those guys.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
They are with or accredited by the National Lawyer's Guild. Oh,
they actually own a trademark on the word legal observer
in this context lawyers, I know, I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Wow, that's a fac They said, Actually, what you won't
do is encourage them on our jobs, okay.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
And I started off being like, oh, I'm going to
research these folks. I'm like interested, you know, they do
good stuff or whatever. And I found myself just like
I was messaging one of my friends is in energy
and just being like you all are amazing, Like I
have no idea because the state has come for them
so many times and tried to destroy them so many times.
And one of the reasons that they don't fall apart

(05:26):
is that they're hard to come after legally because they're
all really good lawyers.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
We know the law and you can't use it against us.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
I love that it would be like if you were like,
all right, we're gonna go beat up this crew of boxers,
you know, like.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
It's foolish and also terrifying, but also so great that
they've been able to consistently be like, no, actually the
law holds, which I think right now is maybe should
be everyone's biggest fear. Yeah, you know, if the rules
are set up to work the way they're supposed to work,
will probably be okay. But if they cave, that's what
we Yeah, you know, that's when it gets super scary

(06:06):
and so right, like the laws are holding.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
That's exciting.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
And I love a group of badass lawyers because really
I think this is sort of like the folks who
go into like more on the ground like community active
work as opposed to you know, like a social worker,
police work sort of job, like folks that actually care
and they're like, hey, no, we're actually going to use
these rules and enforce them for the people as opposed
to being forces of authority.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah. No, And there's a certain amount of hope and
what you're talking about about how like we're all hoping
that certain forms of the rule of law hold right
as fashions interested undermine them because they uniquely survive the
Red Scare, and we're going to get to it. Ooh
ooh ooh.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Okay, I love the Red Scare. It just as a
point in history, not as an action.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
No, no, I understand. Okay. But I'm of course going
to take this back to the nineteenth century, because of
course I am. Because I'm going to talk about two
lawyers working together who don't share a political ideology in
a way that I find really fascinating. And the very
first episode of this show, three or four years ago
or whatever it was. I don't know how long I've

(07:12):
had a job. I've there's no time before or after podcasting.
All I do is podcast anyway. I love my job anyway.
So the very first episode was about the Haymarket affair
of eighteen eighty six. Have you ever heard of this?

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Okay, So I'm going to speed run it because I'm
going to get to the court case involved. This wasn't
quite the birth of the American labor movement, and it's
not the first moment with like fire and bullets and
death in the labor movement, but this is one of
the loudest, earliest moments of the American labor movement. In
eighteen eighty six, on May first, the organized working class

(07:48):
of the United States of America declared that they were
going to have the eight hour workday no matter what.
Hundreds of thousands of workers across the country went on
strike and participated in these huge demonstrations for eight hour workday.
A lot of employers caved right away and were like,
I find you can have eight hour work day. I
don't want to deal with this, but other ones fought,
so the workers fought to and one of the most

(08:09):
militant and popular associations of workers was the International Working
People's Association, which was an anarchist organization that was particularly
popular among immigrants, and one of the most militant groups
was in Chicago. Yeah, it was, yeah, And two figures
in particular stood out in the English speaking chunk of

(08:29):
that movement, whereas a lot of it was German speaking
and other immigrant languages. And there was a power couple,
and I kind of love a power couple absolutely, Lucy
Parsons and her husband, Albert Parsons. Even heard of Lucy Parsons.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yes, I'm from Chicago, so that's why I'm.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Like Yeah, Lucy Parsons is like one of the threads
that ties together everything that comes after her is so
it's amazing. She was a black woman who had been
born into slavery. Her husband, Albert, was a white man
who had already been shot once in Texas for registering
black voters after the Civil War. Their interracial marriage was illegal.

(09:09):
That didn't stop them. They moved to Chicago. They saw
striking workers get gunned down in the streets by the
dozens during the Big railroad strike of eighteen seventy seven.
I don't remember in my be eighteen seventy eight. That's
not in my script, so I'm not beholden to know
the date. And both of them were like, oh, it's

(09:31):
going to take a lot to make labor rights happen.
And they become more and more radical, and so you
have these two anarchists. They're running newspapers, they're throwing big
labor marches together, all the while raising kids. And Lucy
owns a dress shop for the dresses that she sews.
And during the May Day strikes, a couple days into it,

(09:53):
police opened fire and killed some workers who were striking
at a factory in Chicago. People held a labor in
response at a place called Haymarket Square, and Albert Parsons
and a few other people spoke at that the cops
tried to disperse it. Someone was like, you know what,
fuck all this, Like they keep shooting my friends, I'm
done with this and throws a bomb at the cops,

(10:14):
and the cops start shooting everyone. It is called the
Haymarket massacre or the Haymarket Riot or the Haymarket affair,
depending on who you ask, And so the cops go wild,
just fucking wild for weeks after that, they round up
anyone that they can accuse of being an anarchist, and
at the time, anarchists and socialists were in Chicago kind
of synonymous terms with each other. Hmm. Anyone who's an immigrant,

(10:38):
especially like anyone who's an immigrant, anarchist or socialist, and
anyone that they suspected might be one of these things.
And they literally say things like arrest everyone now, look
up the laws later. So you have this setup where
the state in this case clearly is only using laws
as an enforcement technique and not actually listening to their
own legal structure when they don't want to. And eight

(11:02):
men find themselves on trial including Albert, Lucy's husband. The
prosecution is openly like, we don't think any of them
threw the bomb. We don't care. They're anarchists and they
should die. That's their aggressive Yeah, directly.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Wow, they're like, make sure nobody else has these thoughts again, please, Yeah,
we'd like to end them now.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
Good.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Which is interesting because it puts two different things on trial.
It puts anarchism on trial, for sure, but it also
threatens the American legal system. It threatens the ideas of
free speech, it threatens these things that some people believe in, right,
And so when none of them had any money for
legal representation, and also the entire country is in this

(11:48):
huge anti anarchist moment at this point, and so anyone
who would represent them is torpedoing their career. And they've
got like one movement lawyer, but they need a team,
and they need someone to head that team is much
more experienced. And so today's first cool person stepped in
besides Lucy and Albert, who I think are cool, but
they're not lawyers, and this is an episode about lawyers,

(12:10):
was this man who was not an anarchist, not a socialist,
not a Marxist, and he was someone who believed in
doing what was right, and he believed in the American
legal system. His name was Captain William Perkins Black, from
a local prominent law firm, Denton Black, which is a
I feel like if I was making up a fictional Yeah,

(12:33):
all right, Denton Black.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
It feels very futuristic for its time period, right, that's true.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
This would have really hit in the eighties and nineties,
that's true.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Absolutely would have worn like kind of uncomfortably small sunglasses.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
You know, exactly exactly and suits too far too large.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Oh yeah, absolutely, which is funny because actually what is
actually true is that this is the nineteenth century, so
they're all, including all the anarchists, wearing really nice suits
probably like sys. Yeah. William Black, who I hope went
by Billy Black because that would be a good name.
Absolutely was a white man born in either Mississippi or Kentucky,
depending on your source, whose family soon moved to the

(13:14):
North or was already in the North, depending on your source.
And it's kind of frustrating because it like, sort of
he's about to join the Union Army, and so if
he's a Southerner form Mississippi joining the Union Army, it's
like a different vibe.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
That's huge.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, as opposed to already up north just signing up
for Yeah, I'm seeing the difference.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah. He's about nineteen or so when the Civil War
breaks out and he and his brother John Black, who
I hope went by Jack Black, joined the Union Army,
and he and his brother became the first brothers to
ever earn the Medal of Honor, which is the highest
military distinction. Yeah, Billy Black got that distinction I think

(13:52):
at the same battle as his brother, but I'm actually
not sure because I didn't read as much as his
brother at the Battle of p Ridge on March seventh,
eighteen sixty two, by fucking single handedly holding back like
a hundred Confederates who were like trying to take an
artillery position.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
Come through Billy.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, and he gets shot in the side or he
gets wounded in the side. I don't know exactly how
it happened, but he takes a nearly murder wound, and
he single handedly holds the Union artillery from being taken
by the Slave army. And he stays in the war
for several more battles and campaigns and shit. Wow, So

(14:30):
after he helped in the war that ended legal chattel slavery.
Although we've talked about before in the show, and I
always try and point out whenever possible, that war was
largely won by the labor actions of enslaved workers in
the US South who completely crippled the Confederate economy by
refusing to work, and their actions get largely uncredited. But

(14:52):
this guy still did his part. I still think he
was cool for this. He moves to Chicago and he
becomes a corporate lawyer. He's just like a guy, right,
He's just like, ah, I'm a captain and I'm going
to go join Denton Black. And he defends like railroad
companies and shit, and he's like, not a political radical,
but the haymarket defendants need legal counsel and very few

(15:15):
people are willing to help them, and so Billy Black
torpedoes his career to step up. Oh my gosh, Denton
Black is no more. Dent Is like, I want nothing
to do with you, you filthy socialist or whatever. I
don't know who.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
He represents the railroad company in eighteen hundred, sir, we're
not trying to get into the politics.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, totally gone, Yeah exactly. And so he teams up.
He has a legal team, and one of the other
people on the team is the movement lawyer. I was
probably not a phrase they used at the time, but
the person who's actually politically aligned with the socialist and
well they're all anarchists, but they use the terms interchangeably
named Sigmund Zeisler, and who is a German immigrant himself,

(15:58):
I think actually from Austria. But I am not totally
always clear on exactly where all the political lines are
when people immigrate in the nineteenth century. Sure, and Zeisler
says what Black did was quote nothing short of heroism
for stepping up famously. The defense lost, like hell, five
of the men were sentenced to death. Black did not quit.

(16:21):
He took his appeals all the way to the Supreme courts,
first of Illinois and then of the entire United States.
So this is how he's torpedoing his career, right. He
is like continuing this incredibly unpopular thing all of the
way because I think because he just believes that you
can't tell people that they can't have ideas.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
I think, if you fought for the continued utification of
the United States by single handily fighting off one hundred people.
The injustice of this might drive you a little crazy.
You might be like, for real, though, for real, the
people that make sure we eat insane insane? Please feel
like they're just workers, Okay, they they just want to

(17:01):
work eight hours a day and y'all want to kill
them first speaking, Yeah, no, can't sleep, must defend.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah, exactly. And like the first time I read about that,
he was this complete side character. I only mentioned him
really vaguely in the episodes I did about it, but
it kind of stuck with me. His story of like,
it's not that he did something more radical than Sigmund Zeisler, right,
but he he did go out further on a limb

(17:27):
that he didn't need to.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, you know, he could have easily skated in the background,
been like, wow, that's crazy, look what's happening out there,
but he inserted himself right in the front of it.
And that's yeah, it takes some balls, let's grave.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yeah, And he's like, actually, just believes in the rule
of law. And so you have these two lawyers, Captain
William Black and Sigmun Zeisler, and they work together on
the case, and it is that spirit of socialists working
alongside people who just actually want the American system to
live up to its promise. That is going to animate

(18:01):
the creation of the National Lawyer's Guild, one of the
most powerful forces of good in the US for almost
ninety years. Now, they're two years away from their ninetieth anniversary.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
But you know what has been around for a lot
longer than ninety years. Hmmm, the concept of advertising. Oh,
we are right now participating in an age old tradition
by interspersing content with advertisements. Don't you feel proud to
be part of history.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Honored to be part of the commerce chain? Really?

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, really excited about our little place in that line up.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
That's nice.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Uh huh. Here's some ads and we're back.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
So that's the first piece of context I wanted to offer.
The second was that I started reading all of these
pieces about the National Lawyer's Guild, and they assumed that
I knew a lot of things that I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Okay. Lawyers tend to do that.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, and so I'm going to assume that the listener
doesn't know some of the things that I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
That's really fair.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Do you know what a bar association is?

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Now this is a term I've heard that if somebody
asked me, I feel like I could fake a definite bar.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
You got to pass the bar to do the things.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
So maybe it's like a group of people who oversee
that test and make sure everyone's on the up and
up to be part of a lawyer.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Think, are we close?

Speaker 1 (19:21):
That's what I thought, and that's true. But that's only
half of it. Oh, because that's okay. So, like I assumed,
the bar was like a test you have to pass
in any given state in order practice law in the state,
and most states are that way, okay, But it is
more convoluted than that.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
There are these things called bar associations, which are associations
for lawyers. The word bar comes from the railing that
separates the judge from the court, and the word barrister,
which I think is some like England thing that sounds
like it comes from that as well. It's from the
same etymology. And so you have these bar associations, and
some are mandatory most states, you need to be admitted

(20:01):
to the bar the state's bar association in order to
practice law in that state. But others are voluntary, okay,
And there's both states where the state bar association doesn't
make you need to pass it. I think Illinois is
one of those. But don't go practicing law in Illinois
without check in first. This is not legal advice. Nothing

(20:24):
I say is. I am not a lawyer, and I'm
not your lawyer. But in this case, a bar association
is just a word for a group of lawyers who
come together to try and accomplish things. It's like a
professional organization. Oh okay, And so they do things like
develop best practices, right including I think that's where the
mandatory ones probably come from, as people being like, well,

(20:46):
in Illinois, you better do it like this, right. Well,
that one's not mandatory, so that's a terrible example. But
unless it is, again, I'm just gonna go practice law
in Illinois and see what happened. But they would also
do like political lobbying, develop legal frameworks to suggest to politicians,
and basically have these like associations like professional associations for example.

(21:10):
And an important example, because they are the villain of
today's episodes, the American Bar Association, who's still around and
are not as conservative as I'm going to describe them
at the beginning of them, But okay, fuck their old days,
and I know nothing about their new days. I have
no idea whether they're good or bad. The ABA, they

(21:31):
were founded in eighteen seventy eight, and they were conservative
as fuck. In nineteen twelve, they like realized they had
led a black man in kind of oops. Yeah, I know,
it's a terrible mistake. They must have.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
Obviously the paperwork got missed over. Something happened.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, because he was the Assistant Attorney General of the
United States. Oh shit, William H. Lewis.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Ok.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
They kicked him out in nineteen twelve for being even
though he was again the US is assistant Attorney General.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Guys, Wow, you can't. I don't think that's how it works,
I know.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
And like one of the things that like I didn't
know from my American education is, you know, we get
presented like progress is kind of linear.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
So like they're slavery and then like it gets a
little better, and then civil.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Rights Jim Crow, yeah, and then the civil rights movement
for yeah, we skipped right over the drug war to
Obama and then Tadah Yeah, equal rights exactly.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
I was gonna make a terrible joke. I've never faced
racial discrimination so just.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Oh, man, yeah, I know, now those school books are
like slaves. They were workers, and some of their masters
were nice. Yeah, it was an okay time. God, no
crimes were committed here. No, No, it was legal, So
what could be the problem?

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, but one of the things that like I pretty
quickly learned the basics of. But the more I study history,
the more I realized how deeply true this is. That
things have ebbeden flowed, and actually things got like more
racist again for a while in the beginning of the
twentieth century, and like Jim Crow laws and all that stuff.
You know that reconstruction has whatever had a lot of promise,

(23:21):
even if people were getting shot for registering voters, although
that was true in the eighteen sixties and the nineteen sixties.
So ay, anyway, I was surprised that the US's assistant
Attorney General was black, But I wasn't surprised that he
was kicked out of the organization. I was mostly surprised
he was in it in the first place. Yes, And
they were surprised too. They were like, actually, we thought

(23:43):
we were whites only, and then they formalized whites only.
They let women in in nineteen eighteen, but of course
white women only. Yes, in nineteen forty three they will
officially say, okay, technically we can let black people in.
And in nineteen fifty they actually let a couple black
people in. Oh, I am suspecting that it is not
a coincidence that that is after the formation of the

(24:03):
National Lawyers Guild. But we'll get to that, because I
think that kind of shamed them. So there's things called
bar associations, and the ABA basically existed to be the
like no progressives, no people of color, like, no women,
like good old boys lawyer club. Sure to start with

(24:25):
one cool bar association that's older than the National Lawyers
Guild by eleven years, twelve years, the National Bar Association AH,
which gets called predominantly African American, and they were found
in nineteen twenty five by a bunch of black lawyers
who were like, yeah, it sucks that we're not allowed
to join any of the bar associations, even though we're

(24:46):
allowed to be lawyers.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
We can practice law, but we do not have our
own association. We'll create our own and our name will
be better. National Bar Associations sounds so much more official
than American Bar associates, nary bar associations like the dot
co ye.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Totally, totally, and they're the NBA and they're still around
and they're founding goals even though like obviously part of
it was like, hey, we're not allowed in any associations,
so we should start one that we can be in.
But they're founding goals. Weren't just for black people, though
that would have been plenty, right. Their founding goal was

(25:21):
to quote, advance the science of jurisprudence, uphold the honor
of the legal profession, promote social intercourse among the members
of the American bar, and protect the civil and political
rights of all citizens of the several States and United States.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
My heart is so goody because like the idea of like,
how can we make sure juries are fair for a
bunch of black lawyers as sort of like is that
jurisprudence right?

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Is like, yeah, yeah, I barely know what that word means.
I'm gonna be real.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Music text is PHONEX chaining.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, I'm looking up the world right now. And then
everyone can think that they're smarter than us if they
already know it is the philosophy or science of law
of law.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Okay, but that idea of like I mean really think
of like coming out of enslavement, practicing law, trying to
get your mind fully around like okay, you said land
with free but the clearly that was not true. Yeah,
we had to come and make our own organization to function,
and then trying to figure out, like how do we
make sure these laws and practices are actually fair and

(26:23):
accommodating for everyone. Yeah, it's such a beautiful like agenda
for an organization.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
I know. And it's like it's kinder than they need
to be, right mm.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Hmm, like yes, as we frequently are.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, totally. And they also weren't an all black organization
because they didn't discriminate based on race. They had one
white guy, and it came up really well because at
one point very few white lawyers wanted to join them,
basically sure, and so at one point one of them
is like arguing against segregation and I'm paraphrasing here, right,

(26:58):
and one of them is arguing against SegReg and the
other person's like, the white pro segregation person's like, yeah,
well you're like in a racially segregated organization, and they're like, no,
we've got Marty Popper's is the white guy. Look at
Marty over here.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
This is okay, But I just want to say, if
you're in a group of black people trying to go
up against any type of larger organization, that is the
rule of thumb. You need one Marty at all times.
Like I'm not even joking. I am a part of
multiples where like we don't have a white guy where
if people show up, we could be like, that's our
white guy and you can talk to him about it. Okay,

(27:34):
he is well versed, we trust him, he's good. You
always need one white man hanging around, just in case,
just in case.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, No, you need a Marty and just start calling
them a Marty.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
And the NBA is still around. They have about eighty
chapters and sixty seven thousand members.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, but still in the early twentieth century, the biggest
bar association was the ABA and their very right wing
and some lawyers are like, we really got to do
something about that. Yeah, And so they started to do
something about it. And we can start exactly how they

(28:15):
started in any number of places, but I'm going to
start in another commonplace for our stories to start. I
love that there's these common roots right, and one of
them is like hmm, folks after Jim Crow being like,
fuck this, we got to do something and like, but
one of the other places that a ton of stories
about progressive and radical United States history starts is the
kid of Jewish immigrants.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, listen, I'll just tell you.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
I come from on my mom's side, a fluent black family.
So they were at the first Juneteenth in Austin and Cheff.
My grandmother was mayor pro temp of her town. She
was like on multiple government boards going back, like my
great great great grandfather maybe four grades is the fourth
governor of Texas.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Whoa all my whole life.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
All I've heard from that as like Black and Jewish
power together fix his things. And my grandmother believed that
with her whole heart, like constantly was partnering with Jewish
organizations within Chicago.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Like just that's beautiful. I love to hear it.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
No, it comes up so often, and it's funny to
me because of there's a lot of stereotypes around Jewishness
and because I re leftist history, I'm like, ah, yeah,
they're all socialists, you know, that's.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Why they hate us. It's the politics, yes.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
And so we have a man named Maurice Sugar who
was born in Upper Peninsula, Michigan in eighteen ninety one
to Jewish Lithuanian parents. And his parents owned a store
and they did well enough that they moved to Detroit,
and they were like, we want our kids have better
access to schools, so we're going to Detroit. He graduated

(29:50):
law school nineteen thirteen and it became a lawyer, and
it became a pacifist socialist. So when the US joined
World War One in nineteen seventeen, the US demanded that
all men between the ages of twenty one and thirty
sign up for the draft. And he was like, no,
I'm not only am I gonna not do that. I'm
gonna fight it in court. That's my thing, right.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Yes, pacifist love it.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, And so he wrote essays saying basically, the thirteenth
Amendment says you can't be forced into involuntary servitude except
as punishment of a crime, and that should apply to
the draft, which is a strong argument. If you can't
be forced in involuntary servitude, I don't see why they
can make you do anything job wise. Yeah, he fought
against his own conscription in court appealing it every way

(30:37):
that he could, and he lost again and again, but
he didn't give up. And this is a thing also
that comes up a lot on the show is often
the way that you get things done is you fight
for things and lose and lose and lose and lose,
and then you either eventually win or like the people
who come like four after, you win because you fought
and lost and lost and lost and lost.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Fighting is a long term game, yea, which is the
thing folks listening should remember.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah, totally, hm, And we have to kind of understand
that sometimes the wind condition is fighting, Like sometimes the
wind condition is being like I didn't go down without
suing the hell out of them or physically blocking. I
would never encourage anyone to do anything, you know, whatever people.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Whatever, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
I also I think a lot of times winning is,
to your point, just the ability to just stand ten
toes down and just be like, I'm not going to
be moved, and then changing the minds of folks, which
is less trackable and therefore is not as tangible to folks, but.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
Totally, as we see it makes a huge difference.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Totally, and one of the ways that the ENLG is
going to kind of win. Is literally just a perseverance
and just be like there's so many times when the
energy was almost wiped out by government repression and like conflict,
and it just didn't. And so two weeks after World
War One ended, he was convicted to ten months in
prison for avoiding the draft.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Wow, but he did avoid it.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, yeah, totally. I would probably rather sleep on a
cot in a jail cell for ten months than die
in World War One.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Did you see the kind of diseases they were coming
back with for World War One? And also the mass
horrific death and the invention of the flamethroaer. I'll need
to see battle. I'm good trench warfare. Yeah, hard pass, Yeah,
hard pass, I can like. And then you know, Pacifists
are gonna do the same thing. We're in World War two.
And I also, I'm just not into the draft. I
think it's a terrible thing.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
But I also am like, you know, proud of my
grandfather for signing up and fighting in World War two
or really yeah, but like, oh yeah, but whatever. Anyway,
he goes to prison, he gets out, and he starts
working with the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, who
are gonna kind of end up a little bit of
a villain for a while in this story because they
didn't do great during the Red Scare, but overall trying

(32:53):
to do some good things.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
He also joined the United Automobile Workers Union as a lawyer,
and he kept running for political office. He's never going
to win political office. But he also starts talking about
what if we had a bar association for progressive, liberal
and radical lawyers altogether.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
That sounds real cool.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah, I agree, We're going to do a whole cool
people did cool stuff about a thing that came out
of that, and so we started traveling around the country
in nineteen thirty three being like, hey, we need to
have this thing because in nineteen thirty three another repeat
character on this show, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who mostly comes
out good but also did the Japanese Internment not so good.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
That's okay there.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
He wanted the New Deal, which is the closest to
socialism the US has ever gotten. Probably check out our
episodes about Francis Perkins, the lesbian who pushed FDR into
the New Deal for more about that. The New Deal
also hired my hobo grandfather to build infrastructure.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
And I think that's nice, we love it.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
But business leaders didn't want my hobo grandfather to have
a job building infrastructure for the United States of America. Crazy,
and they pretty much ran the ABA, the American Bar
Association at the time, So every single time the New
Deal wanted to do something good, there were ABA lawyers
fighting to make sure that it couldn't go through, and

(34:12):
not just being the lawyers on call to fight it,
but they were like basically doing think tank stuff where
they're like, what are the legal strategies we can use
to destroy the New Deal. The ABA was huge. It
represented about thirty thousand of the one hundred and eighty
thousand lawyers working in the US at the time, and
of course that specifically disincluded black lawyers and progressive lawyers.

(34:33):
So Maury's sugar. By nineteen thirty five, he meets up
with some lawyers in New York City and he is
an outline prepared of what a new Bar Association could
look like, including things like making sure that radical lawyers
weren't being isolated, because that happens a lot. Right, You
go and defend people and then they're like, well, you
don't got a job anymore, like fuck you, you know,
and also included building a united front against fascism was

(34:57):
explicitly part of his plan.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Beautiful.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
And I couldn't tell you specifically that it was this
prompting that got the Nalgy together a year later, but
I think it was. And that's the inference in what
I have read. A lot of shit happened in this
world of ours in nineteen thirty six. That was one
of those years where just everything happens. The world was
hurtling towards World War two, fascism was on the rise.

(35:27):
FDR won reelection in a landslide, the third largest popular
vote victory in US history. It was like plus twenty
percent or twenty two percent or something. Yeah, as compared
to I think, Oh, I don't have the chart in
front of me, but I was looking at it. I
think the worst loss of the popular election was Trump
while still winning the election, you know, but the right

(35:51):
wing was making a comeback, and industry leader not with Trump.
But that's true too, But in nineteen thirty six, the
right wing is like starting to get it shit together
a little bit, and the industry leaders formed like the
liberty league, which I don't know enough about, but they're
basically trying to get together to like have a union
of bosses. Which is a thing that often comes up
is when they see that the workers get unions, they're like,

(36:12):
what about us? You know? And the other thing that happened.
One another thing that I ties together everything I ever
talked about on this show is that ads came up.
Oh my goodness, yeah, I got you.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
He's jumped right out there.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
I know, that's just what they do. And here they are.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
And we're back.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Okay. The other thing that actually also is on almost
every episode of the show is that Spain had a
civil war. Ah, and I swear I'm not even shoehorning
it in. It's like literally an important part of the
Nalgy's history. So the Spanish Civil War, which I I
think I told the story recently on air. Also very recently,

(36:56):
I was at a cafe with a new friend and
then we were talking about, like they knew a lot
about the whole bunch of like really interesting radical history
and I was like, oh, it's a relase to the
Spanish Civil War, And they were like, I don't know
anything about that. Can you tell me about it. Uh oh,
and I'm.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Like Mircaret said, sit back.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
No, I said, where are the hidden cameras? This is
a trap? No, But I think I literally told that
story like two weeks ago on this show. Sorry, everyone,
I'm gonna tell that story for way too long because
I think about it all the time. The Spanish Republic
in nineteen thirty six was a very young democracy and
it was troubled. The left in Spain was primarily a narcosyndicalist,

(37:35):
which is basically like labor unions trying to make the
state and capitalism obsolete through organizations that are bottom up,
and this or that section of the country, like a
mining town would just like raise the red and black
flag and be like we're doing this now, and then
the republic would have to come in and be like,
you're actually not doing that. You're still part of the republic.
But at the same time, the anarcosynicalists and the Republican

(37:59):
government are particis pitting in this popular front model, which
is basically like all non fascists kind of need to
work together whenever there's fascism around, which is probably true,
just seems like it.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Yeah, watch Steady Rise, We don't have time for infighting's yes,
we got to get aligned, not those guys.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
I know, I look forward to getting back to the infighting.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
That's glorious to have infighting when it's safe to do. Yeah,
it is currently not so safe.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Yeah. The right wing in Spain was essentially fascist and
kept trying to overthrow the Republic, and a fascist named
Franco tried to stage a coup. The coup was stopped
by the combined response of basically the Republicans, like the
government and the anarcho synicalist working class. The coup failed,
so Franco invaded with an army and a war broke out.

(38:50):
Civil war. It should have been and so this is
how it ties in energy. It should have been a
no brainer for the Western democracies like France, the UK,
and the US to support the Spanish Republic. Their whole
thing is that they're trying not to have the entire
world fall to fascism, right, But their whole other thing
under that is they're also trying not to have the
whole world fall to communism. You know.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
Oh, they hated it. They hated like people in charge.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Yeah, totally. And even though the Spanish Republic is ostensibly
in charge. At this point, they all chicken out the US,
the UK, and France, and they declare neutrality. And the
US passes a neutrality Act making it illegal to offer
material support to either side of the war, which means
it's illegal to support the Spanish Republic. So this didn't

(39:40):
stop tens of thousands of people, especially socialists of various types,
from making their way to Spain and joining in defense
of the Republic, but it sure stopped governments from providing
what's actually needed to win wars, like planes and bombs.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
In the end, the.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Spanish Republic falls, Franco and fascism win the day. The
one thing I can say, though, is that the republicans
of all types in this case good republicans. I love
how meaningless political terms are. I love they know they
just of course I'm talking about When I'm talking about republic,
I'm talking about the Spanish Republic of nineteen thirty six.
What are you talking about? What other kind of republican

(40:18):
would you be? Oh? An Irish Republican?

Speaker 3 (40:19):
No?

Speaker 1 (40:20):
And anyway, whatever, the terms are meaningless. Franco inherited a
country that was not ready to join the other fascist
countries in World War Two. It was wrecked, the population
was divided, it had just barely survived this war in
which tons of people died or fled. So he stayed
neutral in World War Two. And so even though the
Spanish Republicans loss, this gets to the point earlier about

(40:42):
winning by losing, they helped the later war effort against
the Nazis by crippling a fascist country. And the left
in general is to tie back to the energy. They
are not happy about this newtral thing. This is a
big political issue in the United States. Lawyers were trying

(41:06):
hard to fight against the Neutrality Act because we need
to stop fascism was a really big idea. So that's
another part of what starts the analgy. Then the Great
Depression is happening, and labor unions are gaining ground faster
than ever. A million people joined labor unions in nineteen
thirty six. Wow, that's so many people.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
That's so many people.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Especially I don't I don't off the top of my head, no,
but I know popularly she was not anywhere near where
we're at now.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
That's crazy, Yeah, I would guess. And I'm going to
refuse to look it up. I'm going to guess we
had about one hundred and some million people at the time. Yeah,
and a million people joined labor unions in nineteen thirty six,
and then millions more in the years to come. And
all of these unions need lawyers. So you have these
three things coming together. And on December first, nineteen thirty six,

(41:59):
twenty five East Coast lawyers meet up in New York
City to discuss creating an alternative to the American Bar Association.
They have several things on their mind. A lot of
them are new dealers, and they're trying to get lawyers
to fight for new deal policies and stop the American
Bar Association from trying to, you know, do their thing. Also,

(42:20):
the new dealers were like, hey, also, a lot of
lawyers are out of work. It'd be pretty cool if
the government created jobs for us too, because.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
We wouldn't mind being a little employment on our side.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
To you guys, I know, one of the things that
they're later going to win is social security extensions for
independent professionals like freelancers, like lawyers.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Listen, but speak of all the artists they I know,
it's such a view that's so beautiful.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
It helps me directly I am a freelancer at my job.
Oh yeah. So, and then you also have the ACLU
representing labor union lawyers, and then there's people fighting for
a popular fund against fascism and trying to get the
US to break the Neutrality Act. So they meet nineteen
thirty six and they're basically, the invitation is to create

(43:09):
an organization. It's for quote, all lawyers who regarded adjustments
to new conditions as more important than the veneration of precedent,
who recognize the importance of safeguarding and extending the rights
of workers and farmers, upon whom the welfare of the
entire nation depends of maintaining our civil rights and liberties
and our democratic institutions, which sounds like a little bit

(43:32):
like what we need right now too.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
Again, I'm really liking the ideals of this place so far.
I can really I rock with the community aspects.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
I rack with the protection Ye down a fascism.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Love it, No, I like, I have found only one
dark spot on their record, and I'll get to it
in a minute.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
Wow, Oh, you are right.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
And so at the meeting, they're like, all right, we're
going to call this shit the National Lawyer's guild and
it's going to be a voluntary bar association. And right
away there are chapters in Philly, d C. Saint Louis, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Newark,
and New York. And they start with around twenty five
thousand members. They came out of the gate with a
press conference at which they read a piece called the

(44:16):
Call to American Lawyers, and I'm going to quote from it,
just I like the way that they talk about things. Quote.
The history of our nation is, to great extent, a
history of the leadership given by lawyers. In almost every
national crisis. When human rights were an issue, lawyers championed
the cause of liberty and justice. In recent times, however,
certain groups within the legal profession have done much to

(44:39):
block progress and befuddle the legislative progress. So they're subtweeting
the people who are blocking the new deal. Such activities,
although not aided or sanctioned by the greater number of lawyers,
have served to bring the profession into public disrepute. Through
the National Lawyer's Guild, the overwhelming majority of American lawyers
now inarticulate will sound their collective voice, and so they're like,

(45:03):
it's sort of a union in a lot of ways, right,
we're like, oh, only a tiny minority. The like rich
white guys got to say everything.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
You know.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
They had their founding convention on February twentieth, nineteen thirty seven,
a senator and an assistant Attorney General, where like they're
talking shit on the American Bar Association for trying to
stop the New Deal, and they come out the gate saying,
regardless of race, gender, political ideology, people can join. Their
constitution opened, the National Lawyer's Guild aims to unite the

(45:35):
lawyers of America in a professional organization which shall function
as an effective social force in the service of people,
to the end that human rights shall be regarded as
more sacred than property interests.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
Oh, I know, people were getting hot under their hats.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
They said, more important than why yeah, I know, than
the business, you.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
Know, a life.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
I don't know about that. These radicals out here talk insults.
I also feel like we could copy paste and just
resend now, which is a little said. But also it's
nice to know the blueprints.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
I know, I know it's exactly as for how this
all went. Now that they've created the energy, all the
things they've done, including the one dark spot on the record.
That's my cliffhanger. We're going to get to that in
part two on Wednesday. How do you feel about the
NLG as the opening salvo of nineteen thirty seven.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Here's where I'm at so far. I think aspirationally, all
of their goals are lovely, like a, really, this is
easily an organization. I could be like, I would like
to align myself, take my dollars, like, let's support really
beautiful initial start. Now typically this point in the documentary,
I'm like, what's the sinister underbelly of it? Who who's

(46:48):
trying to profit? What angle am I not seeing? So
I'm nervous that I'm excited.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
Honestly, they the one bad thing they did was during
World War Two, and they okay, they like are kind
of all right, Like I e. There's like some stuff
where I'm like, oh, I wouldn't have framed it the
same way that you framed it or whatever. And there's
like stuff that they're like aware of, right, like they're

(47:13):
constantly probably still you know, there's a lot of fights
that happened through their history about like hey, we need
to be a little bit less white of an organization,
and we need to like be a little bit less
like male dominative in organization and and stuff like that.
But like, this is gonna be one of those episodes
where I'm like again with the one caveat that you'll

(47:33):
get to hear next day on Wednesday, they didn't do good.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
Like listen, if.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
You show me ninety years of anything and it's got
one mark again, that's a whole success. I know here,
this is a long time to get potentially a lot wrong.
So I'm excited to learn about all of their good things.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Well, what if people want to hear about you or
do you have anything you want to plug?

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Yeah, absolutely go to X ray Vision podcast.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Okay, guys, if you are looking for escapism but with
still a moral conscious, Okay, if you come find us,
we're gonna be talking about all of the great movies
coming out this summer.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
Okay, I'm talking. We got Superman.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
I got interviews with James Gunn and the cast of Superman.
Pretty good movie, check it out. We talk sinners, We're
gonna be talking weapons when that comes out. But then
on top of that, we're doing things like Foundation, the
Isaac Asimov adaptation on Apple TV Plus and Recovering Alien.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Earth this summer.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
When it comes out in August, we'll be at San
Diego Comic Con. So I love this show. It's full
of really great, like warm hearted people and we're just
talking about nerdy shit. So if you're into that, you
can check out the x RA Vision podcast.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
I'm gonna listen to The Center's episode probably the next
time I drive anywhere, because.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
Margaret, Yes, you're specifically gonna love this one. Jason conception
On is our host, and he does this really breathtaking
historical deep dive into Indigenous America and their correlations with
the Irish population and their they're battles against the state,
and it's a really fun conversation.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
Definitely check it out.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
I'm going to be so interested. I loved how that
movie framed so many things and I don't want to
talk about it too much on the case people haven't
seen it yet, but like, if you haven't seen it,
people should go see this movie.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
Absolutely fucking go see this movie.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
My mom is forty percent Irish and sixty percent black,
and I was deeply you know, a family came up
in the Mississippi migration.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
I was like, is this my story?

Speaker 1 (49:32):
I was like, your story Blown Away, Blown Away, I
just love and like the way it talks about art,
like is just oh god, so impactful.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Like I saw that movie three times in theaters, and
during the big scene which you can live on spoil here,
I cried each time. I kept of waiting to not
be as affected, and I was just completely switch like beautiful.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Art, gorgeous.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
The part that kind of got me near to you
is just literally some of the dancing scenes. Yeah, that's
a yeah, we'll just go with that. Yeah, and like yeah,
but also the way that they like successfully convey how
they care for each other, like the people you know anyway.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
So yeah, as community, and then the total absolute dis
on Christianity at the end where.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
I'm plow it away.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
So anyway, all right, Well, people should go check out
that podcast and if you want to hear me talk
about sometimes history and sometimes current events and sometimes preparedness
and sometimes my day in life. I have a substack
Margaret Kildoy dot substack dot com. Almost all the posts
are free. The more personal ones are for paid subscribers,
but you can follow me there and I post pretty

(50:41):
much every week. I'm gonna go subscribe sweet, all right,
I'll see you all on Wednesday.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
Cool People Who.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Did Cool Stuff is a production of pool Zone Media.
The more podcasts and pool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Com, or check us out on DApp, Apple Podcasts, or
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