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

Margaret continues talking 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 did
cool stuff. I keep saying weekly reminder, but it's really
a twice weekly reminder, except sometimes I tell you it's
twice weekly, and then I always in the middle of
this sense change what it is because I never write
it down. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me
today is my guest Juel Monique.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi. How are you hey, Margaret? I'm good, I'd be here.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
What people might have noticed, if they are as strange
about format of shows and making them always consistent as
my head is, is that last time we didn't mention
that we have a producer named Sophie who isn't on
the call, And because Sophie wasn't on the call, I
forgot to tell everyone that we have an audio engineer
named Eva hi Eva hey Eva and our theme music

(00:45):
was written for us by unwoman. And this is part
two of a two parter about the National Lawyer's Guild,
the topic that when I first picked it, I have
to admit I was like, oh, I'll probably have to
do like part one the National Lawyer's Guild, and then
like something else for part two, like no, they are
so cool and it's so much.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
You also give us such a good lead into their
history and why they need to exist. So I feel
like we're getting a full picture of the world at
the time to be like, hey, the necessity of this group, yeah,
very vital.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, it's really hard to imagine having been an activist
in the United States without the NLG. And that's gonna
come up more and more as we go through today's episode.
So where we last left our heroes, they had just
gotten together in New York and been like, we should
start this thing. We're going to call it the National
Lawyer's Guild. And then they got twenty five hundred of

(01:41):
their closest friends to start a bunch of chapters and
a bunch of cities and came out the gates strong.
And it really was that thing where it was liberals,
progressives and radicals all working together. Spoiler, one group of
those is going to sell out the rest, you can
probably guess, but we'll get to that.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
So, they hold their first convention in early nineteen thirty seven,
and among the things that they agree to at the
first convention is that literally is the first thing mentioned
in the history that I read of it, demanding anti
lynching laws.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Oh beautiful, great place to start. Ey, Yeah, random people
should not be able to kill other citizens. I don't
know if you know, it's kind of horrifying. It's not
great tramples all over our civil liberty. It's like real messy.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, it's one of those things where you're like, man,
why they need to do that? And I know why
they need to do it because I read history. But look,
you shouldn't be able to murder people who are in custom.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
It's intain that anyone was able to ever argue against it.
And essentially the argument to my understanding of Plato essentially, well,
they're so mad we enslaved them. Of course they're going
to be violently attacking us. We have to be able
to attack first, you know, a backwards ask way if
they is bananas horrifying, and there's.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
A lot of it was like, well, if I had
been treated that way, I'd probably try And those people,
like people who are like.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Black people, would to slave white people. Nobody has time
for that. Man thinking about that, we do not want
to do that totally seriously.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
It's like, how like Ireland didn't turn around to become
a colonial power individual Irish people in the diaspora did
but like.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Sure, sure, sure, but that as that nation. Yeah, you know,
instead they support Palestine, like but you know, has some
sensible thought. Wow. Crazy.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
So the first thing that I read demanding anti lynching loss.
They also they wanted to create laws to help support
collective bargaining, which is, you know, unions doing their thing,
and they wanted to give us social security. I'm actually
gonna do a whole series of once I finished this,
like protest movement, ultra globalization, I'm probably gonna shift into
doing a series of all the stuff that Trump is
working to take away from us that had to be built.

(03:48):
Oh yes, And so I'm going to do a history
on social security at some point. And what's funny, Well,
I find it funny because I find it really interesting
when anarchists do things that you wouldn't expect them to.
The big, fat, huge history of Social Security was written
by like an anarchist punk and it's called The People's Pension.
It's like eight hundred pages long. This is why I

(04:10):
haven't done the.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Episode about social security yet. I love anarchists. That's so
I want no order. But also, what if we just
made sure everybody was comfortable and okay with money. I
bet that would solve a lot of issues medical, crime wise,
you know. Totally brilliant, brilliant.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
And the other thing that NALG tried to do was
try to get the US to stop being neutral in
the Spanish Civil War, and at least five guild members
just went and joined the International Brigades fighting in Spain,
and three of them died in that fight.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
That is the most baller thing whenever I hear somebody's like,
I joined a war, not my nation, not my people,
but just because I had the instinctual human reaction of
this is horrifically wrong and I'm gonna go do something
about it. It just it blows in my mind that
there are folks still to this day who do that.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Totally.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
That's wild. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I did recent episode about three folks who died in Ukraine.
One was a Russian who was like, well hell with Russia, wow,
One was Irish, and one was a guy from Cleveland,
fucking bother man. And so at this first convention, there's
senators and representatives, there's a state Supreme Court justice, and
right away they start writing legal opinions that influence lawmakers.

(05:27):
And this is Actually, one of the things that they
do right out of the gate is they start writing
legal opinions. They're like, hey, actually, what if we interpreted
the laws of the following way, doesn't that make more sense?
Isn't that more just? And start giving those out. They
basically print up pamphlets and give them to lawmakers. FDR
himself wrote a letter of support for the first convention,

(05:48):
and in the first few years it exploded in popularity.
By nineteen thirty nine there was more than four thousand members.
In twenty nine, chapters Chicago and Philly started opening community
law offices, and I want to know.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
More about these.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
I don't know a ton. I believe this is a
place where anyone could go in and get legal information.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Wow, which is like we need that now absolutely.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
I mean, I guess we have like public defenders, but.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Like public defenders are so stretched thin, like additional time
to help folks not currently in the process of legal action,
like there's no way, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent, that
would be amazing, just even you know, for stuff like
I work in the entertainment industry and a lot of
influencers have no education on like what their rights are
as a worker and so it spent a lot of

(06:33):
time trying to steer them towards inexpensive or fresh out
of college lawyers who can just give like basic advice
so that they can protect themselves. It's hard, it's really
hard to find reliable folks, make sure the information they're
getting is good. You know, you want to find ways
to compensate these people's times because not all lawyers are stupid,
rich and comfortable, you know, especially ones doing things like this.

(06:56):
So yeah, it's really a challenge.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
No, totally. And like I think about, like I've always
been really lucky in that because I've come up from activism.
I know a ton of lawyers, but they're not intellectual
property lawyers. You know, they're like if I got arrested,
I know the right lawyers, which is great because that's
a bigger deal than like intellectual property stuff in terms
of impacting my life. But like it's still it's hard. Yeah,

(07:20):
it's hard to get but you.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Still might let to know some of yeah those things
at some point exactly, yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
And so things are going really well for the Energy
for a year and then they run into a snag.
And by a snag, I mean a thing that derails
the entire US for years. In nineteen thirty eight, Congress
set up the DIES Committee, which soon enough became the
House Committee on on American Activities. Yeah, the analgy wasn't

(07:47):
excited about this, and so they worked very hard and unsuccessfully,
although I mean, I guess they did outlive it, so
actually I guess they were successful in the end to
try and get it shut down. But when I said that,
there was radicals, progressives, and liberals, and one of them
was going to sell out the others, here we go.
It was the liberals. I think everyone saw that coming.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
You know, big l for a reason, Jesus, especially at
this moment, at this moment, my god, mind blowing, the
amount of fear of just we'll call you one American. Yeah, okay, yeah,
he'll go to jail for a few years. Okay. Like
the consequences socially were really impactful, but what they were

(08:30):
threatening was so like it's wild. And when you learn
about the folks that stood up to that shit, you know,
like if you've seen good Night and good Luck, which
is both a movie and a stage play that I
really enjoyed watching, they talk about a soldier who they
were like Hey, you subscribe to a communist magazine. You
need to like quit the army. He was like, fuck you.

(08:51):
It's a magazine that I read like once and doesn't
say anything about me as a person, like back off.
And he had to fight for years and years and years,
but he won because it's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I'm glad that people fight that stuff.
Like I think about like, I have a lot of
books in my house. I like to pretend it's because
my job, but it really is because I like having
a lot of books in my house.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
It makes me feel like me felt.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, And I have it's like overflow books in the
guest room, and I labeled one of the shelves bad
because it's the books that I know are bad. And
I don't want people to come in and be like
why do you have this weird conspiracy stuff or like
you know, or like why do you have like fascist books?
And I'm like, because I research history and I care

(09:36):
about this stuff, but I have to have it labeled, right,
you know.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
I just want you to know that I don't rely
on this or think the same knowledgeable source of information
beyond this is a direct quote space, Okay, I just
need to have the initial, like original text, so I
can be informed when i'm speaking out against it. Yes, yeah,
hundred appreciate. I love that. I shouldn't get a shovel.
Two shelves, one shelf, label bad, I'm labeled embarrassing where

(10:01):
I'm like, I have this book and I like it,
you have to deal with it.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, totally, But like unicorn writer romance stuff, that's exactly.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Exactly, this is the romanticy shelf, and there it is.
I'm sorry it exists.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
But yes, that's fine. And it's funny because the people
who I'm when I complain about the liberals selling people out,
I'm actually not going to complain about the people who
quit in fear, which is the majority of the Nalgy.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
We'll get to that.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Most people quit the nalg in fear, but some people
sold them out. You have an early prominent member of
the Nalgy, a guy named Morris Ernst. He's from the ACLU.
He'd done a ton of good shit over his career.
He had fought for free speech, he got books on
band but he's about as anti communist as it gets.
And it seems like pretty much right away before the

(10:55):
Red scare really even gets going, he starts colluding with
the FBI.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
No, that's the worst thing you can do, agreed.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
And so he starts giving the director, Herbert Hoover, information
about NLG members he suspects of communist ties.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Okay, business got it for somebody who worked for both
the ACLU and this amazing organization that was all about
freedom and like making sure people's rights were like understood
and accessible to immediately just be like, but these people
over here are dastardly evil, and so you must take
them out big government. Yeah. Is mind blowing.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
And part of it is I think that he's trying
to kind of control the direction the Nalgy goes. He
wants it to be his organization.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
You can't do that. You're in community, buddy, I know
how it works. Come on.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Ernst AND's followers wanted the Energy to take a strong
anti communist line like the ACO you had, and they
wanted to kick out anyone suspected of communism, and they
wanted new members to take an anti communist oath. But
throughout the entire Red Scare, the Energy is like, we
do have an oath. You have to swear an oath
to uphold the US Constitution in law. That's enough. Like,

(12:10):
you don't have to swear an anti communist oath.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
That seems excessive.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Uh yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Also, if you want to have communists believes us here
right as a human being totally, you get to do that.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yep. And people didn't go for it. This is like
the big thing that separates the Energy from other groups.
They didn't cave, and they took their lumps and they
stayed on course. Meanwhile, meanwhile, Ernst is also trying to
get the Energy to stop supporting Republican Spain, tries to
get them to stop supporting radical labor unions, and tries

(12:43):
to get them to stop critiquing Hoover and the FBI
and the Red Scare.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Ew gross bootlegger.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
The worst and what didn't help the internal tensions is
when there's this complicated thing when you talk about the
Red Scare, where you're like, is someone a commune the
capital c in that matters at this time and place,
because if you're a part of the Communist Party during
this period, you are part of an organization that does

(13:11):
take orders from Stalin, Whereas if you believe in communism
and socialism, you actually might hate Stalin. Yes, when the
USSR in nineteen thirty nine sided with Nazi Germany, so
the Communist Party of the US stopped being anti fascist
for a couple of years. And so we talked about
this in some of the Hollywood episodes that we've done

(13:33):
about anti fascism in Hollywood, where this complicated thing where
people who are like their thing is anti fascism are like, yeah,
we're anti fascists. But for a little while, the Communist
Party was like, nah, the Nazis are Okay.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
It got weird for a second. Yeah, there was a
lot of money on the table. Yeah, and it made
people make some poor choices.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, And a lot of people after that were like, ooh,
we were on the wrong side on that one, you know,
and people left over it. And so there's tension in
the ENLG, even from the left in this part because
they're like, no, wait, the whole thing is we're anti fascist, right.
The ENLG never went it just straight up wasn't a
communist organization. But we'll talk about that.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
In a second.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
And it comes to a head in nineteen forty because
the NLG the lawyers defended a bunch of union folks
and veterans of the Spanish Civil War, I want to say,
in Detroit, because they were accused of violating the Neutrality
Act by supporting Republican in Spain. So during the trial,
NLG lawyers talked loudly and publicly about how the FBI
was doing fucked up shit, and so Hoover they've now

(14:41):
picked on Hoover. So Hoover is like, I'm coming for you.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Here come the bugs.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah, here come the bugs. Here come the burglaries, Here
come the infiltrators.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Within six months of that, he orders a burglary of
their office. Later during the I want to say eighties,
they're going to get four hundred thousand pages of documents
of public record of the FBI's file on the Nalgy.
Jesus Christ, that's so many pages.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
That's a lot of face. It's multiple books worth of faith.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Yeah, Jesus, that is like four hundred Lord of the Rings, Wow,
and the entire series, not the first book. So at
this point, Ernst and the liberal contingent of the ENLGY quit,
which is good, frankly, Yeah the fuck, we don't need them.
Many others resigned in fear, including most of the founders,

(15:37):
as best as I can tell, by nineteen forty, the
convention represented only about one thousand lawyers, that's like three quarters,
and were gone, wow, yeah. And at the nineteen forty convention,
a bunch of the people who had left, some of
the big name of liberals, were like, look, if you
kick out the following communists, we'll come back. And the
energy was like, it says right in our thing, we
don't kick people out based on their political ideology. They

(15:59):
also wouldn't have been kicked out for being liberals.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
You know, yeah, you could come back regardless, but you
don't get to stipulate this makes sense to it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
And the thing that saved the NLG, which left them
able to lay the groundwork for like they're going to
lay the groundwork for like most of the welfare systems
that we have in the United States, as far as
I can tell, wow, okay, is the solidarity between the
progressives and the radicals. Between the lawyers who really were

(16:28):
various types of socialists. Whether some of them were in
the Communist Party, I think most of them weren't, maybe
a lot of them were. I'm not trying to just
paint with a Gilded Brush and the lawyers who believed
in the American system and wanted it to actually respect
the rule of law and equal protection under the law
and free speech and all that shit. Because in nineteen
forty the guy who became the president of the Guild

(16:50):
was a man named Robert W. Kenny, who I want
to call Bob Kenny. Actually people do call him Bob Kenny,
but Bobby Kenny, of course would be funnier. I just
want them to have cue nick names, partly because it's
like story with so many men in it, so I
just like want them to have cute nicknames. It just
makes it.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
I love it too, It makes them stand out personality,
like Bobby Kenny.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah. Yeah, so Bobby Kenny. He was the Attorney General
of California, He was a candidate for governor, and he
was a California Supreme Court judge. He was not a Marxist,
it doesn't sound like it. He risked his entire career
by sticking to the Guild.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
And he wasn't a Marxist, but he understood that a
society that denied socialists and communist rights is not a
free society. Indeed, and he also had the best, like
one liner in the whole ass script I'm ready, which
I'll tell you after the ads and we're back, Okay,

(17:49):
The one liner Bobby Kenny wrote about the people who left.
They founded us in nineteen thirty seven and they dumbfounded
us in nineteen thirty nine.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Bobby Kendy, Oh man, that guy sounds like he was
good to have a drink with. I know, see why
you got so many elected chairs. Amazing, Yeah, totally. And
then to bring back Marty Popper, who was the one
white guy. Yeah, oh, we remember Marty.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
He is like I think he stays with the energy.
I think he died in the eighties, but I am
not one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Certain Marty was a real one.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
He wrote a ton of the stuff that I'm even referencing.
He wrote about this time and energy history. I'm gonna
quote him quote. A core remained whose sense of history
enabled them to withstand the repression, confident that the time
would come when the principles they espoused would inspire a
new generation to take up and advance their cause. And
that is what happened. In the process. We provided in

(18:47):
an example to the entire progressive movement. The latter point
I'm still quoting deserves further elaboration. Large segments of the
progressive movement, abandoning principle, engaged in a frenzy of self distrust,
of red baiting. Leaders of important organizations became the architects
of division and dissolution, and in the process they not

(19:08):
only weakened their own organizations, but undermined the vitality of
the entire movement. It is in this larger context that
the lessons of our history can be best appreciated. Since
we survived because of our adherence to principles and are
stronger now because those principles remained intact.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yes, Marty come through.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
And so he's like, look, everyone else got scared and
left and lost, and we stuck to our guns and
are still in organization, and like only a couple of
them went to jail. And yeah, he says that what
basically socialist and non socialists sticking together and having each
other's back by believing in the core principles of the

(19:50):
guild is what got them through the red scare.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
That's really beautiful. And again, as we embrace our own
version of the red scare right now, uh huh, actively happening,
you see people being pulled off the street, people losing
their jobs for thoughts, switches nuts. Yep, it's very heartwarming
to know, like if you could just be brave and

(20:15):
stand your ground on your principles that you actually believe in, Yeah,
it's gonna get you so much further than you think.
And I think you know when you look back at
the red scar the number of people who folded and
those who didn't, even those whose careers were interrupted, which
I think, because we live in a capitalist society, it's

(20:36):
one of the scariest aspects of us. Like losing your
job has great impact, Like almost all of them go
on to find a way to continue to survive, and
some of them accomplish great things within their career field
despite being blacklisted. That's bananas. I just think hopefully it
inspires others to continue to be brave as they face

(20:58):
their own issues, Like.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
I agree, and like, yeah, solidarity is like literally our strength, Like.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
It's the only thing we have. Yea. It's all about
solidarity and connecting to your neighbors, which again I think
if you're the kind of person I mean, up until
three years ago, I never knew a neighbor because I
didn't have a dog, and I was since at my
house and I didn't think it mattered. I think very
differently now, and I like to encourage people when and

(21:27):
where I can, Like, if you don't know a neighbor,
go meet one.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, totally, say hey, know their name.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Make sure they know your name. It's gonna be necessary now,
it's necessary right now. I remember I live r eally.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
I was talking to one of my neighbors once and
they didn't know that I was kind of a prepper,
and they were like, you gotta get ready. That stuff's happening,
and I was like, I agree. And then they look
at me and they're like, but you're gonna have to
start eating meat and I'm like, yeah, no, totally. If
supermarkets collapse, I'm gonna shoot a deer and eat it.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
I understand that, you know, or I'm prepared to survive.
But I appreciate you looking out for me. This is
what we're talking about. Yeah, exactly, in case you weren't ready,
I just want to make sure you get ready. And
also some eventualities might happen. I can appreciate that totally.
And so then in the nineteen forties, big thing happened
where the US went to war. And while the analgy

(22:21):
did fight against.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Segregation in the military, that was a big thing that
they were campaigning on, they earned the darkest spot on
their record, which is that they didn't really do anything
about Japanese and tournament shocking.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
I know, it.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Actually is a little bit, and it's shocking to them too,
a little bit like the people who came later or
talk about it, more than one hundred thousand, about one
hundred and twenty thousand ethnically Japanese people were held in
concentration camps during World War Two, and they did later.
They were in the fight to keep Japanese Americans from
property confiscation.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Okay, that's good, so that was a necessary thing.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
But like the thing I read was basically they were like,
this is the worst thing we did is we didn't
stand up during that.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
I love an organization that can acknowledge where they fell short. Yeah,
I think if I was to extend any empathy to
them on that guard, it sounds like they were just
coming out of a very bleak situation where they had
lost most of their members. Red scares not over at
this point, you know. There sounds like they were hanging
on by a thread. I wonder if they didn't feel

(23:25):
they had the manpower to tackle such a large issue,
because I mean.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
I hope so. But honestly, my guess is that, like
I remember, I asked my other grandfather, not my Hogo grandfather,
but he's very strongly in the rule of law. Before
he died. I asked him once. I was like, you
think he's very progressive. He was very democrat. And I
was like, what did you think about the Japanese tournament,
you know? And he was like, honestly, I probably didn't

(23:52):
really think anything about it. I probably thought it was
necessary and hadn't didn't really give it any thought. And
he didn't say that to be like and I right,
you know, he just answered my question. Honestly, I am
guessing cynically that is, the attitude was a little bit
of a like, oh, well, like they might be enemy soldiers,

(24:13):
so we've gotta turn them, you.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Know, first terrorist attack on United States soiler.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Right, probably by another government or.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Like outside yeah yeah, yah, yeah, yeah. As I can
just remember the absolute reduction in brain cells after nine
to eleven, yeah, and the absolutely just horror and reaction
to genuinely devastating event, and it doesn't surprise me. And
I think, what's in a struggle now is it just

(24:46):
feels like we should have a three sixty view on
these things at this point. And I feel like if
similar things were to happen tomorrows, we're looking at I
don't know, actual concentration cans we opened up soiled people
being like, you can't call it concentration camp, ma'am. We
have to call this fade of faide to look things
directly in the eye. So yeah, I mean we can

(25:06):
look at again, just around it, what's happening right now,
And see, folks have very similar reactions to be like, oh, well,
if they're breaking the law, what could you possibly do
that doesn't involve me? It's not about me. Crazy Yeah,
crazy that I thought. And we know we're all in
this together. It's literally just us.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
It's nuts, no, I know, And like the energy should
have known better, and they know absolutely better. When I'm
offering them any grace, it was like they sort of
caught their breath and then we're like, oh, well, now
we're going to enter and try and make sure that
people don't lose their property, and like they came late,
you know, and the membership of the Energy slowly grew

(25:45):
during the war because the Red Scare was on a
little bit of a pause as best as I can tell.
And one of the most interesting contributions to history of
the Energy was that nineteen forty four they wrote down
how to prosecute the Nuremberg Trials ahead of time?

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Oh my god, thrilling.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
They sat there and were like, they wrote a report
that was like, all right, the war criminals, once we
win this shit, we're gonna win this shit. What a
defense are they going to use? What are the legal
arguments we can get ahead of time? Two years ahead
of time?

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (26:16):
And it also included advice on how to prosecute German
industrialists who profited off of like the stealing shit from
all of them. Yes, yes, And a ton of the
Nuremberg lead lawyers were Energy.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
I want to cry. That's so beautiful. I also, really
what I love about your show, Margaret, is that it
awakens a lot of folks to the ideas like, well,
what can I do? You know when you are facing
very large problems that seem overwhelming, you know, especially if
you're not somebody who's had the privilege or opportunity to

(26:53):
be educated on like what goes down during these major moments.
You know, a lot of people your options are signed
for army or protests or like run for government, which
are all three free options. But you could also be
using your legal mind to be trying to advance, or
you could just be feeding school children during this time
where there's like a role for all of us. Yeah.

(27:14):
And I just think it's so beautiful that they were like, Okay,
it's not over yet, but I can foresee what's about
to happen, and let's make sure we're prepared. That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, yeah, no, I that's such a good point that
this is, Yeah, such a good example of their like,
how do we contribute, Well, we are some of the
smartest legal minds in the West, so we should get
ready to prosecute the Nazis.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
You know.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
And yeah, and then the war ends and the energy
moves on to fighting the enemy. Within the United States,
the House Committee on American Activities. President Truman instituted a
loyalty program that demanded loyalty checks on two point five
million civil servants. Oooh, and the enalgy put all of
its energy into fighting it, And I like a quote

(27:59):
from a MIDI report from the Energy about this time period. Quote,
those who resist freedom of inquiry are enemies of the people,
where they doom our land to endless cycles of economic
crisis and poverty, of war and annihilation of bigotry and
spiritual degradation.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Like spiritual degradation. Tell them, yeah, there is no end
if you decide that, you get to decide who's loyal.
I have the drop of a hat every day. Oh
my god, who can live under constant surveillance. It's just exhausting.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, and the Red scare rages on the major unions
demand anti communist oaths. Energy lawyers are fired from a
bunch of unions. In nineteen forty seven, ten Hollywood folks
refuse to testify in front of the House of on
American activities. The Hollywood ten and their lawyers are Energy,
including Bobby Kenny.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
I didn't know that. Yeah, oh my god, I love
that Hollywood ten before when I was talking about you know,
there are folks whose careers were on the line and
risk and were eventually black while it's these guys that
I was talking about, Like, I just think there's incredibly
brave to be like, no, fuck you, I'm not answer
your goddamn question totally. You have no right to ask

(29:12):
me in the first place. Oh so brave.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
I would be so frustrated if that was me, because
I'm like, famously have very negative opinions about Bolshevism, but
like I'd have to just be like, I'm not answering.
They'd be like, are you a Bolshevik? Instead of being like, no,
I hate them too, I'd have to be like, none
of your fucking business.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
You don't get an answer out of me, period, no
matter what. Yeah. Yeah, it would be oh gosh, difficult
in every single way, but also just two years of
what seemed to be pretty soft time from what I've
read about their time in prison. You know, it's not
fun you're in prison, but it's also not you know,
the backbreaking labor of like a southern prison back in

(29:51):
the thirties and forties. Gosh, yes, sorry, I've.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Interrupted, No, no, no, that's a Hollywood ten. I believe
that each got year in prison, and then the energy
represented leaders of the US Communist Party and five ENLG
lawyers went to prison for contempt in the course of
defending the communists.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Contempt is one of the funniest things. I would feel, like,
what a badge of honor to be there at a
court for You're like, yeah, you're kept in this court, Like, yes, actually,
i do have contempt for this court. Please.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yeah, I'm fine with it being on my record. Whatever,
y'all are a thought crime tribunal. I'm a human, of
course I have contempt for you. Of In nineteen forty nine,
the League started investigating the FBI, which rules.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Okay, that's some of the most botherers shit I've ever
heard in my life. How do you investigate the FBI?

Speaker 1 (30:44):
I didn't find enough details about what this is, but
I think that they're just basically building a case against
the red scare right, and they're building a case against
what the FBI is doing.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
It sounds like the people that are you may have
to cut this. Let me know. When we're trying to
docs ice agents, we're like very actively in the streets,
like standing outside of their house, like just trying to
bring morale as low as possible. I'm like, yeah, y'all,
we this is incredible to me. But you ain't even attempted,
but be that you're having success with it. My mind
is blown. Oh. I just love little people being like

(31:17):
you think you can do with me. I can actually
do this to you too. Yeah, this Week of the
Street runs both ways, buddy, incredible.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
And that's not legal advice, but I think we should
keep it in Its just not legal advice.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
This is a thing I would never tell you to
do anything.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Any given action is up to people to make their
own decisions.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
And so clearly when you do that to three letter
acronym organizations that are doing terrible things like the FBI,
I don't know what you're talking about. It means that
the FBI went to war against the League and they
makes them the first targets of basically co intel pro
which is what they used to disrupt the Black Panthers
and all these things by doing like counter information and
infiltration and stirring up conflict. It's the first one that

(31:56):
I've run across the House of on American Activities put
out a report called the National Lawyer's Guild Legal Bulwark
for the Communist Party. And this is funny for a
lot of reasons. But one is just like the Energy
wasn't a communist organization. There were communists in it. We
know that when FBI stole their membership list, which they

(32:17):
did several times, six point six percent of the members
had ever been affiliated with the Communist Party in any way,
which is like probably a lower percentage than like the
average film.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Set, right right, right, you know, one percent.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
But this war against the enalg from the FBI led
to even more resignations. By nineteen fifty five, there were
only five hundred members left. Oh my god, down from.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Twenty five k to one thousand to five hundred. Well,
but actually they spiked it the rebound after Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yeah, so during the war, like in nineteen fifty they
had thirty four hundred, but then they yeah, they lost
almost three thousand and members.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Jesus, only four.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Chapters remained New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Detroit.
And Detroit was the most rat of them all.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah, of course they were.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Yeah, lots of people who quit, though it wasn't like
they were like, oh, we actually hate you. They stay
subscribed to like the newsletters and shit, and they like
we're still practicing law, and like I think a lot
of them were just trying to do good shit and
just kind of had to like keep their head down
and I'm like, look, I can't blame you. I can
blame people who turn on it, right.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Of course, if you're a trader, fuck you.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
But if you're a person who's like I have three
children to raise and so I'm just trying to keep
my house together, I get that's totally fine. You have
to maneuver how you have to maneuver, and again sometimes
it's even beneficial. Again never giving advice, but I've certainly
heard of people applying for some of these fancy new
ice jobs in order to you know, see what's going on.

(33:56):
It gets them intel, it disrupts some systems, so you know,
they sometimes you got to quit in order to be
able to move more freely. That's what you gotta do.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Yeah, And so the publishers at the NALG started putting
out like tools that these radical but somewhat timid lawyers
could use, Like they were still offering like legal frameworks
that lawyers could use, and the NALG saved itself. They
spent three years from nineteen fifty five to nineteen fifty
eight successfully fighting. Basically what happened is the FBI was like,

(34:26):
we're going to put you on the list of subversive organizations,
and if that had happened, people would have been in
real trouble. It's like the equivalent of how not wanting
things you're attached to, to be on domestic terrorist lists
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Right, it's not good, not good. Look.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
So for three years this is the fight where I
was like, they picked a fight with lawyers and they
didn't win. They tried to listen as a subversive organization
and nalgy lawyers fought them in court. Tooth and fucking nail.
There you go, and one.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yeah subversive where buddy you show me? Yeah? Amazing.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
And Detroit was the most active chapter because they were
tied into labor rights and also were the place that
the civil rights part of it gets its start.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
But before I talk about civil rights, I want to
talk about goods.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Answer.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Actually, I don't want to talk about it. I just
want to interrupt the podcast with goods and services. That's
what gets me up in the morning.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
A gift, Julie, enjoy and we're back.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Okay. So the Energy saved itself by preventing itself from
being destroyed. The five hundred who remained like soldiers and
some lord of the ring. Shit, fucking held their shit
and drove them back. But what brought new people into
it and revitalized it was the civil rights movement. Lunch
counter sit ins needed lawyers, and the nalg lawyers were like, yeah,

(35:48):
let's fucking do it. They didn't actually have any Southern chapters,
but they had plenty of people, including at large members
in the South, and they also had Northern lawyers who
were like, well, it's a country I can move, you know.
They formed the Committee to Assist Southern Lawyers in Detroit,
and they announced that every Guild member was committed to

(36:09):
volunteering their services in case of anything fighting segregation. Oh wow,
so they were like, all hands on deck, that's beautiful.
There was one particular type of Guild member who had
a problem with this one demographic Uh oh, FBI informants.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
They like to make themselves known at very pivotal points.
This is like what you want to help who?

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Because what happened was there became this conflict where there
was a Detroit versus New York City divide. Detroit was
like we're dropping everything, We're helping the South, and Detroit
was actually the biggest chapter, but New York City was
like whoa whoa, whoah, we shouldn't do that. Or rather specifically,
one guy in New York City kept giving speech is
about that he was an FBI informant. Came out later Mmmm,

(37:05):
he was one of more than a thousand people who
had been hired since nineteen forty. Between like nineteen forty
and like nineteen eighty, there was one thousand people not
necessarily in it. A lot of were in it, but
like hired to like hang out around them and stuff.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
That is so much money for an organization. That's basically
we just want to make sure the laws are doing
the best for the people they represent.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
That's all well, like as above borders like yeah, yeah, insanity.
And once again, the Guild didn't split, like it came
really close to it. Okay, this is my argument. The
fact that it didn't split over an ideological difference is
how I know it wasn't a communist group. And so

(37:48):
sixty six lawyers went to trainings in Detroit and then
headed down to the South to help the civil rights movement,
and they fought like hell every time activists got arrested,
and they started to grow again. Radical students became radical
lawyers and joined by the hundreds and then the thousands,
and at the time students could be not direct members,
not voting members, but they could like join kind of

(38:09):
in an auxiliary way. But as they become lawyers, they're
joining in a voting block. And by nineteen sixty eight,
you know, the Civil rights era moves into the like
new Left era where you start getting the Panthers and
you start getting the Yippies, and the thing that is
the first year of the show is basically just this.

(38:30):
In nineteen sixty eight, the ENLG basically agreed that they
were the legal arm of the movement. And this is
a big distinction because before they were like lawyers who
support the movement, and now they're like, no, we're in
the movement. This is of us as well. And all
throughout the sixties shit with the New Left and Black

(38:50):
power and anti war, the ENLG was there representing thousands
and thousands of arrestees. And it's at this point that
they developed the tactic that is the whole reason I'm
talking about them today wearing hats to say legal observer. Yes,
they started putting legal workers, lawyers and otherwise into parades

(39:11):
and marches to observe what the police are doing take
notes and use to later help people in.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Court vital because the police do what lie?

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, No, totally, I like genuinely struggle with how a
judge can seriously take a police officer as a witness.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
I just like I can't at this point. I feel
like it's ingrained in the inherent nature of the workflow. Right.
So if you think about how much you know your
eighties working with cops, and then cops are reporting to judges,
be simple, they seen like they are familiar faces to
each other, and their uniform is such a way to

(39:51):
pass over these things. But it is I think to
your point, markret when you're like a thinking, intelligent human
being and we've seen the amount of life eyes, deceptions,
theft that police in the same way that I still
find it hard to understand how anyone could be like
this can be reformed. I'm like, what are we talking
totally about. I don't understand how you can think that

(40:11):
the whole point, they don't have to know the law
or protect you. That's what the court said, So what
are they doing here? Because oh my god, exhausting.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
And so the legal observers are there to counteract the
lies that are going to be told, and they would
show up to jails and courthouses the moment there's a
whiff of an arrest happening. And as I was saying
at the top of it, all ENLG actually owns registered
trademarks for the word legal observer and they have an
official certification program. So if you see someone in a

(40:46):
lime green hat, this is legal observer on it. They've
probably been trained according to the trademark registration which I
looked up, and randomly tells me about what they're doing.
And I found that interesting. The certification marks used by
person authorized by the certifiers certifies that the services provided
have been performed by an individual has completed a certifiers
educational training and testing for providing observation services in the

(41:09):
nature of taking notes, photographs, video, and or audio recording
of the conduct of law enforcement and or private security
at public events for potential use in court at police
conduct review hearings or other public hearings. That's what legal
observers do in legal ease.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
We love them for it. Thank you so much for
being because I think if there's anybody who can sort
of outdo a cop in a court case, it's a
legal observer like this is the great equalizer for the people,
you know, other than camera footage, and even then sometimes
that can be difficult to get admitted depending on circumstances.
But if you have a legal observer, hopefully they're aware

(41:47):
of the laws that are doing it correctly so that
it could be used properly. So that's it's wow, lovely.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
Human yes, absolutely, and risking arrest and injury themselves. And
like m hm, the police often target anyone that's like
a mark medic or a legal observer or like we.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Have seen many get hit here in LA during the
last round of protests after the No Kings protests. Yeah,
watched the reporter get shot right in the face.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Crazy And so realistically, I can't come up with a
way in which the New Left or modern protest movements
would have been able to do half of what they
did if there wasn't an organized group of lawyers ready
and willing to help people out. Also, during their anti
war stuff, they set up law offices in like several
countries where US soldiers were stationed in order to offer

(42:35):
you at like in Japan and stuff like that, to
offer services to US soldiers who are opposed to the war,
and they would represent prison rebels, like after the Attic uprising,
they went in and represented all of those people.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
And the next split that they almost had but again survived,
this one was internal and a little bit more honest.
I don't think it was totally cointel pro or anything.
There was a generational divide between the old lawyers who'd
weathered the Red Scare and the younger new left lawyers,
and the generational difference was huge. Younger members wanted to

(43:08):
be part of the movement. Older members wanted to be
lawyers who support the movement. As for that middle generation,
they don't exist because of the Red Scare. Ah, there's
like literally this chunk where there's like all the old
heads just holding on until all of a sudden all
of these students become lawyers in join. But they weathered

(43:29):
the generational divide as well. They are so good at
weathering storms. The way that they did it in the
end could be summed up by this nineteen sixty eight
internal report quote. We had to de emphasize tradition, not
scrap it. We had to jostle the guild and try
not to break it. We had to convince people of

(43:49):
the necessity of change and prepare them for the slowness
of it.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
That is such a good model for anyone going forward.
I think the idea of like because I think that
the nature of youth is to book tradition, and when
you stringently hold tight to it, they can often not
see a space for them to craft their own way forward.
And so to hold on to the reason for the

(44:15):
tradition as opposed to the tradition itself, to be like, Hey,
this is a long battle and this is how we
previously weathered the storm. Do how you do, but the
storm is still going to need to be weathered, Like
it just allows the tools to be there, but the
freedom to evolve and yeah, flexibility and that rigidity, guys,
that's how we're going to make it. I love that.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
The dumb lord of the Ring style sounding quote that
I use a lot is the brittle sword has no
use in battle.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
A maybe I story chip and bray.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Yeah, And the big conflict, a lot of it was
around younger lawyers wanted to fight against elitism, and part
of that was like literally fighting against the idea that
lawyers were like above other people, right, and so they
were a big proponent of like, actually, these are skills
that we should generalize more. People should have more of

(45:07):
a legal understanding, we should do more trainings to help people.
We should support jail house lawyers was a big part
of it, Like, in any given jail, there's going to
be jail house lawyers who are probably not actual lawyers
that gets scare quotes, but are instead people who study
the law to help other prisoners.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Right. And this is like the Church of England being like, no,
everybody should be able to read the Bible your own decisions.
I love being like, you know what if the people
had the power and the knowledge before they got to us,
and then we could just like really elevate them when
they get to right, And it's like there's.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Still a role for a lawyer in the same way
that like, I think everyone should take stop the bleed
classes so that they can respond to traumatic wounds in
the car accident or a gunfire at a protest. But
you probably don't need to learn how to perform higher
level of care unless you want to. Yeah, And I
really appreciate the legal trainings that I've been to that

(45:59):
were probably put on by analgy just as a protester
and it's because of this split, and so in nineteen
seventy they agreed to admit students. Because what happened was
in nineteen sixty eight all of these like students joined
as auxiliary members. But then they graduated, became lawyers and joined,
and they remembered where they came from, and so they
were like, no, students should be full voting members. And

(46:21):
by the time that students are full voting members, the
old guards like fucked electorally right, And so nineteen seventy
one they added legal workers like paraleguals, paralegals and jailhouse
lawyers to be full members as well. Who can vote?

Speaker 2 (46:36):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah. And then there's this thing where a lot of
the founding members left. I was reading one person talking
about being like the thunderous applause when the vote passed,
felt like people telling us they hate us and whatever, right,
And so a lot of founding members left and then
because they were like, all the group has lost its way.
By nineteen seventy seven or so, both sides of the

(47:01):
debate got over themselves, and so the founding members came
back and the younger people were like, welcome, back, we
love you, you did so much work for us.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah, oh, community, is this a fucking heart worman? That
is so lovely? Because the thing is I understood like
dramatic change can often feel like oh. And I think,
especially back then, we have a much better understanding of
like what it means to retire and to leave a
career as opposed to then. You know, I think agism

(47:34):
was such a strong factor of like your old man
get out, you know, particularly if we're looking at the
sixties and seventies and the rise of youth culture. I
could totally understand why culturally these guys might have been
like I'm not significant or needed here, yeah, or wanted
here anymore. But hear that like their work was honored
and they were welcomed back warmly. Like that's so lovely,

(47:55):
I know.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
And I might be reading like Rosie Tinted Glasses version
of it, but I read it and leave it and
I want it to be true. And I didn't read a.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Counter argument choo to believe today.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
And a ton of people did rejoin, so clearly that happened,
you know. And then there's like a thing that if
you read anti energy stuff. But this is also probably true.
Is that like, lawyers make a middle class salary by
and large. Right. It's funny because when I was like younger,
I was like, oh, doctors and lawyers, those are rich people.
Actually rich people. Is when you make money with money,
not by work. If you make money with work, you're

(48:24):
in the working class. If you make money by having money,
you're in the owning class.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
But lawyers it pays better than yeah, like or a
community organizer or like whatever, and so a ton of
the like people like like the weather undergrounds money. Like
some people who went around and bomb shit in the
late sixties, it came from radical lawyers. They were just like,
all right, here's your money for your bombs. I don't

(48:53):
know whether they knew it was for bombs or not.
I am not making any.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Never can doone funding the bombing of anything.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
I just really love the idea of radical lawyers because
they play into this idea of I'm using air quotes, civilly,
engaging right discord while also doing the very cool radical stuff.
And again, Margaret, from your show, I have learned so much.
You need both. Yeah, you eat people who can do
both in order to see active change.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
So we love a facilitator. Thanks lawyers.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yeah, And so they've just like kept doing stuff. The
main history I worked from, like my main sources, a
bunch of sources in the show notes, but there's like
one longer one that I worked from was a history
that they put together for their fiftieth anniversary in nineteen
eighty seven. But they're nearly ninety years old now and
they have continued to just basically be everywhere helping everyone.

(49:46):
In the meantime. They helped during the AIDS crisis and
had like working groups working on legal ship for that.
They have done all sorts of work on international issues.
They helped like when places actually become democracies, they helped
show up and write constitution.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
They defended the ultra globalization protesters, And when I was
arrested during that, it was energy lawyers who were putting
pressure on the city to get us to release us
like me and my seven hundred best friends were arrested
and spent the night in jail.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
You know.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
They fought against the Patriot Act. They supported the Occupy
movement against repression. They are there whenever people are facing repression.
During the movement for Black Lives, they are constantly getting attacked. Currently,
the Republican Party is accusing them of being anti Semitic
because they support the Palestine people against genocide, even though
this is like one of the most Jewish started organizations
I've ever read about.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Apparently that no longer matters.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
Yeah, totally, and they defend activists. They also developed legislative ideas.
They build legal arguments. They built the legal arguments for
things like social security, disability, unemployment, veterans' rights, just like
any of the welfare that they're currently taking away from
us was built by a lot of people, but a
lot of the legal arguments came from energy lawyers. And

(51:04):
most of what they fought for in nineteen forty they
were fighting for Puerto Rican independence, right, Wow, Like that's
how early on the ground they were about that shit,
Because they had only been around for a couple of
years at that point. Most of what they fought for
they've lost. But this is not the mark of a
losing organization, but instead a principled one. They stand for
all kinds of causes well before any of those causes

(51:26):
have any popularity. And during the seventy fifth anniversary, the
executive director, Heidi Bokozian wrote, quote, the Guild's history is
remarkable because we have taken part in every major progressive
political movement of the past three quarters of a century.
And they are the only group I've ever run across

(51:48):
that can say that.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
It's kind of blowing my mind that I was not
more aware of them. I've seen the Neon Hatsonia protest.
I knew before I go, I hear what legal observer was.
Didn't know somebody to the copyright. I know?

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Is that funny?

Speaker 2 (52:02):
It's immaculate because it absolutely says it's pre building in
a way to protect these people and the idea of
what they're doing, and that yeah, sort of gets the
ideal of like what it is they do as a whole.
And so it's just kind of like this perfect thing
to hold up and be like, they've got you and
to your points we've been talking about them, they've got themselves,
Like this is an organization that can endure. And I think,

(52:27):
you know, especially in America, we're a very young country,
even though it may not always feel like it. Knowing
that there are institutions organizations like this that exist and
have continued to endoor through extremely difficult times. Especially right now.
It's comforting. Yeah, it's really comforting to know that there

(52:47):
are folks out there fighting like this regularly in community,
with law at the forefront of their decision making. Like,
it's genuinely thrilling to.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Know there's so much more freedom that an activist has
knowing that, like the Energy isn't going to guarantee that
you don't go to jail if you break the loan, no,
or even that if you don't break the loan that
you won't be you know, but knowing that there's someone
who will fight for you allows everything else to happen.
And it's interesting because if people read through the sources,

(53:20):
I added to the top of the sources a thing
that I didn't quote at all, and it's a speech
by an energy lawyer and a friend of the pod
named Moe Meltzer Cohen. And if you're listening, well, Mo,
if you're listening, you're wonderful, thank you. But if you're
a radical lawyer and you're listening, I think you might
like this speech. And it just didn't quite apply outside

(53:40):
of like lawyer stuff, but it frames the work of
the Energy basically being like, hey, we need to remember
that we're humble. We are the support other people are
the things that make it happen. We can't get too
full of ourselves about like us being the important ones.
And it's in the context of queer rights in the
fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall, Ah. But the thing about that
is I can see how within maybe the lawyer community,

(54:03):
maybe they're a little like we're so great, right, But
I actually think their work is a little bit invisibilized
within the activist community totally.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Is So I just want to.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Say, like, maybe more directly than I usually doing these
kind of things, thank you National Lawyers Guild for having
our backs, you know, and yeah, you whoever you're listening,
the ANALG has your back. There's like a Federal repression
hotline that they run where if the Feds show up
at your door, you can call it. And that actually
includes like right wing people who are getting If the

(54:34):
atf knocks in your door about guns, that's federal repression
and you can call that hotline. And knowing that there
is like a hotline you can call if the Fed's
knock at your door and ask who you know, is
just necessary infrastructure, especially going forward.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Yeah, one hundred percent. It's an absolute gift. And I
also think again, so many people feel like a lot
of despair and hopelessness, which is entire understandable. But I
think when you can put into perspective the amount of
effort and fight that has already gone into building these protections,
you can start to better understand, like what your position

(55:13):
in the fight is going forward. I think like, oh,
it's all rescinding. I'm like, watch the courts, for the
love of God, there are actively judges and lawyers fighting
for you. Watch the courts, like your local courts, guys,
like really see what's going on, so you can understand,
like you can be realistic and optimistic. By doing that,
you can understand what rights are being threatened and or

(55:34):
have already been taken away. And you can also see
where the wins are, and there are really good wins
happening right now.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Totally. I think things would be a lot worse right
now if it weren't for not even activist judges and
lawyers literally just non fascist lawyers and judges, just.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
The ones showing up to do their job in good faith. Yeah,
those guys, we love them.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Like you don't even have to be TLG level of
progressive or whatever. Just don't be a fascist. And we
haven't won.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Yet, not even close. So much fight.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Left, but it would be so much worse if it
weren't for so many people fighting, both on the streets
and in the courts. Yeah, well, thanks for listening to
talk about the NALG.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Thank you for teaching me. I learned so much and
I feel very comforted and warm and gooey. And I'm
gonna go add the hotline to my emergency phone numbers
that are in my phone now you can't. Oh yeah,
catastrophe happens.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
That's a good idea. You got anything you want to
plug here at.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
The end, the same as earlier in the week, check
out xday Vision. Guys. I've never had more fun making
a show, and our listeners tell us that's really tangible.
So if you need a good laugh and a little
bit of escapism again with some consciousness. We don't talk
about translaters, you know, it's not that kind of fandom.
We we really try to make sure that people we

(56:54):
talk to and cover are good human beings to the
best of our ability. So that's what you're about. Come,
here's about this great summer of movies and dinner TV
shows coming out really excited for Alien Earth and foundations.
So I come chat with us.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
Hell, yeah, what do I want to plug? I work
with a publishing collective called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness
and we are putting out a book that, Oh, this
is the opposite vibe of what you just said. I'm
so sorry. Both vibes are important. Yes, we are putting
out a book called Orso Wartime Journals of an Anarchist
and it is written by Lorenzo Arcetti, who is an
Italian anarchist who died in the fight against ISIS and

(57:31):
Rojeva died in the process of trying to protect the
northeastern Syrian Autonomous Communities, and his comrades smuggled out his
journals to Italy. They were published in Italian and we
have the great honor of being able to publish the
English translation. There's articles, there's pieces from his father in

(57:52):
there talking about what it's like to have lost a
kid in that fight, and also pieces just frame the
whole thing. So if you're like Margaret, I don't even
know this thing you're talking about, hopefully this book will
have been given enough context. Because we love context here
that it should still be readable and it will be
out very soon. Is available for pre order now, and

(58:13):
if you just look up or so o RS Strangers
in a Tangled Wilderness, you should be able to find
a pre order link for that.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
That's what I got. That sounds amazing.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Yeah, I think I think we'll probably try and do
some content around that once it comes out, and I
genuinely think it takes both things. I also think we
need to remember that we are alive and love watching.
I'm literally gonna just go watch a bunch of TV
because my work week is done as soon.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
As I yes, get it. You have to escape so
you can return fully recharged.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Okay, oh yeah, I eat whatever the cheesy like I
think I probably have like vegan corn dogs in the freezer.
I'm gonna geat the worst food in my house and
turn off my brain until Monday, when I will go
back to work. That's not sure, I have to go
back to work way before then, but for tonight I'm
free anyway. Thank you so much for being the guest,
and I will talk to you and everyone else soon.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Thanks Mike. Hi.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.