#nlg

As the police escalate violence, beat and attack students and professors, and conduct mass arrests, student protesters should know their rights.

Here is the link to the National Lawyer's Guild booklet for protesters.

I know a lot of folks are going to the streets, to capital buildings and justice centers and protesting which is good and fucking important.

If you're able to go to out to the marches and protests, there's also another way you might be able to help, and that's through the National Lawyers Guild's Legal Observer program.

Legal observers observe and document potentially unlawful or unjustified interference with protestors’ rights by police. Basically, we're there as a safeguard, so if cops interfere with protestors' rights, we can serve as unbiased and reliable witnesses to advocate for protestors in the courtrooms. We also hand out flyers informing protestors of their rights, with contact numbers of legal support resources.

The Legal Observer program is part of the NLG's Mass Defense Program, "a network of activists, community members, organizers, legal workers, law students, and lawyers providing legal support for protests and movements taking an abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist approach to human rights work."

You don't have to be a member of the guild, lawyer, or in law school to be a legal observer-- you just have to go through a brief training. I'm none of those and I've been volunteering as a LO since the George Floyd protests. If you're interested in becoming a legal observer, contact your local chapter by email: https://www.nlg.org/chapters/

And if you're organizing a protest, use that same link to contact your local chapter about requesting legal observer presence at your protest.