Guild Trip: A Retrospective on the Seattle Chapter of the NLG

Context is everything.

In 1936, Generalissimo Francisco Franco declared war on the Spanish Republic. Mussolini's Italy
consolidated its conquest of Ethiopia. Hitler's Wehrmacht reoccupied the Rhineland. Within two years,
Germany had also absorbed Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. In 1936, the right wing of
the Japanese military attempted a bloody coup d'etat and Japan withdrew from the London Naval
Treaty of 1930 that limited the number and tonnage of ships of war. World War was looming.

It was the seventh year of the Great Depression, the third year of the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt,
the fifth year of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, and just another year when the Supreme Court
had rejected as unconstitutional one economic New Deal reform after another. The American Bar
Association was still segregated, and still opposed to New Deal economic reform.

In response to the times, in 1937, 600 lawyers convened to form an alternative to the ABA, the National
Lawyers Guild. It was the first racially integrated, progressive bar association dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system. The NLG dedicated itself to the principle that human rights are more sacred than property interests.

The NLG organized thousands of volunteer lawyers and law students who provided legal support for the Civil Rights Movement. Guild lawyers were at the bar defending the movement long before the federal government was involved. Guild members represented the families of murdered civil rights activists Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, who were assassinated by local law enforcement members of the Ku Klux Klan. Guild initiated lawsuits brought the Kennedy Justice Department directly into the Civil Rights struggle in Mississippi and challenged the seating of the all white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Guild lawyers defended thousands of civil rights activists who were arrested for exercising basic rights and established new federal constitutional protections in groundbreaking Supreme Court cases.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Guild lawyers represented Vietnam War draft resisters, antiwar activists and the Chicago 7, after the 1968 Chicago Convention. NLG offices in Asia represented GIs who opposed the war. Guild members argued U.S. v. U.S. District Court, the Supreme Court case that established that Nixon could not ignore the Bill of Rights in the name of "national security" and led to the Watergate hearings and Nixon's resignation. Guild members defended FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican independence movement and helped expose illegal F.B.I and C.I.A. surveillance, infiltration and disruption tactics (called COINTELPRO), that the U.S. Senate "Church Commission" hearings detailed in 197576 and which led to enactment of the Freedom of Information Act and other specific limitations on federal investigative power. The NLG supported self-determination for Palestine, opposed apartheid in South Africa, at a time when the U.S. Government still called Nelson Mandella a "terrorist" and began the fight against the blockade of Cuba. During this period, NLG members founded other important civil rights and human rights institutions, such as the Center Constitutional Rights, the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in Berkeley, San Francisco's New College School of Law and the Peoples Law School in Los Angeles.

The Seattle Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild was formed in 1938, the year after the national organization was formed. One of the founding members of the Seattle Chapter was John Caughlan. As noted in a King County Bar Bulletin profile published by Seattle attorneys Marc Lampson and Fred Diamondstone, John Caughlan epitomized the energy and esprit de corps of the NLG. Over 50 years of practicing law, Caughlin argued four cases before the US Supreme Court in defense of human, labor and liberty rights. In United States v. Fujimoto (United States v. Huff), 251 P.ed 342 (9th Cir. 1958), Caughlan succeeded in having the Smith Act/Communist conspiracy convictions of four defendants thrown out.

Lampson and Diamondstone quoted John Caughlan in their 1987 profile:

“[T]he Guild... sustained me personally through the bitter and difficult period following the war and through the fifties and sixties when hunting Communists in the schools and universities, rooting them out of labor unions and professional organizations, including the bar, became a national pastime – except for the victims, most of whom were not Communists.”

Wrote Lampson and Diamondstone:

Caughlan credits the Guild and its active members like Leonard Boudin and Thomas Emerson for assistance, not only in developing legal scholarship and resources to defend his own clients, but also for assistance in his own successful defense against federal perjury charges. But only years later, in the seventies, has Caughlan, like the Guild, become accepted by the bar, following years of isolation.

So accepted did he become eventually that in 1987, John Caughlan was awarded the ACLU's William O. Douglas award for “outstanding and sustained contributions to the cause of civil liberties and freedom.”

The Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington has created and posted an oral history of John Caughlan where you can see and hear him speak for himself, a memorial to the Seattle NLG itself: http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/cpproject/caughlan_interview.htm

Consider Seattle in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. There was no Microsoft. There was no Google. There were no high rise condominiums in Bell Town. Cascadia, not “South Lake Union” was the neighborhood south of the Mercer Street. Briefs were typed and copies were made with carbon paper. Mens' casual dress meant an unstarched collar. Women in the law were an oddity. People of color were practically invisible in the professions. There was a war going on somewhere, everywhere.

Guild lawyers were standing on the line, standing up for people when no other lawyers would. What has changed? What has stayed the same?

Scattered across the table in front of us are stacks of old Guild publications. Contempt. Briefs. Both recorded legal memorabilia of the Seattle NLG.

Your are reading this story on line on your computer. It was prepared digitally using Free and Open Software and broadcast into the ether to anyone world wide who chooses to read it. Volume I, Issue 1 of Contempt looks like it was prepared with one of those old style typewriters with the metal hammers that smacked the ribbon of ink that imprinted a letter on a piece of paper. It looks mimeographed. The photos are grainy. There are odd. R. Crumb-like hand-drawn cartoons.

So different.

Or is it? Read the stories from the past. Or is it the present?

“Guild Project Deported from Philippines. On Wednesday, October 18, Guild lawyer Doug Sorenson was arrested in the Philippines with two members of the Pacific Counseling Service and accused by the military government there of subversion.”

“Gay Marriage Rights... In no area is there more resistance to the expression of gayness than in legalizing homosexual marriage...”

“The National Lawyers Guild is currently involved with the American Indian Movement in the defense of the BIA takeover, Trail of Broken Treaties and the actions at Wounded Knee.”

“Weed Struggles Continue. It isn't just a matter of legalizing marijuana. The central issue is one of legal reform...”

“NLG lawyer visits North Vietnam...”

“Public Health Service Hospital Closure Thwarted...”

And all of that was just from the year 1973! In the next year, 1974:

“Boycott the Bon! ...garment workers, 95% Chicano and 85% women, went on strike against Farah Manufacturing Co. in Texas and New Mexico. Wages at Farah, the largest maker of men's slacks in the U.S. Are $1.70 an hour and $2.20 after twenty years. Women lose all seniority when they take maternity leave, without pay. At Farah, there is no job security.”

Now here's a change! Today, the Bon has been bought and metabolized by Macy's, most clothing is no longer made in North American sweatshops but in offshore Central American, African or Asian sweatshops. And wages (not even bothering to adjust for inflation) are even lower in these offshore sweatshops than what Farah paid in 1974!

“At a well attended Seattle King County Bar Association meeting in January, a Resolution favoring the impeachment of President Nixon was approved better than three to one...”

“Initiative Measure No. 316 goes before the Washington electorate on November 4th, in an attempt to reinstitute
in this state the mandatory death penalty for aggravated murder in the first degree. *** Organizing the opposition is a committee called Citizens Against Hanging. They are led by Ian MacGowan, chairperson; Marianne Croft Norton, president of the American Association of University Women; and Carl Maxey, lawyer and Guild member...”

1976.

“During the past year, bank executives have been pressured to admit the existence of redlining and have tentatively agreed to abolish the old discriminatory appraisal and underwriting standards.”

1977.

“The Guild chapter is one of six organizational and thirty-six individual plaintiffs who filed suit on June 27 against the Seattle Police Department. The suit is entitled: It's About time, et. al. v. Seattle Police Department, et. al. and challenges the SPD's refusal to permit the plaintiffs to look at information collected on them by the Intelligence Section.”

The NLG's national convention honoring the 40th anniversary of the Guild takes place in Seattle, August 1977. From the Guild Notes' “preconvention issue:”

Antirepression workshops will include discussion of police crimes, illegal surveillance and harassment, and the death penalty. The Guild's labor program, including safety and health issues, support for rank and file organizing, and practice under federal labor legislation, will be the fourth focus area. And the international work of the Guild will be further developed through workshops on Southern Africa, the Middle East and Puerto Rico.

Other workshops will concentrate on the Guild's program in relation to housing struggles, military law and organizing, grand juries, criminal justice, Native Americans, prisons and jails, unemployment, legislative and state bar work, and the fight to preserve and improve the trial jury system.

Fast forward to 1981, a news item from the Seattle Guild publication Briefs, “After the elections, Strom Thurmond resurrected the old Senate Internal Securities Committee under a new name – Seanate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism...”

1982.

“As part of the growing opposition to U.S. Involvement in El Salvador, Guild attorneys throughout the country have initiated the Lawyers Committee Against U.S. Intervention in Central America. The committee is now a national association with the leading chapter in San Francisco and other chapters being formed in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Texas and here in Seattle.”

1983.

“Guild Joins Fight Against Chokehold. On May 2, 1983, King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng released his decision not to file charges against any of the people responsible for the death of Riley Frost in the King County Jail...The Seattle Guild chapter joined the Coalition and representatives of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the American Friends Service Committee and the National Black United Front in condemning the racism and conflict of interest inherent in Maleng's decision.”

“Progressive people, including many in the Lawyers Guild, are currently exploring a number of questions about the politics and tactics of the movement against the nuclear arms race in this country.” From the April 1984 front pages of the Seattle Guild publication Briefs, a debate whether Guild lawyers should support the Democratic Party candidate, Walter Mondale [Walter who you ask?] or Jesse Jackson and his “Peace Abroad and Justice at Home” campaign. Whoa! Did we just go through this, or what? Obama, Nader, McKinney, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jesse Jackson, George Bush I, George Bush II, El Salvador, Panama, Chile, Condoleeza Rice, Henry Kissinger – our headlines are blurring!

Are we in a time warp!

News from the Seattle Guild Chapter, September 1984:

“The infamous 'White Train' carrying nuclear warheads for Trident missiles at Bangor submarine base rolled again in late July... In Vancouver, Washington, 200 got on the tracks and linked arms, and the White Train had to stop while police and railroad security men cleared the tracks. At the point of the train's entry to the Bangor base, 400 people gathered to protest, and 50 got in front of the train, stopping it momentarily just before it reached the base.”

And then three months later:

“White Train Cases Dismissed. Using a more assertive strategy than previously used in defending nuclear protesters helped to gain an important victory. The trials of 23 people charged with 'obstructing' the passage of the nuclear weapons 'White Train' ended in dismissal of the charges.”

1985.

“On August 7, 1985, eight protesters at the South African Consulate were acquitted of charges of criminal trespass by a jury in Seattle Municipal Court. The trial, a joint effort of the Coalition Against Apartheid, the national Lawyers Guild, and the National Conference of Black Lawyers, was only the second such victory in the nationwide movement against the policies of the South African government.”

Headlines from Briefs headlines, 1989:

“The Lack of Due Process in Israeli Military Courts.”

“Massacre of Political Prisoners in Iran.”

"Intifada Revives MidEast Committee.”

1990.

“It was the thrill of a lifetime to hear a federal jury order Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos to pay more than $15 million to the estate of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes... We [showed] that [the Marcoses] created and ran a conspiracy in both the Philippines and the US which intimidated, harassed, and sometimes murdered the opposition...”

“McCarthyism at Legal Services. Evergreen Legal Services is currently undergoing an aggressive monitoring effort by the Legal Services Corporation that impinges directly upon the associational and political rights of Seattle NLG members. LSC has sent a sixperson team of monitors to Evergreen twice in the last few months (for a week each time) to investigate what is called in Legal Services parlance 'the outside practice of law,' meaning in general work done on one's own time for family members, friends, or charitable organizations.”

1991.

News headlines from the Seattle Guild:

“Guild Takes Action to Oppose Gulf War.”

“Local Group Organizes to Provide Humanitarian Relief to Victims in Iraq and Jordan.”

“Seattle Police Photography Provokes Controversy.”

“Chapter Meeting Report: Police Misconduct and New Officers.”

“On the Unbearable Lightness of Being a Law Student.”

ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
August 1-4, 1991
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington

WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CANNOT REST

CONVENTION HIGHLIGHTS
Keynote Address by SENATOR PAUL WELLSTONE
“20th Anniversary of the Attica Uprising”
“Special Tribute to and Remarks by Former Congressman George W. Crockett, Jr.”
“Gay and Lesbian Outdoor Salmon BBQ for All People”
“Legal Services Waterfront Buffet Dinner”
“4th Annual Women's Luncheon – Hazel Wolf, ardent environmentalist, NLG Client.”

1993.

“Victory for Orozco and Carcamo! Word went out quickly through the telephone tree [ed., this is an prehistorical version of textmessaging] that a verdict had been reached... Not guilty on every count!”

Throughout the 1990s and into the 00s. Guild members mobilized opposition to the Gulf Wars, defended the rights of Haitian refugees escaping from a U.S.sponsored dictatorship, opposed the continued U.S. embargo of Cuba and advocated for a new civil rights agenda that includes the right to employment, education, housing and health care.

Guild lawyers were developing strategies about the impact of "globalization" on human rights and the environment years before the Seattle demonstration against the WTO, and when, in November 1999, the People “shut it down,” Seattle NLG lawyers and legal observers were there as well. As the 20th Century slid into first decade of the 21st Century, the Guild was there, defending antiglobalization, environmental, immigrant and labor rights activists from Seattle, to D.C., to L.A.

We look back at the old handtyped, mimeographed publications with the grainy photographs. We read the new digital web page that publishes our work throughout the world at the speed of light. Much has changed. Nothing has changed.

It's a Guild trip. It's what practicing law is all about. Making a difference. Making the effort. Making history. Welcome to the Seattle Chapter of the NLG. Welcome to our history. And yours.