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On the 10th anniversary of the WTO protests in Seattle, the National Lawyers Guild is holding its annual conference in Seattle.
I'm here for the conference this week.
Today, in just one panel discussion, I heard presentations by Steven Goldberg, a member of the legal team on Al-Haramain v. Obama (originally Al-Haramain v. Bush), challenging the Bush admin's domestic surveillance program and responsible for uncovering, through a Bush admin mistake, the warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, targeting in particular religious and political organizations. I blogged on this case previously.
Eileen Clancy, I-Witness Video, was on the same panel. You might recognize I-Witness Video in recent news as the organization carrying the cameras and documenting police crackdowns at MSP during the Republican National Convention, themselves arrested in a preemptory effort to stifle 1st amendment rights guaranteed to us all.
Also on the panel was Imam Mahdi Bray, the executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom, a DC based civic and human rights advocacy entity of the Muslim American Society. Imam Bray spoke of the responsibility we all share to personify the hope kindled in President Obama's election, itself a temporary deflection from a path of mutual destruction, but one that now demands our continued vigilance and effort to embody real change. Though many of the destructive policies of the Bush administration presently continue under the Obama administration, Imam Bray prefers the path of light, quoting the ancient wisdom that "it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."
The lineup of presenters at this conference, the wisdom and true hope shared here, have been astounding to me and is too long for me to list now, but I assure you that want assurance, and advise all others, that legal advocacy for rationality, human compassion, and the rule of law is alive and well, despite all you might hear, or fear.
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