Movement Lawyering: Representing Activists in Criminal Cases June 10, 2020 MOVEMENT LAWYERING: REPRESENTING ACTIVISTS IN CRIMINAL CASES June 10, 2020 Agenda 2:00pm - 2:05pm Introduction Prof. Sarah F. Rogerson, Esq. Albany Law School 2:05 - 2:20pm Setting the Stage: On the Ground Experience at Protests in Albany, New York Krys Macharie, J.D. Candidate 2021 Albany Law School 2:20pm - 2:45pm Pre-Arraignment Brenda Baddam, Esq.’17 Barclay Damon LLP 2:45pm-3:10pm Arraignment, Bail, and Common Charges Lee C. Kindlon, Esq. Kindlon Law Firm, PLLC 3:10-3:40pm Representing Racial Justice and Other Progressive Activists and Pre-Trial Practice Mark S. Mishler, Esq. Law Office of Mark Mishler 3:40-4:00pm Representing Minors in Family Court Trevor W. Hannigan, Esq. ‘03 Trevor W. Hannigan Attorney at Law PLLC 4pm-4:15pm Questions and Answers MOVEMENT LAWYERING: REPRESENTING ACTIVISTS IN CRIMINAL CASES Presenter Biographies Professor Sarah Rogerson directs the Immigration Law Clinic in the Justice Center at Albany Law School, an experiential course through which students represent immigrant victims of crime including child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and sexual assault. Her students also regularly participate in related legislative advocacy and community outreach initiatives. Professor Rogerson worked as a public interest attorney in Newark, New Jersey, and has represented immigrant adults and children in cases involving torture, domestic violence, and human trafficking at a human rights non-profit in Dallas, Texas. Her scholarship is focused on the intersections between domestic violence, family law, race, gender, international law, and immigration law and policy. Krys Macharie, J.D. Candidate 2021 at Albany Law School, graduated from the State University of New York at Albany with a B.A. in English Language and Literature. Before attending law school, Krys worked as a teaching assistant at East Ramapo Central School District, where she worked with students in the Special Education program. As a clinical student in the Family Violence Litigation Clinic, Krys represented victims of domestic violence in family offense and custody proceedings. Krys currently works as an intern under the Advocacy Director at Legal Aid, where she handles Landlord/Tenant cases and works on the St. Clare’s Hospital dissolution proceeding. Krys is the President of the Albany Law Latin American Law Students Association, the American Bar Association representative for the Student Bar Association, and the Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild Albany Law Chapter. Brenda Baddam, Esq. ‘17, Barclay Damon LLP, primarily concentrates her practice on both regulatory and compliance issues in the health care industry. She is a former Assistant District Attorney with Albany County. Her passion for advocacy and litigation was engrained in her from a very young age by her Cuban grandparents who migrated from Cuba to the U.S. in the 1950s. Brenda is also a Board Member of the Capital District Black and Hispanic Bar Association, the Capital Region Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the Capital Region’s New Leaders Council. Brenda frequently presents continuing legal education seminars on topics such as language diversity and diversity in public and private sectors. She also is a member of Barclay Damon’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Before entering Albany Law School, Brenda worked as a Court Clerk at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Lee Kindlon, Esq., the founding partner of the Kindlon Law Firm, has represented clients in some of the area's most high-profile criminal cases. From those hard-fought courtroom battles, he uses his experience to benefit clients across the legal spectrum. Lee’s experience in civil litigation includes matters based on contract, fraud, civil rights violations, and negligence. He has successfully resolved a number of high-value personal injury and wrongful death cases. Lee’s practice also includes the representation of corporations and professionals in white collar criminal cases. From preventative advice for companies to successful resolution for those charged with financial crimes, fraud or larceny, Lee has the knowledge and experience to provide excellent legal representation. After receiving his commission in the Marine Corps during law school, Lee returned to active duty in January 2003, and was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. During his three and a half years on active duty with the Marines, Lee worked as a Judge Advocate, first in Legal Assistance, and then as the prosecutor for Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. In September 2005, he deployed to Iraq as a Battalion Judge Advocate and was stationed in Fallujah until April 2006. Now a Lieutenant Colonel, he remains part of the Marine Corps Reserve as the Reserve Officer in Charge of Appellate Defense for the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Appeals. Lee, an Albany native, attended Williams College, where he played football and graduated in 1998 with a degree in History. After graduation, Lee attended the University of Connecticut School of Law. He concentrated his studies in Constitutional and Criminal Law and received his law degree in 2002. Lee was admitted to practice in New York State in December 2002 and the District of Columbia in January 2008. He is also admitted to practice in the United States District Courts for the Northern and Western Districts of New York, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and he is certified to practice in all military courts. Lee is a nationally-recognized speaker on evidence in both state and federal court as well as state and federal gun laws, and he has taught CLE courses on matters across the legal spectrum. Mark Mishler, Esq., practices criminal and civil rights law in Albany, New York. Since the 1980s, he has represented progressive activists and groups in protest or strike-related cases, including activists in the anti-apartheid, AIDS funding, public education funding, peace, environmental, anti-police brutality, Occupy, Poor People’s Campaign, and labor movements. Mark has litigated first amendment and police misconduct cases as well as discrimination cases. He developed and taught courses on “Mass Incarceration: The New Jim Crow” at Albany Law School in 2012, and at the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice from 2015-16. As a community activist, Mark served for 20 years as an Executive Board member of the Albany NAACP, served on the steering committee of the Capital District Coalition Against Racism and Apartheid, and currently is a member of the steering committee of Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration, a Board member of the NYS Labor-Religion Coalition, and an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace. Mark has been a member of the National Lawyers Guild since his first year in law school in 1978 and is a member of the NLG’s Mass Defense Committee. Mark received a J.D., with honors, from Boston College School of Law in 1981, and a B.A. from Brandeis University in 1978. He also serves as Counsel and Legislative Director for NYS Senator Julia Salazar (18th Senate District), a strong voice in the NYS legislature for tenants’ rights, women’s rights, for equitable tax policy (taxing the rich), ending mass incarceration, and for meaningful reform of the criminal legal system. Trevor Hannigan, Esq. ‘03, is a former Assistant District Attorney in Albany County who is now in private practice representing clients in civil, criminal and Family Court proceedings. REPRESENTING RACIAL JUSTICE AND OTHER PROGRESSIVE ACTIVISTS Mark S. Mishler That Justice is a blind goddess, Is a thing to which we black are wise: Her bandage hides two festering sores, That once perhaps were eyes. Langston Hughes (1923) Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the police-man’s bullet. We submit that the evidence suggests that the killing of Negroes has become police policy in the United States and that police policy is the most practical expression of government policy. We Charge Genocide, Petition of the Civil Rights Congress to the U.N. (1951) Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a White mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens. Ella Baker (1964) Two weeks that shook the world. That’s how history will recall the period from the end of May 2020 to the date of this program. It feels more like a decade. And, it has been three months since the beginning of the COVID-19 public health emergency, in which communities of color and low income communities have borne the brunt of illness, death, risky and unsafe working conditions, lack of access to PPEs, lack of access to quality health-care, and economic devastation. That feels like a lifetime. And, so we do not forget, it has been . ! 401 years since the first kidnaped Africans were brought as enslaved people to what is now the United States, ! 189 years since Nat Turner led a rebellion of enslaved people in Virginia, ! 171 years since Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery and began her work as a conductor on the underground railroad, -1- ! 157 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, ! 144 years since the betrayal of reconstruction, the re-installment into power in the South of the white racist plantation aristocracy and the emergence of Jim-Crow laws, ! 139 years since Black women organized the Atlanta Washerwomen Strike, with thousands of participants, and won wage increases and better working conditions for women throughout the city, ! 99 years since whites in Tulsa massacred the Black community, ! 77 years since Velma Hopkins and other Black women led a 38 -day strike for racial justice and workers’ rights at the R.J. Reynolds factory in Winston-Salem, NC, went on to organize a militant union, Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America-CIO.