Resisting the Politics of Fear: National Lawyers Guild SW Regional Conference!!

I am very honored to have helped in this endeavor! :)

There is a great conference at the DU Law School on Saturday with amazing speakers and presenters! Here are some of the topics and presenters! :)
Free for students at Activists!!!

Registration: 8am! :)

Panel I: Standing Up for Immigrant Rights
9:00-11:00am in Room 165
Come learn about the current legal battles, and how you can also be an advocate forthe immigrant community!

Presentation by the Pinion Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition
11:00-11:30am in Room 165

Sandy Karp: Organizing to Represent Service People

11:30 to Noon in Room 165

Lunch Break: Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation: Harassment and Oppression of Muslim Americans Since 9/11
Catered by El Centro Humanitario

Noon to 1:00 in the DU Law Forum

Panel II: The GITMO-ization of America: How Guantanamo Bay oppressive Politics are inflitritating into mainstream society.
1:00 to 2:45 in Room 165

Panel III: Defending Dissent
3:00 to 5:00 in Room 165

Keynote Reception with Refreshments
5:00 to 6:00 in the DU Law Forum

Keynote Presentation: What is the Constitutional Imperative: Keeping State Secrets or Preserving Separation of Powers?”
6:00 to 7:30 in Room 165

Michael Avery is a professor of law at Suffolk University and the former President of the National Lawyers’ Guild

SOME PRESENTERS:::
Francisco "Kiko" Martinez was born in Alamosa, Colorado. During his early years as an attorney, Kiko often represented and counseled Chicano inmates at the Colorado State Penitentiary at Cañon City, and members of the United Mexican American Students Chicano organization at the University of Colorado. Martinez also took an interest and supported the activities of the Crusade for Justice, a Chicano social justice organization founded by Rodolfo "Corky" González in Denver, Colorado. Kiko provided legal counsel to various members of the organization, and defended numerous individuals charged with crimes in Colorado and New Mexico. While active in La Raza Legal Association and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1972, Martínez served as legal adviser to the family of Ricardo Falcón. A Chicano community organizer, Falcón was murdered while traveling in Southern New Mexico. Martínez also served as counsel for individuals at the Tonantzin School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which underwent police surveillance, infiltration, and criminal prosecution of its leadership.

Due to his Chicano and leftist political views often expressed through his legal and community work throughout the early 1970s, Martínez became a target of law enforcement and F.B.I. surveillance. In 1973 Martínez was indicted in Colorado accused of mailing three package bombs in Denver. None of the bombs that Martínez allegedly mailed exploded since law enforcement officials arrived just before they went off. Police concurrent with intense media scrutiny in Colorado issued a “shoot to kill” warrant. His law license was subsequently suspended. The Denver Post and the federal government offered a reward of up to $3, 000 for information leading to Martínez's arrest. Fearing for his life, Kiko left the country and went into hiding in Mexico for seven years. He attempted to return to the U.S. in 1980 and was taken into custody at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Nogales, Arizona.

During the 1980s, Martínez stood trial for numerous state and federal charges brought against him pertaining to the 1973 alleged bombing incidents in Colorado and the 1980 attempted Arizona border crossing. Many of the charges were dropped for insufficient evidence and the fact that police "lost" critical evidence. In other cases, trial juries acquitted him of charges. Martínez’ defense fought hard for and received separate trials for each of the mail bomb charges. After he was exonerated, Martínez was reinstated to the bar. He continues to live and practice law in Alamosa, Colorado, where he remains involved in community and social activism.

Kenneth Padilla is a longtime National Lawyers Guild attorney. His Denver trial practice specializes in criminal defense and civil rights litigation, with an emphasis on representing victims of police abuse and voting rights. He currently represents the family of Frank Lobato, a Denver citizen slain by police while he slept in his bed.

Mr. Padilla has been a People's Lawyer in every sense of the word. He was active in the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Crusade for Justice in the 1970s. He has participated in numerous well-publicized and significant criminal and civil trial and appellate litigation, resulting in eleven reported state cases and nine decisions reported in the federal courts. He has participated in landmark litigation in employment discrimination cases against the Denver Police and Fire Department. He has been legal counsel for the coalition against the English Only Initiative and was recently honored by the CHBA as a Pioneer in the Hispanic legal community. In the late 1990s, he represented activists with Jobs With Justice and SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign. Mr. Padilla is the father of three children and he is very proud of teaching his children to be proud of their Chicano heritage.

Kim Baker Medina received her law degree from UC Berkeley in 1989 and is currently in private practice in Fort Collins, Colorado as an immigration attorney. Kim is active in immigrant rights as an organizer and activist in Northern Colorado, mostly through Fuerza Latina, a local immigrant rights group that Kim started along with a group of undocumented parents in February of 2003.

Paul Hughes is a 2L at the Yale Law School. As a member of Yale's Worker's and Immigrants' Rights Advocacy Clinic, he represents twelve Guatemalan laborers in a lawsuit against their former employer. The lawsuit accuses a Connecticut nursery and its foreign labor contractor of forced labor, human trafficking, and wage violations. In addition, Paul founded the Yale Human Trafficking Litigation Project, which pursues civil litigation on behalf of immigrant survivors of human trafficking. He is also a student director of the Yale Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic. Paul also works with the D.C. law firm of Baach, Robinson, & Lewis in their pro bono representation of former Guantanamo Bay detainees who have brought a civil suit over their detention.