Well, it certainly has been a busy year for activists across the state, and that means it has been a busy year for our Mass Defense Committee! We worked in partnership with the NLG Legal Observer program and the Litigation Committee most closely this year to provide the holistic, wrap around social movement support that organizers have come to depend on. We also partnered extensively with other legal NGOs to help support our mission.
A significant part of our legal work this year was supporting Palestinian and Solidarity activists working to end the ongoing assault on Gaza specifically and Palestine generally, and to specifically highlight the role of US based institutions that are enabling those war crimes and the targeting civilians and they civilian infrastructure that societies rely on to exist. In the spring we supported numerous ongoing campus encampments, with amazing round the clock Legal Observer support at multiple locations simultaneously. Massachusetts saw close to 400 arrests related to the encampments this spring, which was more than 10% of all the arrests reported nationally. We also represented more than 50 people for non-campus anti-war arrests. For almost everyone we were able to get dismissals of the cases, often before charges formally issued. There are a few remaining activists with more serious charges and people who are planning on challenging their cases at trial in the coming year. After activists did sit-ins at congressional offices, our legal team successfully represented dozens of activists in federal court. There was a dramatic escalation of college and university repression, with students being targeted for disciplinary hearings, suspensions, evictions from student housing and the loss of scholarships for campus activism. We have been working with campus activists for decades, and the tactics used this year in Palestine solidarity activists are tactics that we have been seeing for decades, but the campus repression is worse than we have ever seen before. With the support of other legal NGOs and lawyers in private practice, we were able to provide support and trainings and sometime direct representation for many of the students facing campus discipline.
Due to increased harassment of activists, we fielded dozens of requests for support from activists who were approached for questioning by local, state and federal law enforcement.
We continued our longstanding with other social movements with year. We represented dozens of climate justice activists with XR Boston and other groups, and at least one group facing prosecution for a protest against the expansion of the Hanscom Privat Jetport will be going to trial in the new year. In late November we represented 17 reproductive freedom advocates who were arrested opposing an anti-choice ‘Men’s March”, and keep up our support of union efforts, anti-eviction campaigns, queer and trans activism, anti-racist organizing, immigrant justice work and other campaigns.
We know the coming year, and years, are going to present new level of repression and targeting of activists. We need your help! We have relied on 30 volunteer lawyers this year, and that was barely enough to cover everything. Please join our Mass Defense Committee and support our work.
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