Waterfield — National Lawyers Guild?

Have you had any dealings with the National Lawyers Guild, out there in California?

For folks who dont know, the NLG has been a Progressive/Radical/Commie organization of Lawyers since the 1930’s. They’ve had their noses in prettymuch every ornery leftist cause since the 30s. Naturally, they came/come under attack by the FBI and the Powers-that-Be. Etc.

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Wiki
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States. The group was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association (ABA) in protest of that organization’s exclusionary membership practices and conservative political orientation. They were the first US bar association to allow the admission of minorities to their ranks. The group sought to bring more lawyers closer to the labor movement and progressive political activities…
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…According to Victor Rabinowitz, head of the NLG in the 1960s, the original membership of the organization came from two camps — established liberal attorneys with a labor-oriented perspective and “a militant segment of the bar, mostly young and sometimes radical.”
[12] The National Lawyers Guild was the nation’s first racially integrated bar association.[4] Among the NLG’s first causes was its support of President

Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was opposed by the American Bar Association (ABA

). NLG assisted the emerging labor movement, and opposed the racial segregation policies in the ABA and in society in general.[2] Following the Nazis’ invasion of the Soviet Union, the Guild gave its support to President Roosevelt’s wartime policies, including that of Japanese American internment.[13]

According to historian Harvey Klehr, the NLG was allied with the Communist Party; in the 1930s a significant number of NLG founders had been members or fellow travelers of the Communist Party USA,[14] including Riemer and Joseph Brodsky of the CP’s International Labor Defense auxiliary.[10] During the McCarthy era, the NLG was accused by Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. as well as the House Un-American Activities Committee of being a Communist front organization.[15].

In 1937, Allan R. Rosenberg joined the NLG and remained a member as a late as 1956 during his second appearance before HUAC.[16]
1940s

Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly tried to get successive Attorneys General to declare the NLG a “subversive organization,” but without success.[17]

In 1944 the Special House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) chaired by Texas Congressman Martin Dies Jr. published a brief history of the NLG in its massive and controversial “Appendix — Part IX” cataloging so-called “Communist Front Organizations” and their supporters.[18] This report charged that the NLG, despite being promoted as a “professional organization of liberal lawyers” had proven itself by its actions to be “just one more highly deceptive Communist-operated front organization, primarily intended to serve the interests of the Communist Party of the United States…”[3]

The 1944 HUAC history asserted that the NLG was merely “a streamlined edition of the International Juridical Organization”, a Communist Party mass organization established in 1931.[19] The document charged that “the National Lawyers Guild has faithfully followed the line of the Communist Party on numerous issues and has proven itself an important bulwark in defense of that party, its members, and organizations under its control.”[20] Particularly damning in HUAC’s eyes was the NLG’s reversal of position on the war in Europe after the June 22, 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union by the forces of Nazi Germany, with an October resolution by the previously anti-war organization offering “unlimited support to all measures necessary to the defeat of Hitlerism” and supporting the Roosevelt administration’s policy of “‘all out aid’ and full collaboration with Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and other nations resisting Fascist aggression.”[21]
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1950s

In January 1950, the NLG published a report for US President Harry S. Truman that accused the FBI of “systematic search by illegal methods” into the politics of thousands of private citizens, reported the Washington Post. The report focused on FBI methods used against alleged communist Judith Coplon. The report recommended that the President stop such practices. It also recommended that the President appoint a committee of private citizens to investigate the FBI. Contributors to the report were NLG president Clifford J. Durr, Frederick K. Beutel, Thomas I. Emerson, O. John Rogge, James A. Cobb, Joseph Forer, and Robert J. Silberstein.[22]

On September 21, 1950, HUAC responded with Report on the National Lawyers Guild: Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party. The HUAC report accused the NLG of playing a part in “an overall Communist strategy aimed at weakening our nation’s defenses against the international Communist conspiracy.”[23][24] The report advocated that Guild members be barred from federal employment in light of the organization’s alleged subversive character.[25][26]

In 1958, the US Government determined that the NLG could not be declared subversive.[28]
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1970s-1990s

Again in 1974, the US Government determined that the NLG could not be declared subversive.[28]

In 1989 the FBI admitted its continued efforts to investigate and disrupt the NLG in the period from 1940 to 1975.[28]
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2000s

…In 2011, lawyers associated with the NLG became involved in the Occupy movement in the United States, making use of temporary restraining orders on behalf of encamped activists in an effort to forestall the forced dispersal of their sites by law enforcement.[31] Charging that the Occupy movement was the subject of a “coordinated national crackdown,” NLG lawyers filed actions in Boston, New York City, San Diego, Fort Myers, Atlanta, and other cities seeking the temporary prohibition of site removal efforts.[31]