The Communists On Campus

Yesterday pro-Hamas protesters occupied Jackson Square in New Orleans. This was the first such occupation in the country not on a college campus. New Orleans police moved in quickly to break up the encampment. Social media documented the presence during the occupation and clearance of a number of legal “observers” from a group called the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). They were there to intercede on behalf of the folks illegally occupying a public space.

Who are these guys?

Well, it turns out that the NLG is a group with long-standing ties to the Communist Party and a history of involvement with Antifa and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. They also have ties internationally to enemies of the United States.

The NLG started back in the 1930’s. It was composed largely of members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The express goal of the CPUSA was the creation of a Communist state here in America.

By the late 1930s, most non-Communist members of the NLG quit in protest against its overtly Communist policies. One prominent member of the group who resigned, then-Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr., said on quitting.

“The National Lawyers Guild was formed in the hope that expression might be given to the liberal sentiment in the American bar. It is now obvious that the present management of the guild is not prepared to take any stand which conflicts with the Communist Party line. Under these circumstances, and in company, I think, with the most progressive lawyers, I have no further interest in it.” ¹⁷

influencewatch.org

The NLG opposed the formation of NATO. It opposed the Truman Doctrine which committed the United States to opposing the spread of Communism. It pushed for cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In the years since, the NLG has consistently been identified with groups that seek to overthrow the existing social order and impose a revolutionary Communist government on the citizens of the United States. NLG attorney William Kunstler wrote in 1975 that “the thing I’m most interested in is keeping people on the street who will forever alter the character of this society: the revolutionaries.” A number of NLG members were connected to the Weather Underground, a domestic terrorist organization that carried out at least 25 bombings in the United States in the 1970s.

Beginning in the 1970’s the NLG increasingly began to forge connections to the foreign enemies of the United States. NLG delegations have since traveled to Vietnam, China, Iran, Guatemala, Southern Africa, Chile, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. 

The NLG has consistently opposed the state of Israel. In May 2021, the NLG’s International Committee released a statement saying “the Zionist settler colonial movement with the support of imperialist powers established the state of Israel.” It asserted “the legal right of Palestinians to resist the colonizing power that seeks to annihilate them,” including through armed struggle.

The day after the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas inside Israel, the NLG affirmed “the legitimacy of the right of the Palestinian people to resist” and declared the group’s support for “the people of Palestine in their struggle against the settler colonial state of Israel.” The NLG argued that the terrorist attacks upon civilians were justified and that the terrorists involved were simply “exercising their fundamental and protected right to self-defense and to liberate their land and people from occupation and colonialism.” The Guild called for “all Palestinian and Lebanese resistance organizations” to be removed from the list of U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

The NLG has officially stated that the United States “is based on and dedicated to preserving white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy and imperialism.” It has called for the abolishment of all jails and prisons and the dissolution of all law enforcement organizations. Predictably enough, it also wants the end of fossil fuels, reparations for slavery, and the return of the Hawaiian Islands to their native peoples.

The NLG believes Donald Trump to be a fascist. It has longstanding ties to BLM and was heavily involved with that organization during the 2020 riots that tore apart most major American cities. The NLG has also worked closely with Antifa.

Internationally, the NLG stands with Islamic radicals, the Houthis in Yemen and the ayatollahs in Tehran.

“National Lawyers Guild International condemns in the strongest possible terms the bombing of the country of Yemen by the United States and the United Kingdom.  We call on states, human rights and legal organizations, and popular movements to Act Swiftly to pressure the U.S. to stop this Imperialist War.”

“The actions of the U.S. and UK clearly violate international law, and the Biden Administration is in clear violation of U.S. law which requires that every president must first go to Congress and request military authorization before launching attacks on other nations..”

“The United States continues to aid and abet the genocide of the Palestinian people through its financial and political support of Israel, which was shamefully displayed before the world in its veto of a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in addition to its direct provision of arms, intelligence and military assistance of all kinds to the Israeli regime.”

NLG International

“The Committee of Anti-Imperialists in Solidarity with Iran (CASI) and the endorsing organizations [including NLG] listed below firmly support Iran’s right to defend itself against Zionist aggression through the illegal attack on its embassy in Damascus, murdering high-value personnel who supported the Axis of Resistance in both Lebanon and Syria and murdering civilians in the neighborhood.”

“CASI also stands against war and sanctions on Iran and calls on the US and its allies to end the genocide and blockade on Gaza immediately.  We not only support Iran’s right to defend its sovereignty in the face of imperialist aggression, we also view Iran’s actions as part of the long decolonizing tradition and expression of principled international solidarity among the peoples of the Global South.  This decolonizing tradition transcends political rhetoric and takes material action to advance the Palestinian struggle for freedom and national liberation.”

NLG International

The list of radical organizations with which NLG is associated is long and noteworthy. The NLG works closely with the ANSWER Coalition. These guys not only support Islamic terrorist groups and Iran, but they also side with North Korea. The NLG cooperates with Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. Samidoun is a front organization for Hamas and banned in Germany as a result.

https://www.dw.com/en/why-germany-banned-hamas-and-pro-palestinian-group-samidoun/a-67546361

The men and women who run the NLG are the predictable lot of radicals dedicated to social change and overthrowing the existing political and economic order in the United States. Ría Thompson-Washington is representative. Her bio on the NLG website is worth quoting in full.

“Ria Thompson-Washington (she/they/elle) is an anti-racist, Afro-Latine Queer nonbinary feminist living in Washington, DC. For more than twenty years, Ría has been organizing and training Black and Latine people, working on various campaigns from the Labor movement to Occupy Wall Street and later, supporting the Movement for Black Lives around the country. 

Ría joined the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) as a law student member while attending the David A Clarke School of Law at the Univerity of the District of Columbia. In the DC NLG chapter, she is a legal observer, coordinator, and trainer. Currently, they serve on the NLG Mass Defense Steering Committee, are senior co-chair of The United People of Color Caucus, and are on the Executive Council of the NLG. In 2021, Ría was awarded Legal Worker of the Year by the National Lawyers Guild for their work training legal support workers across the country during the Uprisings of 2020 that erupted after the murder of George Floyd and Hulu made a short documentary about Ría’s work as an organizer. 

Ría is the National Digital Organizing Director for the Redress Movement, a housing and racial justice non-profit organization that educates, organizes, shifts narratives around housing segregation, and wins Redress victories for Redress Neighbors across the country, locally and nationally. Before joining The Redress Movement, Ría built democracy training at the Center for Popular Democracy, created election protection programs at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and worked as a paralegal at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.”

The average college student squatting in a pup tent on a college lawn smoking a joint and jabbering about “the revolution” likely has no real idea what he or she is actually “fighting” for. The folks behind the scenes pulling strings and causing trouble sure do.

They have been at this for several generations now. They want to topple the whole system. They are the Communists on Campus.