East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association

Responding to a call from Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (“BALIF”), the EBLRLA board of directors voted to join the amicus curiae brief authored by Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal Prop. 8 case.

The EBLRLA’s statement of interest follows:

The East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association (“EBLRLA”) is the county bar association of Latina/o lawyers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Dedicated to expanding legal access, the EBLRLA provides annual scholarships to Latina/o law students, supports Latina/o attorneys with a local professional network and advocates for increased Latina/o representation in the judiciary. Through its board of directors, committees and membership, the EBLRLA opposes all forms of invidious discrimination and promotes respect for human dignity, equal protection of the law and the fundamental rights of all persons. Hence, having courts protect marriage equality is central to the EBLRLA’s mission.

A copy of the brief will be posted when it has been filed with the court.

The East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association and the Women Lawyers of Alameda County invite you to a reception and judicial candidate forum for the Superior Court of Alameda County.

Monday 4/26/10
6:00-8:00pm
Cocina Poblana
Jack London Square
499 Embarcadero West
Oakland, CA 94607

Three candidates are running for one seat on the Alameda County Superior Court:

• John Creighton, www.creightonforjudge.com
• Louis Goodman, www.louisgoodman2010.com
• Victoria Kolakwoski, www.kolakowskiforjudge.com

Join us for sponsored appetizers at 6:00pm, followed by a brief program at 6:30pm, and the opportunity to ask questions of the judicial candidates thereafter.

RSVP to marctizoc @ yahoo.com, and please suggest questions you’d like the candidates to prepare to answer.

Through the Minority Bar Coalition (MBC), the EBLRLA Board of Directors learned of and voted to endorse the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers (BAAML)’s letter to SF Mayor Gavin Newsom against SF Police Chief George Gascón’s recent remarks, which reportedly associated terrorist violence with the Middle Eastern community of San Francisco.

In its letter, BAAML asks for more than a generic apology, seeking concrete measures to redress the Chief Gascón’s symbolic harm and to reestablish the Middle Eastern community’s faith in the SF Police Department.

“Associating Middle Eastern, Muslim or Arab communities with terrorist violence plays into the trope that those communities are inherently violent, which is premised on longstanding, fundamentally racist (orientalist) stereotypes,” noted EBLRLA president Marc-Tizoc González.

He continued, “While Chief Gascón and others may think the remark merits no more than a simple apology, this notion misunderstands the symbolic power of authority figures’ statements. We need police chiefs who are educated about the pernicious history and effects of racism, willing to take responsibility when they make mistakes and courageous enough to make sincere redress even for inadvertent harms.”

Today, the EBLRLA board voted to endorse the 2010 National Latino Congreso.

Convened by nine national Latina/o advocacy organizations, the 2010 National Latino Congreso will be held January 29-31 in El Paso, Texas and will be the fourth such Congreso in recent history, following the original convening in 2006.

In the coming months, the EBLRLA will organize a delegation of lawyers, law students and other legal workers who identify with the Latina/o community and wish to engage one of 2010’s first national convenings of Latina/o advocates, bringing the distinctive legal education, social capital and critical insights of organized Latina/o lawyers to share with other advocates for justice.

“Organizing Latina/o lawyers to unify in support of the human rights of our people — and all who are socially and legally marginalized — is necessary at this time,” says EBLRLA president, Marc-Tizoc González, “and the EBLRLA calls on others interested in advancing social justice to endorse the National Latino Congreso.

The East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association joins local and national legal organizations calling upon California Department of Justice attorney David Carrillo to reconsider teaching a constitutional law course with Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo.

Authored by the National Lawyers Guild - San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, the open letter calls for Mr. Carrillo to meet and discuss grave concerns about how co-teaching the course will serve to legitimize Professor Yoo, whose actions as a Bush Administration attorney created the legal justification for US torture policies — in contravention of binding domestic and international human rights law and the professional responsibility of a governmental lawyer advising one’s client.

The EBLRLA joins the following organizations in co-signing the letter:

• Alliance for Justice
• Berkeley La Raza Law Students Association
• Boalt Alliance to Abolish Torture
• Law Students for Justice in Palestine
• National Lawyers Guild UC Berkeley School of Law Chapter

“By co-signing this letter, we express our views on the ethical duties of organized lawyers to educate the public on the limits of the rule of law — which Professor Yoo clearly violated and which Mr. Carrillo threatens to legitimize,” says EBLRLA president Marc-Tizoc González, an attorney at the Homeless Action Center and lecturer in the UC Berkeley Chicano/Latino Studies Program.

“In particular, we express solidarity with other legal organizations promoting accountability for the abuses of the Bush Administration, which distorted legal reasoning to justify torture and other policies abhorrent to the US constitution and international human rights norms,” he continued.

“As legally educated people whose ancestry and heritage extends throughout Latin America, it is incumbent on us to help educate the public in the terrible histories of torture and to ensure that we not forget the recent past. We look forward to meeting and discussing these matters with Mr. Carrillo.”