Stirring a Cause (Compost Puffs Commie Lawyers Carl Messineo & Mara Verheyden-Hilliard)

Stirring a Cause
When Things Get Rough for Protesters, These Lawyers Go on the March

Law school won't prepare you for a workout like this, but it's all in a day's work for a movement lawyer like Mara Verheyden-Hilliard. She and her law partner and husband, Carl Messineo, have become the constitutional sheriffs for a new protest generation. Still in their thirties, they're outpacing established free-speech watchdogs in this "I have a dream" capital of marches, crusades, lost causes and mass arrests. Picture a couple of aspiring William Kunstlers for the post-Seattle pepper-spray generation.

Their Partnership for Civil Justice is handling four key First Amendment lawsuits stemming from protests against corporate globalization, the Bush inauguration and the war in Iraq. The causes vary but the complaints are the same: That the D.C. police collaborate with the FBI and other federal agencies to suppress dissent. And that the police engage in preemptive mass arrests, spying and brutality.

This article contains some interesting information, but the spin, and the whitewashing, is un-freaking-believable.

A.N.S.W.E.R. is mentioned, for instance, as is the National Lawyers Guild, without the slightest indication that the former is, and the later was (some claim still is), a communist front organization. In fact neither the words "communist" or "leftist," nor any cognates thereof, appear anywhere in the article. The word "radical" appears a couple times, but note the contexts:

You don't have to be a radical lawyer to question the tactics [of Chief Ramsey and the D.C. Police].

and...

Saul Alinsky, who wrote the handbook "Rules for Radicals," used to say real radicals do what it takes to win. Does that mean hiring a corporate law firm and pursuing a narrower, less politically charged case?
Hard to say. But it's not the Partnership's style.

IOW the Stalinist A.N.S.W.E.R. lawyers are distinquished from "radicals" in both instances!

Or consider this:

Still, the Partnership can come on too strong even for natural allies. The lawyers have made enemies in the legal community that specializes in protester defense. The Washington model has been for lawyers to stay out of the sectarian fray, but Messineo and Verheyden-Hilliard are on the leadership committee of International ANSWER, the coalition that sponsored the recent antiwar march...
Some activists and lawyers also complain that the Partnership, in the crusade of representing dissenters, brooks no dissent.
The ACLU and the Partnership started as teammates in the lawsuit filed by protesters after the World Bank demonstrations of April 2000. The ACLU eventually quit -- after being fired by several plaintiffs who wanted the Partnership to continue representing them. Some others dropped out rather than continue to be represented by the Partnership.
The reasons are shrouded behind attorney-client privilege, and the lawyers won't comment. Interviews with clients suggest neither legal team was satisfied with the work of the other, and there were arguments over everything from tactics to meeting court deadlines. The Partnership wanted to be more "political," according to one.

At least the reporter reveals openly one of the reasons that less extremist liberals have a problem with the "Partnership" (they "brook no dissent") and hints at another (that they are too "political") but the major reason is of course suppressed: that they are blatantly pro-totalitarian and pro-terrorist, and refuse to criticize brutal and muderous dictators in even the mildest terms.

Anybody know about this reporter, David Montgomery? It's hard to believe that he could have written this piece as he did without being a left-extremist himself.

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