NLG honors CTU lawyer team
The Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild honored Chicago Teacher Union lawyers Robert Bloch, Tom Geoghegan, Randall Schmidt, and Robin Potter with the "Arthur Kinoy People's Law Award". The award is given in "Recognition of their tireless advocacy on behalf of the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public School students, parents and employees, throughout the City's recent attacks on public education."
Introductions were made by Jeffrey Frank and Sharilyn Grace, then welcoming remarks were made by NLG President Azadeh Shahshahini.
Next CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey was the special guest speaker. He spoke of his admiration for the hard work of those being honored with examples of seeing the sun rise in Bloch's Office and getting and responding to emails from the others at midnight. He spoke about the sad turn of events when Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana became right-to-work States and anti-union and the history of the disolution of unionism with occurences like the PATCO strike.
He said the recent turn of events was not because of less effective legal work but because of "zillionaires" buying elections and provicing resources. Sharkey said one of the contributing problems was the slowness of going to court for justice: by the time a union won years later, a union was dissolved. In Chicago, CTU has gone to court even if not winning to show tha all resources have been used. This action has built confidence in the movement for democracy in the schools.
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Jackson Potter (with sister Amy) became the emcee Amy recited the poem "Voice" by Shel Silverstein. After talking about growing up as a child with the National Lawyers Guild because his mother was so active, he introduced each of those getting an award.
Robert Bloch thanked his law firms members and workers. He told of a union leader asking if they could take legal action. When told "No," the union leader said "We are not having you as a lawyer to tell us not to get arrested. We are paying you to get us out of jail when we are."
He said our success as a whole is because we are fighting for the have nots against the haves, the 1% against the 99%.
Potter described the Geoghegan's style as "Hard Charging." Geoghegan thanked the NLG for hosting the awards, his law firm's workers, and said that fight for public education was forced on all of us by big business and the elite and that they were trying to resegregate and privatize us with the school closings. He said 88% of schools closed were in predominantly black schools and resulted in resegregation.
Jackson Potter then introduced Professor Randall Schmidt of the Legal Aid Clinic of the University of Chicago Law School. He has been working on the school closings pro bono. In doing so, he may have risked his legal standing. He felt that the closings and turnarounds unfairly impacted special needs students, and caused disparate treatment of both black students and teachers since the they have diminished the number of African American teachers in the CPS.
He said he especially cherished this award since Kinoy was one of his heroes. He also thanked his law students for their sacrifice and the law school for allowing and funding his proceedings. Jackson Potter before his next introduction lauded Professor Schmidt for his pro bono work and asked if any other lawyers present wanted to work pro bono on some cases for CTU that he would welcome it since they have about 150 more cases to be worked on.
Jackson Potter then introduced the lawyer who most affected his and his sister's lives, the CTU's Robin Potter. He said her leadership had made him tied to a movement. He knew that if he had to go to jail for the CTU, she would get him out along with all the others in the CTU.
Robin Potter, the last honoree, thanked the CTU rank and file. She quoted CPS Tim Cawley as saying that there was no problem with poverty in education which is contrary to all research. Business wants the money of the schools and is unrelenting. She said when problems arose, they would write the lyrics to songs. She ended with the lyrics to the union song "Solidarity Forever" -- "They Union makes Us Strong."
During the program, diners feasted on 5 salad courses and six entr�e courses, followed with a Baklava table at the rear bar while Len Cavise of DePaul's Law School, a 2012 Kinoy Honoree, closed with a request for both donations or funds or time for the forthcoming NLG Convention next year which will be held in Chicago. The news of that convention will be announced in a future Substance story.
Always,
C.M. Blumenthal
