The Animal Liberation Committee is a network of lawyers, legal workers, and law students endeavoring to dismantle all systems of domination and oppression by empowering political activists, protesters and movements for social change dedicated to total liberation.

The Anti-Racism Committee (ARC) strives to make the Guild into an effective anti-racist organization, holding it to the principles on which it was founded. The cost of joining the Anti-Racism Committee is $12, which can be paid alongside your membership dues. (Dues generally go towards covering expenses for the two anti-oppression trainings we organize - one for the NEC in April and one for the convention, as well as to the TUPOCC travel stipend.) Are you doing anti-racism work in your local or student chapter?  Looking for assistance, resources, or ideas?  Email the ARC Co-Chairs at antiracism@nlg.org

Anti-Racism Resources:

• Culture Shifts toward Anti-Racist Organizational Culture from the Catalyst Project

• Culture as an Iceberg from the Brown Boi Project

• Pledge to support the mission of The United People of Color Caucus of the NLG (TUPOCC)

The Disability Justice Committee works to transform systems that privilege some types of body-minds over others. We bring disability perspective to social justice work. We support leadership of queer women, trans people, and people of color with disabilities. The DJC is also a way for lawyers, legal workers, and prisoners living with all kinds of disabilities to support each other. Their contact is djc@nlg.org

See the Disability Resources list created by the committee!

The EJC is a forum to discuss anything and all the work our members do around protecting the rights of individuals and movements to defend the environment.

The Guild has provided legal support for environmental and animal rights movements for decades. When the FBI began investigating these activists in the late 1990s, the NLG provided lawyers, created the Know Your Rights resource Operation Backfire, and set up a national Green Scare hotline. Our legal support for environmental activism continued through the many years of resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline, as well as from the earliest days of the #NoDAPL demonstrations at Standing Rock. Guild members traveled to North Dakota to assist Water Protectors and Indigenous legal workers, eventually forming the Water Protector Legal Collective. NLG members have also been actively involved in the resistance to oil and gas pipelines across the country, including Louisiana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

The Guild is a member of Protect the Protest, a coalition of environmental and legal organizations dedicated to challenging the repressive tactics used against environmental movements, specifically Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). We have analyzed the legal trends in environmental struggles, both those that repress these movements and the strategies used by movements to address climate change.

The Indigenous Peoples' Rights Committee is a sub-committee of the International Committee that works on issues of urgency and interest for Indigenous peoples and nations inside and outside the land of the United States. It works closely with the Environmental Human Rights Committee on issues of the rights of the earth and extractive industries in indigenous land, and with Indigenous movements internationally.

The NLG International Committee (IC) supports legal work around the world "to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests." As lawyers, law students, and legal activists, we seek to change U.S. foreign policy that threatens, rather than engages, or is based on a model of domination rather than respect. The Guild provides assistance and solidarity to movements in the United States and abroad that work for social justice in this increasingly interconnected world.

The Labor and Employment Committee is a non-profit unincorporated legal association engaged in legal education and advocacy. The membership of the Labor & Employment Committee includes lawyers, law students, legal workers, and worker representatives. It serves as a liaison between the Guild and legal organizations that represent organized labor and workers. The L&EC also works directly with organized labor and other organizations that represent workers. The cost of joining is $40. Students can join for $15. For more information visit the L&EC website at nlg-laboremploy-comm.org, as well as Facebook.

The Mass Defense Committee (MDC) is a network of lawyers, legal workers, and law students providing legal support for political activists, protesters and movements for social change. For more information on NLG mass defense work, visit our MDC web page, or email massdef@nlg.org.

For Mass Defense work in Colorado, learn more about our Legal Observer Program

The Guild opposes aggressive and interventionist military policies, as well as abusive treatment of service members and veterans.  Through the MLTF, it works to provide support for those in and out of the military who challenge such policies and treatment. The MLTF is a network of attorneys, legal workers and law students working in the areas of military and veterans law and rights. It produces legal training materials as well as self-help guides for service members on topics ranging from dissent and conscientious objection to sexual assault and hazing. Members provide individual representation to GI's and veterans, and collaborate on challenges to oppressive military policies. The Task Force produces a quarterly newsletter, On Watch, and maintains a listserve for its membership. Volunteers are always needed for research and writing projects, and to help in counseling service members about their rights. The cost of joining this committee is $40 ($25 for low income and free for students) - with a fee waiver available. For more information visit the MLTF website at www.nlgmltf.org, and follow them at facebook.com/NLGMTLF and @Military_Law.

The NLG is committed to the dismantling and abolition of all aspects of systems and institutions that support, condone, create, fill, or protect prisons, including jails, police lock ups, juvenile detention facilities, immigration detention centers, involuntary psychiatric treatment centers, and other institutional settings in which people are held against their will. We are committed to supporting grassroots organizing efforts, policy initiatives, and litigation that promotes or moves toward abolition, including: the rights and organizing of prisoners, the de-funding and closure of prisons and redirection of prison and policing budgets into social and human services as well as re­-entry support; legalization of drug use and sex work; release of prisoners serving life without parole and other inhumane sentences, decreased use of solitary confinement, and efforts to prevent construction of new prisons. We shared our analysis of abolition and strategies for decarceration in a webinar featuring Guild members.

The Guild has engaged in numerous initiatives to promote an end to mass incarceration nationally and locally. The NLG organizes an annual national Week Against Mass Incarceration (WAMI), supports political prisoners, and shares the voices of our jailhouse lawyer members in theGuild Notes column, “Beyond Bars: Voices from NLG Jailhouse Lawyers.” The Guild has critiqued the obstacles to legal resource prisoners face due to the Prison Ligation Reform Act and explored the role of bond funds in our webinar Bail Funds & Community-Based Strategies.

The Queer Caucus provides a space for queer members to come together to discuss and strategize about work and their role within the NLG. facebook.com/NLGQC / queercaucus@nlg.org

TUPOCC is an alliance of law students, legal workers, attorneys, and other people of color within the NLG. The necessity of such an organization is borne from the history of the United States where economic power is dependent on the continued subjugation of people of color, poor people women, queers, and other oppressed people.

Visit the TUPOCC page and watch a "Speaking Freely" interview with TUPOCC co-founders!

TUPOCC wishes to provide all people of color with opportunities and, when such opportunities are not available, to work with allies to create them. The caucus seeks to unite people of color in the NLG, to represent communities of color, to help people of color achieve their potential, and to function as a powerful force within the NLG, the United States, and the world. Membership is open to all members of the NLG community who self-identify as people of color.