Government

300 Lawyers Named 'Chicagoans Of The Year'

People are recognizing that lawyers are the first responders to the Trump crisis.

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Very few people are actually doing anything about President Trump. Republicans in Congress are afraid of him. Democrats are inept. The media keeps trying to convince the white working class to not vote for sexual predators and bigots, to no avail. People like me talk a lot, for no appreciable effect.

But lawyers, some lawyers, are out there doing things. Some lawyers are out there trying to stop this bulls**t administration. Some lawyers are out there trying to ease the suffering caused by the President of the United States.

In Chicago, they’re recognizing 300 such lawyers as their men and women of the year. These are people who descended upon O’Hare airport when Trump’s hasty, ill-conceived, and ultimately unconstitutional travel ban first went into effect. From Chicago Mag:

It became clear early on that there needed to be some structure to what started as an organic movement, so [Sufyan Sohel, an attorney in the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations] and three other local attorneys—Iman Boundaoui and Jamie Friedland, who both work at major law firms, and Matt Pryor, who works with Cook County on federal antidiscrimination compliance—led the organizing efforts. They coordinated a schedule, ensuring that a handful of attorneys, out of a pool of more than 300 active volunteers, would be on hand around the clock in the first three months following the ban. “We wanted to be at the airport and just be visible so we could publicize what we were doing and gather info from people coming off flights,” Friedland says. They also arranged for malpractice insurance and found translators who could be on call to help with any language barriers.

Good job, lawyers. Really. You guys fight. You guys inspire others to fight. Thank you.

The 300-Plus Attorneys Who Volunteered at O’Hare [Chicago Magazine]

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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