Defend the Right to Protest is hosting a session, ‘Solidarity, protest and the law’, at the Unite the Resistance national conference on the 17th November, from 12.30 to 2pm, at The Emmanuel Centre, 9 – 23 Marsham Street, London SW1P 3DW (Nearest tubes Victoria, Westminster, St James’s Park, Pimlico).
Speakers include Michael Mansfield (campaigning lawyer), Alfie Meadows (student defendant), Dave Smith (anti-blacklisting campaigner) and Carol Duggan (Mark Duggan’s aunt).
Michael Mansfield QC is prominent radical lawyer who has taken up a number of cases throughout his career relating to police brutality and political activism. He has represented the Orgreave miners, the families from the Hillsborough disaster, Stephen Lawrence and Jean Charles de Menezes families, as well as being Alfie Meadows’ current barrister.
Alfie Meadows underwent life-saving brain surgery after being struck by a police baton at a student protest on Dec 9th 2010, and was then outrageously charged with “violent disorder” - a charge that carries a maximum of five years in prison. Following a hung jury verdict in an earlier trial this year, Alfie and another defendant are currently in retrial at Woolwich Crown Court.
Dave Smith is a longstanding trade unionist blacklisted for his activity and for raising safety issues on building sites. Since he has been involved in exposing and fighting blacklisting, including taking legal action for compensation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
In the current context of austerity we have seen a broad attack on protest from the students demonstration to the recent 6 month custodial sentence of Trenton Oldfield for disrupting the Oxbridge boat race. These assaults on our right to protest must be seen within a historical understanding of state repression against resistance from Orgreave to the Poll Tax riots, as well as the wide-ranging crisis in policing from the Hillsborough cover-ups and corruption to the deaths in police custody.
This session is part of a bigger conference building resistance to austerity and we hope this meeting will provide a space to practically discuss how we can build a strong solidarity network to oppose this repression. Whether its trade unionists who are being victimized for their activity, protestors criminalized for challenging the government, or families, friends and communities fighting for justice for people killed, beaten or racially profiled by the police, we must stand together against these attacks and defend our rights.
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