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Hello Terry!

URGENT BLURB

We have an urgent need for Legal Observers and have an LO training tonight at 7:00 via Zoom. If you are trained, please email us and let us know that you are available to LO! We recommend that you re-train yearly.

We are reaching out with an urgent request for help! In addition to coordinating legal observers to support protest actions, NLG coordinates a protestor support hotline. The goal of the hotline is to keep track of arrests and, when possible, connect people to bail funds or attorneys willing to provide pro bono assistance. 

In that vein, we want to ask if you are willing to join our list of pro bono attorneys. A "yes" is not an obligation to accept cases; it would mean that we could reach out to you after an arrest, to see if you have the capacity to advise/represent a protestor who has been arrested. Typically, we see misdemeanor charges, including traffic violations, though felony charges are possible. 

If you're interested in joining our list, please let us know what your general capacity is (e.g., "I could only accept X type of case," "I  could only accept X number of cases a year," or "I could only accept cases in X county"). 

If you’re not an attorney, you can still help by being trained to respond to our hotline!

The more we prepare in between mass police repression, the better we will respond to it in the future. Our strategic planning retreat will be June 8th! We will meet in the Brook Park Library (Cleveland area). Please RSVP by May 10th if you plan to attend! If you need accommodation, we will help match those traveling to the area with members living near Cleveland who can host you.

This retreat is where we will review our mission, vision, and values and focus on values-based decisions. We will vote on any amendments to the bylaws, including the mission, at our Annual Meeting. However, these conversations take more time to flesh out than we can allot in our annual meeting alone. If you want to help shape our mission and have values-based conversations, please sign up to participate in the retreat so that we can include you from the beginning and give everyone the time to make significant decisions with a process that is deliberate and inclusive.

We also have extended the deadline for our membership survey to May 15th, and we are still accepting responses to our activist survey! You can find both here: https://ohionlg.com/forms/.