Public Employee Press

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Legal service celebrates Law Day

Director and Chief Counsel Joan Beranbaum welcomed DC 37 leaders and staff of the Municipal Employees Legal Services program to the union’s annual celebration of Law Day May 4.

The guest speaker, New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman, praised this year’s long overdue reform of the draconian Rockefeller drug laws, which have incarcerated thousands of black and Latino youth for possession of small amounts of drugs. She likened the old statutes to laws from the Jim Crow era.

Lieberman questioned Mayor Bloomberg’s educational policies, which have increased automatic suspensions for minor offenses and raised the police presence in the schools. “The number of police in our schools is now larger than the entire police forces of major cities like Detroit and Austin,” she said.

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, who is widely credited with supporting DC 37’s creation of one of the nation’s most comprehensive union legal services, explained that “MELS grew out of our dedication to meeting the needs of the membership.”

Law Day was created during the rabid anti-communist fervor of the 1950s to counterbalance the May 1 International Workers Day, which is still celebrated by socialists and unions worldwide.

For MELS Associate Director Bob Martin, Law Day is an opportunity to celebrate the rule of law in the United States, “which has won important victories recently. There will be no more torture and President Obama has vowed to close the infamous prison on the Guantanamo military base in Cuba.”