A Big Win for Political Expression – Why Punish the Advocate?

By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News

14 January 16

y friend Ron McGuire is a lawyer. He is involved in a case of life and death. His life. His death. He is trying to get paid more than eleven dollars an hour for a civil rights case he has worked on for 19 years. A case that he won.

For the first time, the students at the City University of New York (CUNY) –predominantly young people of color and Muslim immigrants – can publish their student newspaper without being subject to the worst kind of censorship. CUNY has the third largest student body in the country.

The Second Circuit upheld the right of student journalists to publish prominent editorial opinions on candidates for election on the campus. 

CUNY students protesting tuition rate hikes (2011). A continuing history of resistance. (photo: RT)

The court told the president of the College of Staten Island that she violated the First Amendment rights of student journalists, candidates, and voters when she canceled a campus election to punish the newspaper for publishing a special endorsement issue on the eve of balloting. 

You would think that would be a ruling all reasonable people would celebrate. You would be wrong. It was a 2-1 ruling. That means one judge was on the losing side.

The losing judge bragged about not reading the ruling written by the winning side. He went on to compare the CUNY students to the genocidal Cambodian leader Pol Pot. This judge really hated losing. 

Ron is 67. Born in the Lower East Side. Grew up in a housing project in the Bronx. Sole practitioner. Wants to retire. No savings. This case was his nest egg. His health is, to put it in two words, not good. 

Ron worked on this case for 19 years, He fought several CUNY lawyers at almost every hearing. The administration sent a dozen lawyers into the field in an all-out effort to shut the students down. And their big-mouth attorney.

Somehow, Ron’s motion to get paid wound up in front of the losing judge. The judge saw a way to get revenge. Ron’s fee award was slashed to the bone. Eleven dollars an hour. Just about the minimum wage. 

The losing judge calls it “a case about nothing.” Students and allies say the judge is full of shit and, yes, Ron is their hero.

As a civil rights lawyer, I can assure you that many cases at the courthouse are not about much. But everyone makes sure that the lawyers get paid.

Not here. Because Ron McGuire is a people’s lawyer. Why did Ron make this choice? Or was it even a choice?

Ron was part of the movement to open up admission at CUNY to everyone in 1969. Back then, that meant a free college education for all. Not just students of the European persuasion. 

Ron joined the student strike, standing in solidarity with Black and Brown students. 

A couple of years earlier, Ron found a way to avoid arrest. He sat in a tree. He wouldn’t get out. The police couldn’t get him out. A cop and a construction worker stepped into the scoop of a front end loader. From high in the air, they tried to lasso him. Ron grabbed the rope and lashed himself to the tree. The media loved it. Ron was a tree-sitter before there were tree-sitters. The authorities were furious. Ron was suspended. 

When Ron stood with Black and Brown students, the authorities knew what to do. Ron was expelled.

Ron moved to the West Coast. He went to Laney Community College, with a major in Black studies. He was at the barricades in the antiwar movement in the years during and after Vietnam, which is how I know him. After an era of determined resistance, the military pulled up stakes and abandoned virtually every base in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

The Presidio, Mare Island, Alameda Naval Air Station, Concord Naval Weapons Station, the list goes on. All gone. In their place? Beautiful parklands. How’s the economy? Maybe the best in the country. Any questions? 

As that era was winding down, Ron went back East to go to law school at NYU. After school, he went to a fancy law firm for a couple of years.

In 1991, he heard that they were trying to end open admissions at CUNY. 

When Ron went to school there in 1969, it was 92% Anglo. Twenty years later, it was a whole different population. Black, Puerto Rican, Dominican. Admission was no longer free, but it was still available to working class people. The looming cuts could have ended all that.

The students went on strike. They defied a court injunction to end the strike. Thirty of them were arrested. Nearly 200 of them faced expulsion.

Ron never went back to the firm. He said the students “reflect the future we fought for in 1969.” 

He advised the students how to fight back. They formed a defense team, with two lawyers and lots of students. The defense of necessity is rarely allowed in the courts. In political cases, it enables people to justify their acts. Any way the courts looked at it, the evidence remained the same. The students kept the school open and stopped the authorities from closing it. 

The result? No convictions, expulsions, or suspensions. The decisions in Ron’s cases and the transcripts of the disciplinary hearings became required reading in legal skills for first year CUNY law students. 

The administration fought back. Ron’s work continued to be used, but his name was expunged from the course materials. The university disciplinary code was changed to eliminate the defense of justification.

Nor were the students allowed to have a free press. The authorities insisted on “balance.” In the mid-90s, a campus election was overturned because of this lack of “balance.” That’s when this suit began. 

CUNY students are stronger than they have been in some time, with a Second Circuit decision protecting their right to free speech and to organize effectively.

Ron is facing poverty and ruin.

Who will ever represent these students again?

In the last two weeks, the Second Circuit has been confronted by a wave of legal briefs from allies throughout the community, including New York City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez, naming Ron “the foremost advocate and … the leading expert on the civil rights of CUNY students.”

Their message? Reverse the decision to punish the advocate – if freedom of the press means anything in this country.

Yes, and honor the dignity of Ron and the students of CUNY.

Bill Simpich is a civil rights attorney who knows that it doesn’t have to be like this, but it will continue unless people speak out against these grand juries. My next article will discuss how a new Supreme Court case means that anti-war activists can be subpoenaed by grand juries for nonviolent action – after all, it might free up someone’s resources to take violent action.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.