A Brit is second in command at UN Syria - was involved in Fraud Scandal at U.N.'s Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue

CLICK HERE TO READ STORY ON GENEVALUNCH.COM

Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue charges a former director with CHF3.8m fraud (update)

Update 17:40  (video)  Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD) an international mediation organization, announced Saturday 28 August that it has been the victim of a CHF3.8 million fraud engineered, it says, by its former director of finance and administration, who held several other international posts before joining the Centre.

“A number of different schemes” were used, since 2004, to carry out the theft, says the organization.

Executive Director Martin Griffiths, who has headed the the CHD since it was created in 1999, has stepped down, “because he felt morally responsible,” the official announcement notes. “The Board accepted the resignation in order to put in place a new senior management. In recognition of his experience and knowledge of mediation, the Board has asked Martin Griffiths to dedicate his time fully to the mediation activities of the organization.”

Griffiths, a lawyer, worked for the UN as director of the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (which became OCHA) in Geneva and from 1998 to 1999 he was deputy to the UN Emergency Relief coordinator in New York, when he was also the UN regional coordinator in the Balkans (1999) with the rank of UN assistant secretary-general.

KPMG brought in to determine extent of fraud

The fraud was discovered in June 2010 by senior management, at which point the CHD hired audit firm KPMG to investigate. The announcement comes six weeks after the former finance director was stripped of his right to sign for the organization. Criminal charges have now been filed against the former director, and the group is “taking steps to recover the stolen sum.”

The organization is funded by several governments, private foundations and philanthropists, all of which have been informed about the fraud.

The former director, who cannot be named under Swiss law, lists, on online networking sites and as part of his CV, work done with a number of organizations, in Geneva, the UK and the US.


These include the World Bank and the IMF as an external auditor, finance positions with the Asian Development Bank, the British Embassy in Kathmandu, Arthur Andersen and, on one site, a fictitious trucking company. He appears to have served as an outside expert involved in approving funding for at least one international organization in the past year and has participated in a tax justice network as well as a corporate governance organization, both of which hold discussions on fraud.

Centre involved in several key African, Asian conflicts

It describes itself as an independent body that is “dedicated to improving the global response to armed conflict. It attempts to achieve this by mediating between warring parties and providing support to the broader mediation community. The HD Centre is driven by humanitarian values and its ultimate goal to reduce the consequences of violent conflict, improve security, and ultimately contribute to the peaceful resolution of conflict. It maintains a neutral stance towards the warring parties that it mediates between.”

Major mediation projects in which it is involved currently are in Somalia, Sudan, Kenya and the Central African Republic in Africa, as well as the Philippines NDF, Philippines Nindanao and Myanmar/Burma.

In 2010, the HD Centre brokered a historic agreement between the most heavily armed opposition movement in Darfur, the JEM, and the United Nations on the protection of children caught up in the conflict.

It has been active in Somaliand’s elections, training 600 national monitors/observers as well as working on resolving election disputes.

The official notice about the fraud notes that “The HD Centre has financial policies and procedures in place which govern financial transactions and accounting and which fully conform to generally accepted standards including Swiss legal requirements for Foundations. It has also received clean external audits every year since its establishment. As a result of this fraud, the HD Centre has already begun putting in place additional measures to strengthen control and compliance systems.”

Angelo Gnaedinger, director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) until 30 June 2010 has been appointed interim executive director, effective 6 September, while the organization undertakes a search for a new executive director.

Video, CHD, work in the Philippines



POSTED BY ELLEN WALLACE ON 30 AUGUST 2010 AT 15:28, LAST UPDATED ON 3 SEPTEMBER 2010 AT 15:39 | PERMALINK

Hate Crimes in Chattanooga

These are two very different statements:

"I am not a racist."

"I am an anti-racist."

 Many people think of racism solely in terms of the first statement. They reduce racism to individual attitudes, beliefs and actions. Many white liberals believe that they should be "color blind" and that "we are all just one race, the human race." 

The second statement is the one that is adopted by many radicals. It is a recognition that racism is more than mere bigotry and prejudice. It is a recognition of the history of racism and how it has fundamentally structured the world and created institutions and social relationships that perpetuate the domination of one group of people over another. To be an anti-racist is to recognize that racism is a historical reality that has fundamentally structured our present world. To be a white anti-racist is to recognize that while I may not personally hold bigoted or prejudiced views towards people of color, I still actively benefit from living in a racist society:

I have greater job and educational opportunities. 
I am more likely to have access to quality health care and nutritional food. 
I am more likely to be taken seriously, trusted and respected by others.
I am more likely to have my worth and value constantly confirmed by broader social narratives and images.

It is not enough to "not be racist". We must be "anti-racist". We must realize that the world is clearly structured to the benefit of certain groups of people (white folks, men, able bodied, straight people) over others. To promote mere "color blindness" is to completely obliterate this truth about how the world is structured in favor of a shallow reduction of racism to individual attitudes. White liberal "color blindness" also absolves us from taking personal responsibility for the social privileges that we have, regardless of our own individual attitudes.

We must take responsibility for these privileges and actively seek to dismantle them and build a new world based on shared values of equality. We must also accept the leadership of marginalized communities and actively listen to them because we value the insight they can provide us about how the world is structured to our privilege and their detriment.

To this end I would like to encourage folks to watch the following videos. This a local documentary entitled "Hate Crimes In Chattanooga" and was produced by Allison Rhodes. To understand how the world has come to be structured the way it is, we must look to history. If we are to understand the reality of white supremacy and how it has actively shaped our city, institutions, relationships and identities - and how it continues to do so today - then we must look to history.

Hate Crimes In Chattanooga Part One:
Part One features interviews with Chattanooga historian Raymond Evans and Chattanooga author and attorney Leroy Phillips

Hate Crimes in Chattanooga Part Two:
Part Two features interviews with Chattanooga author and attorney Leroy Phillips and former NAACP chairman James Mapp who led the desegregation lawsuit against Hamilton County schools. Also featured are Mr. Saul Hyman, Chief Skip Vaughn, Dr. Albert Cecil Rhodes, and Leonard Chill in interviews concerning the 1970 bombing of the Chattanooga synagogue Beth Sholom.

Hate Crimes In Chattanooga Part Three:
Part Three features interviews with Leonard Chill about surviving anti-Semitism, Chief Skip Vaughn discusses white supremacist murders, and Ms. Kathy Willis and Elizabeth Willis discuss current day struggles with racism in Chattanooga

Hate Crimes In Chattanooga Part Four:
Part Four features interviews with Part Four features interviews with Ms. Kathy Willis, Chief Skip Vaughn, and Chattanooga Historian Raymond Evans

Sentiment Indicators say the Markets are in HIGH RISK mode




Alert:
Our Sentiment Indicator declined to 4 in February 2012.  This means the markets (including equities, corporate bonds, Fx, etc) are not considering the embedded risks.  For exampl, Banks are lending to companies with Covenant-lite loan structures.  Investors are buying bonds without demanding large premiums or spreads over treasuries, etc. Thus, this is Bearish, but note this is not a (short-term) timing index.


Since Feb'12, the Sentiment Indicator has moved slightly higher.  This is a normal movement, but we still consider the Markets in a high risk phase.


Macroeconomic backdrop:

The European Crises is likely to improve over the next few weeks.  However, unless a EuroBond (bonds backed by the Euro-zone countries) is implemented the Euro-Crises will return with a vengeance.  A EuroBond is a low probability solution given that the Germans want the weaker Eurozone members, such as Greece, to execute on their promised Austerity Plans.  This probably won't occur given the political instability in Greece and upcoming (June) elections.  Other Euro-zone countries (i.e., Spain, Italy) have the same issues.

The "Eur-Lema":
Europe is in a tough dilemma:  If it enacts Austerity Measures, economic growth will deepen the Recession (see Purchasing Manager's chart below).  If (French president) Hollande's growth-friendly agenda is supported in the Euzo-zone, Debt levels will continue rising, in turn causing funding rates to soar.  There is no easy solution!

Likely temporary measures:  We expect the European Central Bank to command a big part of a short-term "bandage" by:
  1. lowering interest rates,
  2.  supporting banks by lending to troubled ones,
  3.  and outright purchasing of bonds on the open market.
Source: Markit Economics


Sentiment Chart:  It became bullish when the index surpassed 7 in mid-August'11.  Since then, it has trended lower to the recent low of 4 during Feb'12.  That was the lowest since July'11. <click chart to enlarge>



Technical Chart.  It became extremely Bullish in August'11 as well, but moved to Neutral in Feb-April 2012.  <Click chart to enlarge>




 BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
As a long-term investor, I believe the time for Socially Responsible Investing is now…right NOW.  Long-term investors are not concerned over the current level of the stock market and whether the Market’s going to rise or fall the next day.

I propose investors be “fully invested” in equities most of the time.  Being “fully-invested” is different for different people depending on age, risk tolerance, etc.  As a Heuristic, I suggest being 75% long equities as a “base-case” level.  The remainder would be invested in bonds, real-estate, hard assets, and alternative/exotic investments (e.g., natural gas, platinum, rare-earth anyone?).

With that being said, there are certain times that are better to invest in the market.  Rather than choosing tops and bottoms based on certain fundamental criteria (e.g. price to earnings ratio), I have developed two Market Timing Indicators.  These indicators help me maintain objectivity with regards to my investment positions, as I have no influence on them.  They were designed during late 1992 and have been updated weekly since.

The two major indicators are:

1.    Sentiment:  based on human behavior, and supported by theories backed by Behavioral Finance. 

2.    Technical:  which measures market breadth, or underlying strength in the broad market.

These indicators are used to obtain my Portfolio's Investment Position.  Note, they do not know, or represent market levels.  They are measures of perceived risk, especially the Sentiment Indicators.  I have often taken mental notes of how everyone seems to clamor to buy things when their expected rate of returns are minimal compared to their inherent risks. 

This website will include three simple colored (traffic) signals.  Green for “Buy” (i.e, low-risk levels) which means allocate your portfolio to a fully-invested equity position.  For me, that’s about 75-80% invested, but it could be lower for a more-risk adverse, or retired individual.  Yellow, means caution, risk levels rising.  Red means “High-Risk”; investors should reduce their investment positions to conservative levels perhaps 30-40% equity.  The remainder could be in treasuries, gold, high-grade corporate bonds, etc.

Theocracy & The Hamilton County Commission

The Chattanooga Times Free Press announced on Wednesday that the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national non-profit organization dedicated to the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, has sent a letter to the Hamilton County Commission objecting to the County Commission routinely opening their agenda sessions with Christian prayers that are made explicitly in "Jesus' name".

The Freedom From Religion Foundation makes a very clear argument for how and why these prayers are unconstitutional, unnecessary, inappropriate and needlessly divisive:
"Calling upon Commission members and citizens to pray is coercive and beyond the authority ofthe local goverment. Citizens are compelled to come before you on important civic matters, to seek licenses, permits, to participate in important decisions affecting their livelihood, their property, and quality of life. These citizens should not be made to feel offended, excluded, or like political outsiders because the local government they support with their taxes imposes religious ritual at civil government meetings. Local government should not be in the business of performing religious rituals, or exhorting all citizens, regardless of beliefs, to participate in a Christian prayer, or even asking citizens to show deference or obeisance to this ritual."
What were these prayers like? Well, here are two examples:



In this video, the Hamilton County Commission opens their agenda session with a prayer in which the preacher says:
"We thank you for the sacrifice that you give us through Christ, who offers us freedom from oppression and injustice, from all the 'isms' of life. But more importantly, from the sin that takes our life over. . . In the name of Christ we pray."



This video was shot while attending a Hamilton County Commission agenda session with a Muslim friend of mine. She is clearly visible in this video, standing almost directly in front of me, and directly in front of the preacher, wearing her hijab, the head covering traditionally worn by Muslim women.

In this video the preacher says the following:
"Our society is quickly moving away from allowing men like me, to come to a place like this and request anything from a God like you. Yet, here I stand and here we are. And even more amazing to us Lord, we know we have had your attention. So it is in the name of Jesus that I pray and in the name of a loving God that we say Amen."
Hamilton County is home to many people who practice a multitude of faiths as well as many freethinkers and self-identified atheists. Allowing the openings of these necessary governmental meetings to be dominated from the outset by open prayers by right-wing Christians preachers to their particular (mis)characterization of Jesus Christ creates an needlessly hostile and uncomfortable environment for many of our area residents. If any theocrats disagree with me, try to imagine how you would feel if the Hamilton County Commission opened a meeting with a reading from the Holy Qur'an and bearing witness to Muhammad as Allah's messenger.

I know exactly what would happen - the vipers at Abba's House would lose their minds and screech about "Shariah Law" taking over our government, failing to recognize that a creeping right-wing Christian theocracy already has.

U.N. investigators 'seriously compromised' by relationship to management bosses, report charges

 
Published May 23, 2012
| FoxNews.com

The  people who are paid to root out waste, fraud, corruption and wrongdoing in the sprawling United Nations are often not qualified to do their jobs, and are hampered by insufficient funding and potential conflicts of interest because the very people they are investigating control their careers and budgets, according to a report by U.N. experts on how the world organization investigates itself.
Very often, the U.N.’s internal investigators are part of the management structure they may be called on to probe, the report adds. Nor do most of the U.N.’s array of funds, programs, agencies and other organizations have any consistent means of making sure that investigations are followed up when wrongdoing is discovered.

The report’s stark conclusions amount to a renewed call for accountability by one of the few independent groups of investigators in the U.N., a small conclave of top-level experts based in Geneva that is known as the Joint Inspection Unit, or JIU.

The JIU inspectors are the only group of U.N. investigators expressly mandated to examine on a system-wide basis the effectiveness of the proliferating array of funds, agencies, programs and other organizations that make up the expanding U.N. universe, and even they have come under increasing pressure from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to toe an organizational line.
When queried by Fox News, JIU officials declined to comment at all on their report.

Click here for the JIU report

The 31-page document, a follow-up on several previous efforts over the past decade to examine the U.N.’s self-policing efforts, was intended to appear in 2011 -- and is labeled that way on its front page -- but the final version was not even created until February 2012.

The JIU inspectors examined a total of 21 U.N. organizations, by no means an inclusive list. One reason is that some of the U.N.’s most important programs are still considered, for investigation purposes, as part of the U.N. Secretariat. For example, there is no separate mention in the document of one of the most important and ambitious U.N. bureaucracies, which is bidding fiercely to become a bigger player in matters of “global environmental governance” in the years ahead.

That organization is the United Nations Environmental Program, or UNEP, which, according to various press reports, has the support of France, among other countries, to become a kind of environmental super-agency in the wake of the upcoming U.N. Rio + 20 global summit  on “sustainable development,” which begins June 21. The reason: UNEP makes use of investigators from the U.N. Secretariat instead.

“It seems to us sensible and a saving of taxpayers’ money to draw on the capabilities of the U.N. Secretariat rather than having or setting up a separate system,” a UNEP spokesman told Fox News.
Maybe not. A report three years ago by the Secretariat’s watchdog organization, the Office for Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), noted that under the arrangement, the United Nations Environmental Program had just one auditor and one assistant to inspect its operations and a number of multilateral agreements under UNEP's purview. The OIOS document estimated that it would take 17 years for the auditor to look over just the high-risk areas already identified in UNEP's work.
The same issue applied to the United Nations Human Settlements program, known as UN-Habitat, where OIOS estimated that it would take the solo auditor 11 years to cover the high-risk areas in a $250 million Habitat budget.

Last year, a confidential examination of UNEP by OIOS, obtained by Fox News,  revealed that UNEP had repeatedly ignored its own financial rules, bypassed internal quality control agencies, didn’t know how its money is spent or even who it might be dealing with when it comes to hundreds of corporate, public and non-governmental partners that are key to fulfilling its mission.

What the JIU inspectors have to say about the U.N.’s other investigations efforts closely parallels what they recently said about the people who are entrusted to examine the U.N.’s books: They are over-stretched and too much under the thumb of the managers they are likely to be investigating, who control investigation budgets, human resources and even the immediate careers of investigators who could be policing their decisions.

“As currently set up,” the JIU inspectors declare, “no oversight entity is free to decide on its budgetary requirements; oversight entities are subject to the same budget policies as any other entity within the Secretariats. The Inspectors believe this seriously compromises the independence of the oversight function, including investigations. “

And in some U.N. organizations, the report says, “no investigation can be opened in the absence of the executive head’s explicit approval or specific instruction.”

In other words, the people who may be held ultimately accountable for their organization’s failings get to decide whether those failings will be exposed or not.

Even when investigators get to do their jobs, the report says, “executive heads are able to make use of the investigation reports’ findings, conclusions or recommendations in the way they judge best, which, in a worst-case scenario, could include concealing evidence and/or burying the findings.”
And if the wrongdoing includes criminal activity, the report adds, the “executive heads” of the organizations get to decide whether local police or other authorities will even be involved.
When it comes to encouraging staffers to report wrongdoing, the inspectors indicate that U.N. organizations can also be less than forthcoming. In one unnamed case -- involving a “large” U.N. organization, the report says security cameras are installed “throughout its internal oversight office,” making a record of whoever comes inside.

 “This is a major deterrent to staff wishing to report and discuss wrongdoing with the investigators,” the report dryly states. “The Inspectors believe the cameras should be deactivated during business hours.”

Atop all that, there is something approaching systemic anarchy when it comes to investigative standards. Some smaller and more technical U.N. organizations, the report notes, don’t set aside any money for the investigation of wrongdoing, and have the option of “outsourcing” investigations -- though how is unspecified.

Both the JIU inspectors and U.N. staffers are concerned that such investigations conducted by “non-professional investigators and/or entities which are not independent but are part of management, can result in conflicts of interest, information not being handled properly, an uneven application of standards, and problems with due process, as well as cases being “dropped” or taking undue time to complete.”

The solutions that the JIU experts offer for most of the U.N.’s investigative problems are also not new:  greater autonomy from top management, including the right to pursue investigations without permission; more financial independence; and a direct reporting line to external oversight organizations -- independent auditing committees, for example -- as well as to bosses who might take a dislike to the investigators’ findings.

The experts, however, do have one fairly dramatic new idea on offer to deal with all the gaps, uneven standards, professional disparities and other  problems of the deeply fragmented system -- although, in typical U.N. fashion, it is less a solution than an invitation to a drawn-out bureaucratic process.
They call on Secretary General Ban to pull together an “inter-agency task force,” under the auspices of a U.N. body that includes the heads of 29 U.N. organizations to “develop options” for the creation of a single U.N. system-wide investigative unit, which would then be presented to the U.N. General Assembly and other legislative bodies for consideration.

The JIU suggests that the “options” be assembled by the end of 2013.  A spokesman for Ban’s office said that the secretary general wouldn’t be commenting on the idea until this fall.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News  and can be found on Twitter@GeorgeRussell
Click here for more stories by George Russell

Darshak Shah's wife - running for UNFCU Board of Directors (a year ago Darshak couldn't make it) - what's in it for Darshak that wants at any cost the UNFCU?

Aruna Thanabalasingam
Residence New York, USA 
Agency and Department or Office UNICEF, Deputy Director of Human Resources 

Educational Background 
Year of Graduation Name of School Degree 
1984 University of Essex, UK BA (Honors), Policy Making and Administration 
1985 University of Lancaster, School of Management and Organizational Sciences, UK Postgraduate Diploma, Business Analysis 
1993 Columbia University, NY USA MA, Organization Psychology 

United Nations Service 
Start date/ end date Company Position Held 
2001 - 2003 UNDP Chief of Recruitment, OHR 
2003 - 2005 UNDP Chief, Business Advisory Services, OHR 
2005 - 2007 UNDP Deputy Director, OHR and Chief, Business Advisory Services 
2007 - Present UNICEF Deputy Director, DHR, Strategic Talent Management 

Non-UN Experience 
Start date/ end date Company Position Held 
1988 - 1990 KPMG, Kenya Managing Consultant, Executive Search 
1990 - 1993 Citibank, Avon Products, UNDP; Catalyst Consultant 
1993 - 1998 PWC, New York Manager, Human Resources 
1998 Deloitte Consulting, New York Manager, International Recruitment 
1998 - 2001 KPMG, East Africa Director, Human Resources Consulting Practice 

Experience/Qualifications relevant to candidacy 
I am a seasoned HR Professional with over 20 years of experience both in the private sector and UN system. I have a strong academic background in the behavioral sciences and a good grounding in policy and advocacy, as well as a sensitivity to people matters. Therefore, I believe I can add value as a member of the UNFCU Board, bringing to the table my diversity of experiences, and understanding of the contexts and needs of members both in the developing and developed world. 

Personal Statement 
I believe in the mission of UNFCU: “Serving the People Who Serve the World” by enriching members’ lives. Additionally, I strongly believe that in this current volatile and challenging environment, UNFCU has an opportunity to make a difference for its members. I would like to be part of the team that effects the change where appropriate and necessary to facilitate and impact the lives of members. The diversity of my background, experiences both in the private sector and the UN system, my professionalism, sound judgment and people intelligence are elements I can contribute as a member of the UNFCU Board. 

Professor David M. Siegel on the Post- Conviction Access to Forensic and Scientific Analysis Act

                         
      A new article in the Boston Bar Journal written by Professor David Siegel, co-director of the Center, and Gregory I. Massing discusses the Post-Conviction Access to Forensic and Scientific Analysis Act. The Act, as the article explains, provides criminal defendants with the statutory right to access the scientific and forensic analysis of evidence in their cases. Professor Siegel states that "This developed out of long term work of the Criminal Justice Project that involved many students over the past decade."
     Below is an excerpt of the article.  To read it in full please visit this site. For more information on the Criminal Justice Project at the Center for Law and Social Responsibility please visit here.

                         
A New Tool for Determining Factual Innocence: Massachusetts' Post-Conviction Access to Forensic and  Scientific Analysis
         Angel Hernandez spent thirteen years in Massachusetts prisons for a rape he did not commit.  He spent a decade of that time seeking DNA testing of evidence he was told was lost or unavailable, or was not subject to discovery through the procedure he was using, or that he had no right to test, or that he had waived the right to test.[1]  He ultimately obtained access to the evidence, and DNA testing fully exonerated him.  The ability of a wrongfully convicted criminal defendant to access evidence to prove it, and the obligation of the Commonwealth to keep that evidence, may seem utterly common sense -- but they are now the law of the Commonwealth too.  On February 17, 2012, Governor Patrick signed the Post-Conviction Access to Forensic and Scientific Analysis Act, 2012 Mass. Acts, c. 38, which provides a statutory right for wrongfully convicted defendants to obtain access scientific and forensic analysis of evidence in their cases.  The Act, which becomes effective May 17, 2012, creates a comprehensive framework by which criminal defendants who have been found guilty may gain access to evidence and testing to support a claim that they are factually innocent.  The Act also requires for the first time in Massachusetts state-wide retention and preservation of evidence in criminal cases and provides for regulations in this area.  Although virtually every other state already provided this type of access, testing, and retention, the Act is among the most comprehensive in the country.  The saga of Angel Hernandez should not have to be repeated. READ MORE....

The Chattanooga Roots of Black Power


Ricks, Willie: Ricks joined SNCC as a Chattanooga high school student in the early 1960s. He was part of SNCC's advance group organized to mobilize black support in small communities. A self-described black nationalist known within SNCC as "The Reverend," he shortened the slogan "Black power for Black people" to the popular "Black power." He was later expelled from SNCC for refusing to distance himself from the Black Panther Party.
- Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC edited by Cheryl Lynn Greenburg 1998, Glossary of Names and Terms  p. 244 

Student-Led Direct Action in Chattanooga


Freedom fighters in the United States had been organizing non-violent direct actions to challenge white supremacy and American Apartheid since "Jim Crow" laws were first enacted at the end of Reconstruction, when power was being gradually returned to the Southern white establishment by the occupying armies of the North. But it was the 1 February 1960 sit-in by four students from the North Carolina Agricultural & Technological State University at the lunch counters of a Woolworth's department store in Greensboro, North Carolina that catalyzed a national call to action. What started as four courageous Black students sitting at a "whites only" counter grew to 20 people the next day. Then 60. And then 300. The students received national media attention and the moment continued to grow as other students followed their example and began performing direct actions through out North Carolina and then Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. 

Mukasa Ricks (at the time known as Willie Ricks) became a freedom fighter early in life when, at the age of seventeen, he began working with other students from Howard High School to organize student-led non-violent direct actions. In January of 1960, students organized a sit-in at the segregated Woolworth diner on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga. 

Students occupying the segregated lunch counter of Woolworth department store located on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga

By February, over 200 Black students, most from Howard High School, were taking part in the demonstrations. The sit-ins were now spread out over four stores which were all located on Market Street: McClellan Stores Co, 713 Market Street; Woolworth, 729 Market Street; W.T. Grant, 715 Market Street; and S.H. Kress, 822 Market Street. All of the stores began closing down their lunch counter service, and often their doors, in response to the organized student actions.

Hundreds of Howard High School students were demonstrating by late February

Reactionary white high school students started organizing counter demonstrations. These young white conservatives began routinely attacking the peaceful Black student demonstrators.


Conservative white students in Chattanooga reacted by demonstrating in support of American apartheid 

Tensions mounted quickly. Soon, the department stores became frantic scenes of violent outbreaks as mobs of conservative whites tried to keep Black students from entering the stores and sitting at the lunch counters. These struggles would spill out into the street where brickbats were hurled and knives flourished. Thousands of people began packing the downtown streets to see what was going on and what would happen next. Three years before Bull Connor ordered the Birmingham police to unleash their city's fire hoses on peaceful students, the Chattanooga police viciously attacked peaceful Black protesters with fire hoses on Market and Cherry Street.


In February 1960, Chattanooga Police unleashed high-pressure water jets on peaceful student demonstrators in downtown Chattanooga

The forceful blast from water hoses violently cleared the streets and sidewalks of student demonstrators - and anyone else who happened to be there

In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", Dr. Martin Luther King said that "nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue." This is precisely what the student-led direct actions at department stores in downtown Chattanooga successfully did. In August of 1960, after months of organized action, Black students had successfully desegregated seven department stores in downtown Chattanooga. Similar "stand-ins" were performed in movie theaters and within a short period many of Chattanooga's theaters, motels and hotels, about 70 restaurants as well as city buses and trains were all desegregated.

During the sit-ins, Mukasa Ricks had developed a reputation for himself as a student leader and a powerful organizer. The Chattanooga Police department had arrested, beaten, and turned high-pressured hoses on hundreds of non-violent students, all in the service of Chattanooga's racist white political and business establishment. With the leadership of student organizers like Ricks, and through the methods of principled direct action, Chattanooga's young people of color successfully challenged some of our city's white supremacist apartheid laws.

Due to his notoriety in the community, Ricks was contacted by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to register voters in Chattanooga in 1961. The next year Ricks joined the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and participated in their first Direct Action Program in Albany, Georgia.

From Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to Black Panthers


Front window of a SNCC field office in the South, picture taken from "The Story of Snick: From 'Freedom High' to 'Black Power'" by Gene Roberts, New York Times Magazine, September 25, 1966

Like the 2011 occupation of Zuccotti Park and the massive mobilization of protesters in Wisconsin, the moment created by the Greensboro sit-ins became a national call to action. Freedom fighters who had been involved in organized struggles against white supremacy prior to the Greensboro sit-ins recognized the opportunity created in this new space and the need to go beyond uncoordinated solidarity actions, successful as they were, like those in Chattanooga.

Two such freedom fighters were Ella Baker and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who called together a conference at Shaw University to talk with university students from all over the country about what could be done to build on the momentum created by the Greensboro sit-ins. On Easter morning 1960, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was formed with the explicit objective of bringing people together, developing local leadership and organizing locally controlled organizations to combat oppression on the front lines of the civil rights struggle in the deep South.

At a time when registering people of color to vote was incredibly dangerous, SNCC leaders declared that "voting is direct action". SNCC members would put their lives on the line by becoming "Freedom Riders" in 1961. Freedom Riders were integrated groups of activists riding in buses through the south, registering voters in towns where they stopped. In the lead-up to voter registration drives, SNCC organizers provided indigenous leadership development and grassroots community organizing trainings to folks living in the local community.


Klansman firebombed the Freedom Rider's Greyhound bus on 14 May 1961

SNCC was different from other civil rights organizations in that it did not have a hierarchical decision making structure, but instead utilized consensus decision making practices to ensure that those who were most directly affected, and in many cases literally laying their lives on the line, could meaningfully participate in all decisions. Also unlike most other civil rights organizations, which simply supported civil rights activists and mass mobilizations, SNCC organizers traveled throughout the southern United States working alongside the rural poor to form their own community organizations. SNCC organizers found that most rural communities already had in place some recognizable indigenous leadership and some degree of organization that had been  actively working to protect and advance the interests of the local Black community, sometimes for many years. These leaders and organizations had existed as a matter of survival for rural communities of color living in the Black Belt.

These were the most dangerous areas of the country for civil rights work. SNCC organizers would often spend years traveling among the same communities. When Ricks joined SNCC as a community organizer in 1962, the organization was integrationist, non-violent and inter-racial. He immediately began working in Georgia, Mississippi and then eventually in Alabama alongside Stokely Carmichael. It was from their experiences on the frontlines of the battle for civil rights that organizers like Mukasa Ricks and Stokely Carmichael became more deeply aware of the depth to which violence and oppression were built into the white supremacist political system - and how inadequate their approaches were in seriously challenging and changing the deeper root problems.

"It took us through a lot of different kinds of changes to see the extreme savage brutality and racist behavior of not just the police, but the judge and the entire system that was oppressing and holding our people down."
- Mukasa Ricks, quoted in Challenging U.S. Apartheid: Atlanta and Black Struggles for Human Rights by Winston A. Grady-Willis, 2006 Duke University Press p. 61 


Due to their experiences organizing in the rural South, Ricks and Carmichael began undergoing a deep change of consciousness. They began to see themselves not as second-class citizens of the United States seeking integration and assimilation, but as a separate nation living under the colonial rule of the white supremacist capitalistic United States government. The struggle for Black folks in the South to organize their own communities into a larger movement for liberation became inherently linked to the international struggles of Black Nations against European imperialists. Their growing Black Nationalist consciousness was heavily influenced by Malcolm X and Franz Fannon, but the largest contribution came from the underlying values of self-reliance and self-determination taught to SNCC organizers by the folks living and struggling in the very rural Black communities they were organizing within.
We had been struggling throughout the south, in this country for freedom and liberation. We had to go through the backdoor and say, “yes sir” to white people. We were being lynched, shot down and murdered, like they did Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman. Like they did Medgar Evers. They dynamited our churches, burned down our churches and just killed our people just for wanting to be free. Then in Alabama they had bombed and killed many of our workers, the governor and government were fighting a movement. In Tuskegee, Alabama, a man named Sammy Young went into a bathroom that said “whites only”, and when he came out the owner of the gas station, a white man shot him in the head with a shotgun. SNCC had begun to become somewhat militant. I remember one night, the Ku Klux Klan came and shot in our house, the next night we went and shot in their house. We began to say long ago that the non-violent part didn’t make sense and that we did it for tactical reasons. In 1965, in Lowndes County, Alabama we formed the Lowndes County Black Panther Party. We said we were going to defend ourselves against these killers. We often preached and talked about if we had power, we would have power to defend ourselves, power to feed our people, power to stop them from shooting us down in the streets, power to have decent schools etc.
- Mukasa Ricks, interview performed by Kalonji Jama Changa [LINK]

With this change in consciousness came a change in political focus, from non-violent actions that attempted to appeal to the conscious of whites to Black solidarity and self-reliance, the creation of alternative Black institutions, and complete political control of their own communities. No longer would they demand equality with whites, but self-determination for their communities. This change in focus necessitated a change in their organizing program, which found its expression in the organization of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO).

In 1965, Mukasa Ricks and Stokley Carmichael began organizing political workshops in Lowndes County, Alabama. The vast majority of folks living in Lowndes County were people of color, but not a single Black person was registered to vote. During the workshops, community members debated whether their vote would truly matter, since the interests and needs of rural poor and working class people of color diverged significantly from those of the white folks in control of the Democratic Party on the national, state and local level. So they arrived at a consensus: they would work together to form the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, an independent third-party organized solely by Black people to solely represent the interests of Black people.

1965 Montgomery, Alabama Police Department File Photo

With the creation of the county-wide LCFO, the Black community could mobilize support for a third-party and end the subordination of their own interests to the white supremacists that controlled the Democratic Party. The State of Alabama required that all political parties register an emblem to represent them. The Democratic Party literally had a "white supremacy" white rooster as their logo. So the folks in the Lowndes County Freedom Organization chose the Black Panther.

From a pamphlet handed out by the LCFO at the time

The first organizational meeting of the LCFO was a massive success. Over 50% of the potential Black voters from Lowndes County turned out to elect party officers and candidates. Shortly thereafter, on 8 May 1966, SNCC held an organizational meeting in Kingston, Tennessee to adopt an organizational plan of action. What came out of that meeting were three main policies that would completely change the organization of SNCC as well as the organizing work they were doing:
  1. The organization would focus on organizing all-Black independent political parties based off the Lowdnes County model.
  2. The organization would incorporate the promotion of Black consciousness and postive Black cultural representations into all of their education and messaging work in an attempt to combat white supremacist constructions of Black people.
  3. White allies would no longer work for SNCC as organizers in rural Black communities - this choice was made to better align SNCC's organizational composition with their renewed allegiance to self-reliance and self-determination as the core guiding principles of their organizing work.
Taken all together, this new orientation came to be encapsulated by two words: Black Power.


Black Power


On 6 June 1966, James Meredith, the first Black graduate from the University of Mississippi, started a solitary journey from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi to encourage Black folks to register and vote in the face of the violence that was awaiting them at their county registrar's office and polling locations. At this point in time in Mississippi, killing civil rights workers was a popular past time. From 1963 to 1966, over forty Black and white civil rights workers were lynched or murdered, but not a single person was convicted of any crime. From 1964 to 1966 over fifty Black churches had been burned or bombed. While the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was proclaimed as ushering in opportunities for Black folks to participate meaningfully in government, the realities of white supremacist terrorism in the South ensured that no such promise was actualized. Earnest attempts of enforcing the Voting Rights Act would have required that the Federal government mobilize its resources, as of 1966 not a single Federal law officer had been assigned to the South to ensure implementation of the law. It was in this gulf between existing legislation and the daily realities of Black folks living in the South that James Meredith began his trek.

Meredith's "March Against Fear" was quickly cut short when the very next day after starting his march he was blasted by a shotgun on the side of the road. After meeting with Meredith in his hospital room, Dr. Martin Luther King with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Floyd McKissick with the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and Stokely Carmichael and Cleveland Sellars with SNCC all agreed that their organizations would work together to organize the continuation of the march.

Dr. King, Stokely Carmichael & Mukasa Ricks during the  "March Against Fear"
It was ten days after James Meredith began his trek, in Greenwood, Mississippi that the SNCC inner core decided to go public with their new organizational philosophy. On approaching Greenwood, Carmichael was arrested, for the 27th time. After being released from jail he joined Ricks at the planned mass meeting. What happened next is history:
"As we approached Greenwood large crowds turned out to welcome us to the city. At the huge mass meeting that night which was held in a city park, Stokely mounted the platform and proclaimed in stentorian terms, "What we need is black power." After expounding his black power theme, Willie Ricks, the fiery orator of SNICK leaped to the platform and shouted, "What do you want?" The crowd roared Black Power. Again and again Ricks cried What do you want? and the Black Power response grew louder and louder. This refrain was continued until the crowd reached a fever pitched point. For people who had been crushed so long by white power and who had been taught that black was degrading, this slogan had a ready appeal. So Greenwood turned out to be the arena for the birth of the Black Power slogan in the civil rights movement. The phrase had been used long before by Richard Wright and others, but never before had it been used as a slogan in the civil rights movement."
- From the original transcript of the chapter on Black Power from Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community" by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. provided by The King Library and Archives [LINK 

During one of the many rallies that accompanied the civil rights march through Mississippi in June, Willie Ricks, a 23-year-old member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, stood on the back of a flat-bed truck and harangued a crowd of nearly a thousand Negroes. Ricks is known within the Committee as "The Reverend" for his ability to thunder in the manner of a fundamentalist preacher, and that night, at the fairground in Yazoo City, he talked of "white blood flowing," yelled "black power" several times and otherwise warmed up to the subject of how he, as a Negro, was tired of white society.
- "The Story of Snick: From 'Freedom High' to 'Black Power'" by Gene Roberts, New York Times Magazine, September 25, 1966

Mainstream civil rights organizations and white liberals became increasingly uncomfortable with the deepening and increasingly explicit radicalism of SNCC. Since self-determination had become a central principle of SNCC's organizing program they had decided to no longer allow white allies to work with them in organizing communities of color. This choice to have only Black organizers preaching Black self-determination shocked the white liberal establishment. Many liberal white newspapers, supportive of the civil rights movement over all, called SNCC racist, sometimes going so far as to compare them to very white southerners who had tried to lynch, firebomb, and shoot civil rights workers. Many moderate civil rights leaders denounced SNCC and their Black Power philosophy, saying it alienated white allies and the philanthropic donors that supported the movement. At the time, Dr. King described Black Power as "disappointment wrapped in despair."

For Ricks and Carmichael and other veteran freedom fighters in SNCC, Black Power was the direct philosophical and cultural development of the reflective community-directed grassroots organizing that SNCC had been doing in the rural south. It was from rural Black southerners that organizers like Carmichael and Ricks learned the incredible value of self-reliance and self-determination. As their consciousness evolved, SNCC organizers recognized the need to develop a program that would build the necessary institutional support through which these values could flourish. The organizing experiences in Lowndes County were the basis for this new vision. It was through the creation of all-Black political parties that existed outside the control of white supremacists, like the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, that independent power bases could be constructed.

Black Power, as an organization philosophy was much more than rhetoric, it was both radical & pragmatic.

Liberation is a Journey
For much of its early history, SNCC battled against the fear that had kept rural southern blacks from wholeheartedly organizing and acting on their own behalf. It strengthened or built aggressive, locally led movements in the communities where it worked. While organizing grassroots voter-registration drives, SNCC workers offered themselves as a protective barrier between private and state-sponsored terror and the local communities where SNCC staffers lived and worked.  
By 1965, SNCC fielded the largest staff of any civil rights organization in the South. It had organized nonviolent direct action against segregated facilities, as well as voter-registration projects, in Alabama, Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, Louisiana Virginia Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi; built two independent political parties and organized labor unions and agricultural cooperatives; and given the movement for women's liberation new energy. It inspired and trained the activists who began the "New Left." It helped expand the limits of political debate within black America, and broadened the focus of the civil rights movement. Unlike mainstream civil rights groups, which merely sought integration of blacks into the existing social order, SNCC sought structural changes in American society itself.
- SNCC: What We Did by Julia Bond 

From his early days as a Howard High School student organizing sit-ins in the department stores of downtown Chattanooga to his work on the frontlines of the civil rights struggle in rural counties of the deep South to the formation of the Black Panther Party in Lowndes County, Alabama - the story of Mukasa Ricks is the story of what is possible when everyday grassroots folks commit themselves to the struggle for freedom. The journey on the road to freedom changes us, changes who we are and what we come to understand as the destination we are seeking. SNCC's changing political orientation from a non-violent, integrationist and inter-racial organization to an organization dedicated to working within rural communities of color in the South to develop their capacity for direct control of  their own material conditions through leadership development, institution building, raising Black consciousness and being open to a diversity of tactics mirrored the personal political maturation of both Mukasa Ricks and Stokely Carmichael.

Dr. King, towards the end of his life, also began moving in the direction of Ricks and Carmichael. In the notorious speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence", delivered at Riverside Church in New York, a year to the day before his assassination by the United States government in Memphis, Dr. King described the United States as the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world." Like the political program of Black Power, Dr. King's attacks on American imperialism and support of the self-determination of people of color, whether in the ghettos of the United States or the fields of Vietnam, was viciously attacked by the liberal white establishment. The New York Times described King's connecting the plights of poor people of color in the United States to those in Vietnam as "wasteful and self-defeating", while the Washington Post attacked King himself saying he had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

Substantive differences exist between the approaches and philosophies of Dr. King and the SNCC organizers turned Black Panthers, but in the end they all agreed that piecemeal reform would never lead to full freedom, equality and justice for people of color. A fundamental restructuring of our society, economy and political system would be required if we, as a people, are to live up to our professed values. This change will not occur in a vacuum and will not occur of itself. To be liberated from the oppressive confines of  racism, sexism, heterosexism, and capitalism we must individually commit ourselves to the fight for freedom and work to actively move others to join us in our struggles. We can look to the life of Mukasa Ricks, a Chattanooga native, for a guide as to the path that journey might take us.
Love your people more than you love yourselves. Make whatever  sacrifices are necessary for your people. Get organized, every individual should belong to an organization, and within those organizations, get educated. Study liberation movements, not just African liberation movements but study movements in China, Guinea, Cuba. Study these movements to see that all liberation movements have one common enemy: imperialism. And that there is one solution: poor people all over must unite to whoop imperialism; we have to take their resources and use them to uplift people all over. Students have to serve working class people. Not just study history, but get out there and make history to make a strong contribution towards our liberation.
- Mukasa Ricks


Picture taken from Challenging U.S. Apartheid: Atlanta and Black Struggles for Human Rights by Winston A. Grady-Willis, 2006 Duke University Press p. 60

This post is one in a series entitled "The People's History of Chattanooga". My hope is to begin providing a more complex and true history of the actual events and people who lived, worked, and struggled in Chattanooga. This is not the Chamber of Commerce's version of local history. I am trying to provide narratives that speak to the grassroots about the grassroots in a way that includes all of our failings, contradictions, victories and moments of inspiration.

Clinical Law Fellow Opportunity: University of Massachusetts School of Law

Clinical Law Fellow
The Clinical Fellow in the Immigration Law Clinic at the University Of Massachusetts School Of Law—Dartmouth will work in the Immigration Law Clinic on direct representation, student supervision, teaching, and appellate and advocacy work. For the complete job description please go to www.umassd.edu/hr.
 
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS; Juris Doctorate; Admission to the Massachusetts Bar or eligibility to be waived into practice in Massachusetts upon assuming clinical responsibilities; EXPERIENCE:  Previous student/staff experience in a law clinic; OTHER: Evening and weekend hours and travel as required

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
•  Previous experience in immigration law and practice
•  Previous successful completion of work as a law student in a law school’s immigration  clinic
•  Ability to communicate in Spanish as a second language
•  Two years of practice experience in immigration removal defense, asylum practice and Special Immigrant Juvenile cases.

To apply please send a letter of interest, current resume and the contact information for up to three professional references to: Search for Clinical Law Fellow, Office of Human Resources, 285 Old Westport Rd., North Dartmouth, MA 02747.

The review of applications will begin May 22, 2012 and continue until the position is filled.

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WallStreetJournal: UNDP in Afghanistan involved in yet another scandal - will Jens Wandel clean up house (while Darshak Shah's wife runs for UNFCU top board position?)

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE TO READ IT ON WALL-STREET JOURNAL



U.N. Defends Afghan Police Fund as Donors Seek Probe






KABUL—International donors called on Sunday for an inquiry into potential mismanagement of the United Nations-administered trust fund that helps pay for Afghanistan's fledgling police force, even as the U.N. reiterated its support for the program and denied the accusations.
The Wall Street Journal reported late last week that the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, an anticorruption group composed of high-level Afghan and international officials, expressed concerns about the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan, or Lotfa. Administered by the U.N. Development Program, Lotfa covers salaries, benefits and other operating costs for the Afghan National Police.
The issue is sensitive because Lotfa—established in 2002 as a result of international donor concerns that the Afghan government was at the time unable to properly disburse the money itself—is supposed to be an example of probity.
Most of the money in the fund comes from the U.S., European nations and Japan. "We will request a detailed investigation and accountability," a senior Western official said Sunday. "There is zero tolerance of mismanagement and corruption."
An American official in Kabul added that the U.S. has strongly supported the work of the committee that highlighted the problems at Lotfa. "We encourage the UNDP to be responsive to the concerns raised by the MEC that have been reported on," the U.S. official said.
In Brussels, a spokesman for the European Union's External Action Service, which is responsible for foreign aid, said the issues raised by the Journal article "are indeed a matter of serious concern." The EU would follow up with the UNDP "to ensure all necessary actions are taken to restore donor confidence in the management of Lotfa," he said.
In a detailed response to the Journal's article, the UNDP on Sunday denied allegations that the fund was vulnerable to fraud, and said specific incidents of possible corruption, raised by apparent whistleblowers in documents reviewed by the Journal, were incorrect.
The U.N. mission in Afghanistan added that a recently conducted financial audit of Lotfa by KPMG found no financial irregularities. "I am confident that comprehensive steps to ensure transparency and oversight are being taken by UNDP to further its efforts to contribute to a robust and professional police force in Afghanistan," said Michael Keating, the U.N. mission's deputy head.
In a finding issued to donors Friday, the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee said Lotfa "has been and will continue to be vulnerable to corruption," even though the fund is crucial to Afghanistan's security.
"The lack of proper oversight and accountability of Lotfa has been flagged by a number of institutions as insufficient for a trust fund of this size and importance," the finding says. "UNDP Country Office has received internal complaints and is conducting its own integrity checks and financial audits which need to be published and made public."
The committee also called for the fund's management to publish the results of a recent internal audit, which UNDP officials said showed no evidence of irregularity.
On Sunday, Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan's presidential adviser who oversees the transition of security to Afghan control, told reporters in Kabul that the U.N. needs to overhaul its auditing system. "Its auditing system is of a different century," he said.
Among the internal complaints raised within Lotfa were suspicions that the program may have overpaid for office supplies and equipment, or paid worker salaries for positions that went unfilled, according to the whistleblower documents reviewed by the Journal.
Satinder Bindra, the UNDP's director of communications, said in a statement Sunday that the agency "has a zero-tolerance policy towards any form of mismanagement or corruption for its entire country program in Afghanistan," and added that it was "committed to diligently following up on" the committee's recommendations.
Responding to specific allegations of the misallocation of funds, the UNDP said it found no evidence of wrongdoing. A luxury furniture set flagged in one internal document as possibly not being documented or delivered was "procured with full procedural checks and are still being used by the head of the Afghan Border Police," the UNDP said.
An $800 paper shredder mentioned in a report as possibly being purchased for above market price "was in line with our procurement policy and was only approved after the project justified its need for a more robust product," the UNDP said.
The UNDP acknowledged in its response that it was aware of the risk of "no-show" workers at Afghanistan's interior ministry who may still be paid on contract by Lotfa.
"Precisely because we are fully aware of this risk, a system was established for all the staff in the Ministry of Interior in key departments to work under contract," the statement said. "Payments to staff are only processed after the examination of monthly attendance sheets submitted to supervisors, who sign off on the entire process."
The Afghan interior ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Rivercity's Attempt to Beautify Chattanooga

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Pace Community Law Practice Opportunity

Supervising Attorney and Assistant Director, Pace Community Law Practice (PCLP), Pace Law School
The PCLP is an innovative new community legal services center opening at Pace Law School in fall 2012.  One of the first of its kind, the PCLP will provide recent Pace Law School graduates with one-year fellowships to represent low and moderate income clients on a sliding scale basis.  In addition to providing direct legal representation, the PCLP will create capacity for low bono services by training and educating its Fellows in how to build solo and small legal practices.  This training will provide Fellows with the tools to sustain their employment and provide ongoing legal services to high-needs populations.  The PCLP plans to represent clients in immigration proceedings--which permit law graduates to represent clients before they have been admitted to the bar--as well as other legal practice areas, which may include but are not limited to family law, administrative proceedings such as Social Security and disability hearings, guardianship, housing, and others.

The PCLP is seeking a Supervising Attorney/Assistant Director who will have primary supervision and management responsibilities for the Fellows.    The Supervising Attorney/Assistant Director will provide direct legal supervision and mentorship to the Fellows in their representation of clients and assist the Executive Director in the management of the PCLP.  S/he will also assist the Executive Director in creating and executing the training and solo practice curriculum for Fellows and guide the Fellows in their community outreach and training efforts.  The ideal applicant will have experience in one or more of the practice areas listed above.

Duties and responsibilities include but are not limited to:
•    Supervising legal cases and representing clients
•    Managing, mentoring and supervising Fellows
•    Managing daily operation of PCLP law office, including management of administrative personnel, Fellows, volunteer attorneys, and law students/legal interns
•    Creating and developing training curriculum and solo practice training, including monitoring pertinent sources for CLEs, lectures, conferences, bar association programs, workshops, etc. of potential benefit to Fellows
•    Assisting the Executive Director with establishing practices and protocols for PCLP
•    Drafting grant applications and reports and  cultivating  sources of support for PCLP
•    Reporting case data and information
•    Other administrative responsibilities such as maintaining malpractice insurance, Board of Immigration Appeals accreditation, specialized practice library, system of case file organization, Facebook page, budget preparation and reimbursement approval, etc.
•    Reporting to the Executive Director of the PCLP
•    Pro-active public speaking and writing about the PCLP and related issues in legal education, professionalism, and law practice: enhancing the public profile of the PCLP through writing op-eds and letters to the editor, traditional and social media appearances, blogging, online commentary, and list-serv participation  
•    Creating and maintaining relationships with community groups and collaborating legal services providers including private practitioners and relevant bar associations
•    Assisting the Executive Director with recruiting and maintaining panel of mentors
•    Advocating on policy issues and/or participation in policy-making through membership on boards, commissions, or legislative bodies relevant to the client populations served
•    Engagement with the life of the Law School and the New York State Judicial Institute as necessary, possible, and appropriate: e.g., assisting moot court teams and student organizations; guest lecturing in classes, CLE programs or at the Judicial Institute; participating in faculty colloquia; contributing to Career Development and Public Interest Law Center panels and job interview simulations, etc.  
•    Collaborating, when possible, with Pace Law School’s clinics
Qualifications:
•    A JD degree from an ABA-accredited law school
•    Admission to practice law in New York State; admission in federal district courts and Second Circuit a plus; notary public a plus
•    Five to seven years of relevant experience in one or more legal practice areas; flexibility, capacity, and willingness to self-teach new areas of law and/or legal skills
•    At least 1-3 years experience supervising, managing, and evaluating legal work
•    Demonstrated capacity for high-quality decision-making/problem-solving: ability to diagnose problems, identify objectives, devise and select options and strategies
•    Demonstrated professional judgment: ability to generate and justify alternative legal positions, and to assess their strengths and weaknesses
•    Creativity: capacity to use legal arguments and authorities creatively and imaginatively
•    Theoretical perspective: capacity to perceive, research, and critically analyze non-legal contextual aspects of law and lawyering decisions such as empirical data/assumptions underlying a legal rule or principle; ability to distinguish policy and law arguments and to judge when and how to utilize each or both
•    Demonstrated commitment to provision of high quality legal services to low and moderate income communities and demonstrated strong public interest orientation
•    Excellent public speaking and writing skills; publications about lawyering, the legal profession, legal education, or legal issues a plus
•    Enthusiasm for creating and building a new model of legal services provision; interest in developing sophisticated knowledge of law office management, practice models and techniques, etc. through mastery of the pertinent literature and consultation with experts 
•    Commitment to training and mentorship of starting attorneys as well as to continual self-improvement; ability to reflect on, and learn from lawyering experience; skill and experience in providing constructive feedback to colleagues and systematic structured evaluation of attorney performance
•    Sensitivity to ethical issues, awareness of professional norms and standards; ability to analyze the applicability and validity of professional norms and standards in specific situations, choose among conflicting professional norms, and integrate personal and professional values;  inclination to articulate rationale of ethical choices; coherence and consistency of ethical reasoning
•    Small/solo/law firm practice experience a plus 
•    Business experience a plus
•    Fluency in a language other than English a plus

Location:
•    The PCLP is located on Pace Law School’s campus at: 33 Crane Avenue, White Plains, NY 10603.

How to apply:
Applications may only be submitted through Pace University’s career site, at https://careers.pace.edu.  Interested candidates can search for the posting number: 0601319.  Questions may be directed to Jennifer Friedman, Executive Director, Pace Community Law Practice, at jfriedman@law.pace.edu.  Do not submit application materials directly to Jennifer Friedman.