Message from RNC [1] Media list:
hey everyone,
at today's CRASS assembly there was a long discussion about the prospects of civil litigation. CRASS agreed to do an action on Feb. 24 around a mass filing of notices of claim. Basically, a notice of claim is a nonbinding notice that you may soon be filing a lawsuit and why, but it doesn't have to list the specific type of suit or require you to actually sue, and you don't need a lawyer to do it. The NLG [2] is organizing notice of claim workshops to take place before the 24th, which is 180 days (the maximum allowed time to file) from August 29, the date of the convergence center raid.
Civil litigation is a way to go on the offensive for once and something I think we should all have an eye on. If you had police treat you badly, *even you didn't get arrested*, you should file a notice of claim to add to the collective power of this action and to give the lawyers the biggest possible pool from which to decide what cases will be the best to pursue and if there are any possibilities for class action suits. So if you were in the convergence center raid, a house raid, a mass arrest or detainment, or had gas/concussion grenades/whatever going off around you, you should keep an eye out for those workshops or otherwise look into filing a notice. If you have criminal proceedings ongoing, you can still file a notice of claim, though of course you should talk to your criminal attorney first. There's a short pamphlet about all this now up on the "forms and publications" page of http://www.RNCaftermath.org [3].
Also - please forward this info to let folks from out of town who meet those criteria know that this process is underway, especially those who may not otherwise be plugged in to the RNC aftermath. One doesn't have to appear in person to file a notice themselves; they can, for instance, authorize someone from CRASS to deliver it.
There's a lot to say about the potential benefits of civil suits... but I'll just end for now by saying that I think we all want to see the city and county (and their insurance companies... sigh) pay for the RNC, and the first step to doing that is collecting as many claims as possible.
solidarity,
brian