[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 149 (Tuesday, September 17, 2019)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1155]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             COMMENDING THE WORK OF THE PEOPLE'S LAW OFFICE

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                           HON. BOBBY L. RUSH

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 17, 2019

  Mr. RUSH. Madam Speaker, today I rise to celebrate the 50th 
anniversary of The People's Law Office. Founded in August of 1969 in 
Chicago, the PLO has championed many important struggles against 
official racism, police violence, and mass incarceration over the past 
50 years.
   The first important case taken on by the PLO was the Fred Hampton 
Black Panther case. My friends and fellow students of the struggle, 
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were killed by 14 raiding Chicago police 
officers under the command of Cook County State's Attorney Edward V. 
Hanrahan on the early morning of December 4, 1969. After 13 years of 
hard-fought court battles in the wake of Fred's death, the PLO and 
their clients in the Illinois Black Panther Party proved that Fred was 
murdered in his bed as part of the FBI's COINTELPRO initiative. As the 
founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party, I was privileged to have a 
front-row seat to the commitment, diligence, and resilience of the 
PLO's lawyers. Together, we won a victory for justice and 
accountability, and made sure that Fred's death was not in vain.
   The PLO was also an early pioneer in fighting against the inhumanity 
of America's prisons both in Illinois and nationally. Its lawyers were 
instrumental in fighting for justice for the men who were murdered, 
tortured, and unjustly prosecuted in the 1971 Attica prison rebellion. 
They also fought for years for justice in the Marion Federal 
Penitentiary and several Illinois prisons, including Pontiac, 
Stateville and Dwight. Together with other Chicago lawyers and 
activists, the PLO obtained the acquittal of 16 Pontiac prisoners 
wrongfully prosecuted for capital murder after the Pontiac Prison 
rebellion in 1978.
   In my district, as well as the greater city of Chicago, PLO has 
fought for more than 30 years to expose and bring to justice a ring of 
racist police torturers, led by police commander Jon Burge, who 
tortured more than 125 suspects of color from 1972 to 1991. Their work 
in uncovering the scope and breadth of this officially sanctioned 
scandal has been instrumental in freeing numerous men who were 
wrongfully convicted as a result of torture, winning money settlements 
for many of those men, helping to end the death penalty in Illinois, in 
obtaining the firing and conviction of Burge, and in obtaining from the 
City of Chicago a historic and wide ranging package of financial and 
non-financial reparations for many of the survivors of police torture.
   PLO lawyers also fought for justice in Greensboro, North Carolina, 
in a case brought by the families of five anti-Ku Klux Klan 
demonstrators who were massacred by KKK and Nazi members in 1979.
   The PLO continues to champion cases that advance the civil rights 
and civil liberties that uphold the very foundations of our government. 
The PLO has represented many generations of protestors, Puerto Rican 
independence and Palestinian activists, victims of police brutality, 
and other forms of official violence and abuse.
   Madam Speaker, I congratulate the PLO on fifty years of fighting for 
truth, justice, and accountability. I wish them another fifty years of 
success in protecting the civil rights of my fellow Chicagoans.

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