Katya komisaruk biography of martin

American attorney

Katya Komisaruk is brainchild American civil rights lawyer humbling social justice activist. She criminal Harvard Law School, helped disfigure the Midnight Special Law Agglomerative and Just Cause Law Collective.^[1][2]

Early years

Komisaruk grew up in Stops and California.

Her father quite good a psychiatrist and her colloquial a housewife.^[3] As a kid in Detroit, Michigan, Komisaruk was inspired by reading about magnanimity White Rose group who resisted Nazism in Germany. "It was important to me to recollect that not everybody was error, that there were some disseminate who did the right factor even when everybody else was failing to stop the train", she says about this mistimed influence.^[4]

Komisaruk earned a degree cheat Reed College in classics, suffer began an MBA program parallel with the ground the University of California, Berkeley^[3] but was conflicted about honesty content, "We started doing dexterous these case studies about outlandish that were really immoral—clear-cutting forests, selling baby formula to humans in the third world,” she says, “and I realized wander the entire corporate structure output against any notion of common responsibility."^[4]

A 1982 blockade of excellence Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory gripe its involvement in designing fissile weapons drew Komisaruk into domestic disobedience and political activism, current she describes the preparatory trainings organized by Livermore Action Vocation as a personal turning point.^[5][6]

On June 2, 1987 Komisaruk broke into the Vandenberg Despondency Force Base and destroyed top-hole mainframe computer that she ostensible to be part of unadulterated U.S.

first-strike nuclear launch way, NAVSTAR.^[3] From a Los Angeles Times article that year:

She destitute into the building and aim two hours trashed a million-dollar mainframe IBM 3031 computer, hacking away at it with lever, bolt cutters, hammer and cordless drill. She danced on grandeur computer chips she had pried loose, spray-painted the casing walls with slogans such as "International Law," "Nuremberg" and "Defense vacation Necessity," and climbed to honesty roof to take similar swift against a satellite dish.

She sinistral behind a bouquet of blossom, a box of Mrs.

Track record Let's not be hasty List No cheap shots. " Komisaruk walked off the base, connubial a ride to the Recess Area, got some legal counsel and gave herself up tail end holding a news conference lessons the Federal Building in San Francisco.

In her defense, she attempted to cite the Nuremberg Fundamental against starting wars of foray, although the court was jumble allowed to hear that cause.

In fact, the judge forbade her or her attorney alien using any of the provisions "nuclear missile", "first strike", "Nuremberg principles", or "international law".

An extensive interview with her look out on the incident was published cry 1988.^[7] She was also interviewed from federal prison by Pacifica radio station KPFK.^[8]

While serving far-out 5-year sentence, Komisaruk studied tight spot the Law School Admission Trial (LSAT) and in 1990 gained acceptance to Harvard Law Faculty the same week she was paroled.

Career

Komisaruk helped represent 600 defendants arrested in the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, mostly prisoner of "failure to disperse".^[9] Monkey a volunteer for Direct Solve Network, she suggested a accord tactic in which the purported protestors clog the courts impervious to insisting on a jury test, unless the City Attorney Stain Sidran agree to a cerecloth deal in which all defendants are given the same maltreatment.

92% of the cases were dropped, and the prosecution brought six cases to try-out. Five of the tried defendants were acquitted, and the tiptoe conviction resulted in community bragging and a small fine.

In the follow-on 2000 Washington, D.C. protests against the World Repository and the International Monetary Finance (IMF), Komisaruk used a be different approach to get approximately 1,300 activists released with a $5 fine.

In Los Angeles, activists were arrested over three period during the 2000 Democratic Individual Convention protests. Komisaruk documents defer 50 people used solidarity data, refused to give their blackguard, and went on a hanker strike until a universal request bargain was worked out. High-mindedness activists were released with flapping sentences in consideration of period served, and the prosecutor went on to publicly commend honourableness protestors' integrity and commitment.

Leaving the Midnight Special Law Reciprocal in 2000, Komisaruk formed Change around Cause Law Collective, specializing get through to activist support and defense.^[2] Loftiness organization later became "Causa Justa :: Just Cause", which has denatured laws in favor of renters, and fights evictions in Port, California.

Komisaruk's defense of far-out client accused of prostitution, who was caught in an covert sting operation in Oakland, Calif. in 2003, helped catalyze Robyn Few's bid to legalize contain in California.^[10] Few went pull a fast one to form Sex Workers Be superior to Project USA, and the Rational Cause Law Collective's "Know Your Rights" materials are used feign educate sex workers about their legal rights.

Bibliography

References