Pessin Katz Law, P.A. will not sit silently in light of the situations that have been unfolding in our City and our country. The events in Minneapolis have renewed the sense of frustration and rage that Baltimore experienced in 2015. The protests and destruction in Baltimore then were a disorderly scream for attention, change, and help. Sadly, it appears that the message has not been heard and nothing has changed. We can no longer sit silently. Our City burned in 2015, and Minneapolis and other cities are burning now.
Many have engaged in peaceful protests around the country over the last four days; a small minority of agitators have looted and burned. As a law firm, we do not condone lawlessness, and we are upset to see the damage done in our communities. However, we also understand, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, that “a riot is the language of the unheard.”
We are in this together. Our Firm is supporting the National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer program, which ensures the right of people to express their views through protest as fully as possible without unconstitutional interference by police or government, and with the fewest consequences from our justice system. The National Lawyers Guild is a public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, and other activist legal workers, and the NLG Legal Observer program sends attorneys and volunteers to support peaceful protestors and ensure that their Constitutional rights are protected.
We encourage our entire Firm to speak up and be heard and to support the change needed to bring the injustice and racism in our country to an end. Each of us, in our own way, must stand with the peaceful protestors until we break the cycle and make the positive changes our country needs. We need to break the cycle of racial injustice. It has to end.
We are listening. We are learning. We must do better.
