I wanted to say a bit more about my background, and also to say that this project needs people with various talents and skills to get off the ground. We need attorneys to head it up, but other people need to be involved in fund-raisng, media campaigns, public relations campaigns, etc.
I am not an attorney, and would not be qualifed to head up the organization. I do have some legal training, not much, but I had to leave law school before the end of my first year of year of study because I was too ill with ME/CFS. I initially went to law school because of my longstanding interest in disabilty law, and my experiences trying to get adequate services in the public schools for my ASD children. Ironic, huh?
Before that I was a college writing instructor, and also after that, I was the lowest of the low in the academic pecking order, an adjunct. (I did achieve the title of "Lecturer" right before I left teaching in 2007) Among other courses, I taught courses in grant writing, and professional communication, especially for health professionals. I have one academic publication to my credit. I've also worked as an instructional designer/technical writer for a corporate, e-learning company that specialized in web-based instruction. My clients included Toyota, United Airlines, Shamrock Oil, Tesoro Oil, Qwest Communications, Morgan Stanley, etc.
I belonged to an advocacy organization in the past called Justice and Economic Dignity for Women. JEDI women, in fact. I worked on the newsletter, and was once ejected from the Utah State Legislature for participating in an organized act of civil disobedience.
I have also taught my classes at the University of Utah while dressed as a zombie, in order to protest the conditions of academic labor and lack of academic freedom for most professors, the untenured adjuncts. The adminstration didn't appreciate it too much, but my students certainly enjoyed it, and so did I. Except the part where I had a skin reaction to the latex in my make-up
I filed an ethics complaint against my immediate supervisors at the University of Utah, because they were trying to force experienced professors who had long been writing their own syllabi and choosing their own books, to only use the department approved syllabus, and to only use the books written by the three tenured professors in our program. In other words, they were ripping off the students for unconscionable amounts of money, breaking state laws and university codes forbidding such conflicts of interest for state employees, and violating the academic freedoms guaranteed to professors in their own by-laws. More than 100 graduate students and adjunct instructors were affected, as were the thousands of students required to take our courses, every year.
The immediate result of my action was to be pursued and harrassed by Fox News reporters, who followed me from my car to my classes, filming me as I walked and saying that I didn't "look disabled." I was also spied upon by a number of colleagues, as well as students who were planted in my classes by the administration to keep an eye on me, or get me to say something that would be damaging to my cause. Old friends and former allies ran for cover, or made false accusations, or insulted me in public. Others who supported what we were trying to do initially got scared and ran for cover when they saw how down and dirty the administration was willing to get.
So while all these experiences were not equally pleasant, they were all highly educational.