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Bill Quigley
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Bill Quigley is a law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. He is also Associate Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. He has been an active public interest lawyer since 1977. Bill has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. Bill has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the Advancement Project, and with the ACLU of Louisiana, for which he served as General Counsel for over 15 years. Bill received the 2006 Camille Gravel Civil Pro Bono Award from the Federal Bar Association New Orleans Chapter. Bill received the 2006 Stanford Law School National Public Service Award and the 2006 National Lawyers Guild Ernie Goodman award. He has also been an active volunteer lawyer with School of the Americas Watch and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Bill is the author of Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing A Right to A Job At A Living Wage (2003) and Storms Still Raging: Katrina, New Orleans and Social Justice (2008). In 2003, he was named the Pope Paul VI National Teacher of Peace by Pax Christi USA and is the recipient of the 2004 SALT Teaching Award presented by the Society of American Law Teachers.

Blog Entries by Bill Quigley

MLK Injustice Index 2013

(12) Comments | Posted January 21, 2013 | 1:45 PM

"We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values... when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered." -- Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967

While the U.S....

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Billions to Haiti, Little to Haitians

(24) Comments | Posted January 10, 2013 | 1:34 PM

Despite billions in aid that were supposed to go to the Haitian people, hundreds of thousands are still homeless, living in shanty tent camps as the effects from the earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, remain.

The earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010, killing, according to Oxfam International,...

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Remember All the Children, Mr. President

(0) Comments | Posted December 17, 2012 | 9:14 AM

Remember the 20 children who died in Newton Connecticut.

Remember the 35 children who died in Gaza this month from Israeli bombardments.

Remember the 168 children who have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan since 2006.

Remember the 231 children...

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Fifteen Issues This Election Is Not About

(6) Comments | Posted September 25, 2012 | 5:13 PM

Neither candidate is interested in stopping the use of the death penalty for federal or state crimes.

Neither candidate is interested in eliminating or reducing the 5,113 U.S. nuclear warheads.

Neither candidate is campaigning to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Neither candidate has called for...

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Katrina Pain Index 2012: Seven Years Later

(0) Comments | Posted August 24, 2012 | 10:25 AM

Katrina Pain Index 2012: 7 Years After

1 - Rank of New Orleans in fastest growing US cities between 2010 and 2011. Source: Census Bureau.

1 - Rank of New Orleans, Louisiana in world prison rate. Louisiana imprisons more of its people, per head, than any...

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Thirteen Ways Government Tracks Us

(9) Comments | Posted April 13, 2012 | 2:08 PM

Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the U.S. Here are thirteen examples of how some of...

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Bradley Manning, Solitary Confinement and Occupy 4 Prisoners

(5) Comments | Posted February 23, 2012 | 3:43 PM

Today U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning is to be formally charged with numerous crimes at Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by members of the Icelandic Parliament, is charged with releasing hundreds of thousands of documents exposing secrets of the U.S. government...

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Occupy Corporations: How to Cut Corporate Power

(5) Comments | Posted February 6, 2012 | 9:54 AM

"Corporations are people, my friend." Mitt Romney at Iowa State Fair

Corporations are obviously not people. But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is democratizing...

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Social Justice Quiz 2012: Thirteen Questions

(2) Comments | Posted January 31, 2012 | 11:32 AM

Question One. The combined pay of the 299 highest paid CEOs in the U.S. is enough to support how many median salary jobs?

45,000? 83,000? 102,325?

Two. The median net worth of black households in the U.S. is $2,200. What is the median net worth of white households in the...

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Ten Steps for Radical Revolution USA

(2) Comments | Posted January 23, 2012 | 5:05 PM

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967

One. Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously. Every single person...

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Working Poor USA

(16) Comments | Posted January 20, 2012 | 11:50 AM

"Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied men and women, a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937


Millions of...

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Migrants' Rights Are Human Rights! Take Local Police Out of Immigration Enforcement

(33) Comments | Posted December 19, 2011 | 3:18 PM

Nations and organizations around the globe observed yesterday as International Migrants Day. Twenty-two years ago, on December 18, 1990 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, affirming...

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Women Priesthood: Challenging the Vatican Old Boys' Network

(7) Comments | Posted November 1, 2011 | 6:01 PM

We never thought it would end up on a hard wooden bench inside a police station in Piazza Cavour in Rome. Maryknoll priest Fr. Roy Bourgeois, young Erin Saiz Hannah of Women's Ordination Conference in the US and Miriam Duignan from Womenpriests.org from the...

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Haiti: Where Is the Money?

(0) Comments | Posted October 12, 2011 | 10:30 AM

Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood. Men pull oxcarts by hand through the street. Women carry 5 gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street. Hundreds of thousands remain in grey sheet and tarp covered shelters in big public parks, in...

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Wave of Illegal, Violent Evictions Swells in Port au Prince

(8) Comments | Posted August 25, 2011 | 11:14 AM

Mathias O is 34 years old. He is one of about 600,000 people still homeless from the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. He lives with his wife and her 2 year old under a homemade shelter made out of several tarps. They sleep on the rocky ground inside. The side...

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Katrina Pain Index 2011: Race, Gender, Poverty

(6) Comments | Posted August 22, 2011 | 5:18 PM

Six years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. The impact of Katrina and government bungling continue to inflict major pain on the people left behind. It is impossible to understand what happened and what still remains without considering race, gender and poverty. The following offer some hints of what...

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Displaced Women Demand Justice in Port au Prince

(2) Comments | Posted June 30, 2011 | 10:18 AM

Co-written by Jocelyn Brooks

"We women demand!..." sang out a hundred plus voices "...Justice for Marie!" Marie, a 25-year-old pregnant mother, was injured by government agents when they slammed a wooden door into her stomach during an early morning invasion of an earthquake displacement camp in Port au Prince. The...

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Two Thousand Six Hundred Activists Arrested in U.S. Protests

(16) Comments | Posted May 25, 2011 | 5:00 PM

Since President Obama was inaugurated, there have been over 2,600 arrests of activists protesting in the U.S.. Research shows over 670 people have been arrested in protests inside the U.S. already in 2011, over 1,290 were arrested in 2010, and 665 arrested in 2009. These figures certainly underestimate the number...

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Five Great Thrillers

(2) Comments | Posted April 18, 2011 | 1:11 PM

Here are a couple of the best thrillers I have read recently -- some new, some familiar authors. Enjoy!

Three Seconds, Roslund & Hellstrom. (2011). Best thriller I have read in a long time. A ruthless international drug syndicate. An ex-con working deep inside the gang as a secret informer...

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Robin Hood in Reverse in US: Seven Examples

(270) Comments | Posted April 7, 2011 | 10:12 AM

The rich have been getting richer and the poor and middle have been getting poorer in the U.S. recently. Here are seven examples that show how the US is going through Robin Hood in Reverse.

Between 1948 and 1979, the richest 10 percent of families in the US claimed 33...

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