Henry di Suvero

Henry DiSuvero, seated second from right, addressing The National Conference on Government Spying in Chicago, January, 1977. (Photo by Barbara Plog/Liberation News Service)

Henry "Hank" di Suvero (Feb. 16, 1936 - July 3, 2020) was a "peripatetic activist lawyer" who founded the Peoples College of Law. He was married for a time to Ramona Ripston. He was president of the National Lawyers Guild from 1977 - 1979.

Peoples College of Law

Tribute from the Peoples College of Law:

Henry “Hank” di Suvero, noted criminal defense and constitutional rights attorney, led the founding of Peoples College of Law. In 1973, he brought together an organizing committee of attorneys, law students, and community activists to develop what became PCL. The school admitted its first entering class and started operation in the fall of 1974 at its initial location in Los Angeles’ Westlake neighborhood.

Born in 1936 in Shanghai, China, where his father was an Italian diplomat, Hank moved with his family to San Francisco in 1940 to escape fascism. After growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, he attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he was active in the beginnings of what became “the New Left” of the 1960s, and went on to graduate from Harvard Law School in 1961. For many years, Hank practiced criminal defense law in New York City, handling numerous prominent political cases, and was heavily engaged in civil rights legal work in the New York/[[New Jersey] area on behalf of the ACLU and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. In 1972, he moved to Los Angeles with his then-wife Ramona Ripston. There he served as Senior Attorney at the Greater Watts Justice Center. From 1977-79, he was President of the National Lawyers Guild and played a key role in revitalizing the organization.

After seeing PCL through its first several years of operation, Hank left the U.S. in 1979 to study yoga in India and travel in Asia. He eventually settled in Sydney, Australia, where he taught at the University of New South Wales and resumed practicing criminal law, earning a reputation for aggressive representation. He also became a playwright and poet. Hank died there in July 2020, at the home he shared with his wife Jinny, from complications following surgery.

Upon Hank’s death, poet Victor di Suvero wrote a poem about his brother.

National Committee to Overturn the Bakke Decision

In 1977, Henry di Suvero of the National Committee to Overturn the Bakke Decision.

Guardian

In March 1979, the New York radical magazine the Guardian issued an emergency appeal to funds in an effort to save the publication.

Over fifty supporters endorsed the appeal including Hank DiSuvero

National Conference on Government Spying

Henry di Suvero was cited by Rep. Larry McDonald of Georgia in the congressional record on January 31, 1977 as being on the steering committee of the National Conference on Government Spying NCGS, which was held at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, on January 20-23, 1977. The NCGS was organized by the National Lawyers Guild, which, as Rep. Larry McDonald explained:

"has explicitly stated its support for revolutionary 'armed struggle' and terrorism as in the armed occupation of Wounded Knee and in violent prison riots. The NLG International Committee maintains open liaison with terrorist Marxist "liberation movements" such as the Palestine Liberation Organization. The NLG is a member of the Soviet-controlled International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL): the NLG was formed with the assistance of the Comintern in 1936 and was cited as the "foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party, its fronts and controlled unions." The NLG now operates as a working coalition of Communist Party, U.S.A. (CPUSA members and supporters, Castroite Communists, Maoist Communists, and various New Left activists."

Steering Committee

The NCGS steering committee consisted of:

• Bob Borosage, Washington, D.C.; NLG activist; codirector of the Center for National Security Studies-CNSS; and trustee of and attorney for the Institute for Policy Studies-IPS.
• Len Cavise, Chicago; NLG.
• Paul Chevigny, New York; NLG speaker and staff attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union; author of "Cops and Rebels" and "Police Power."
• Terry Gilbert, Cleveland.
• Bill Goodman, Detroit; president of the NLG.
• Leonard Grossman, Detroit.
• Lance Haddix, Chicago; NLG.
• Morton Halperin, Washington, D.C.; director of the joint CNSS/ ACLU Project on National Security and Civil Liberties, funded, as are many ACLU and Fund for Peace/CNSS activities, by the Field Foundation.
• David Hamlin, Chicago; Illinois Civil Liberties Union.
• Lennox Hinds, New York; National Conference of Black Lawyers-NCBL; NLG; National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression-NAARPR; and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers-IADL-controlled by the U.S.S.R.
• Robert C. Howard, Chicago; general counsel of the Better Government Association, a tax-exempt "public interest organization that addresses government misconduct through investigation, public education, and legal action."
• Val R. Klink, president of the Chicago NLG chapter, attorney for the Alliance To End Repression-AER--set up by two CPUSA fronts.
• Michael Krinsky, New York; attorney with Rabinowitz, Boudin and Standard; attorney for Cuba, the Marxist Allende government of Chile, and the Socialist Workers Party-SWP.
• Ken Lawrence, Jackson, Miss.
• Judy Meade, Washington, D.C.; CNSS.
• Matt Piers, Chicago.
• Ramona Ripston (Mrs. Henry di Suvero) , Los Angeles; NLG; executive director, ACLU of Southern California; former codirector of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, an identified CPUSA front.
• David Rudovsky, Philadelphia; NLG; staff attorney of the NECLC Philadelphia office; attorney for the Institute for Policy Studies.
• Franklin Siegel, New York; NLG national office staff.
• Howard Simon, Detroit.
• Zoharah Simmons, Philadelphia.
• Richard Soble, Detroit; NLG and Bill Goodman's law partner.
• Syd Stapleton, New York; member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee and national secretary of the SWP's Political Rights Defense Fund PRDF-which raises money and distributes publicity about the SWP's lawsuits against the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
• Margaret Van Houten, Washington, D.C.; formerly with the Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate--OC-5- now coordinator of the OC-5 spinoff, the Public Education Project on the Intelligence Community-PEPIC.
• Margaret "Peggy" Winter, New York; national staff of the political rights fund.

The National Conference on Government Spying was organized from room 815, 33 North Dearborn, Chicago, Ill. 60602, 312/939-2492, with Paul Bigman as information coordinator. In addition to the NLG, those assisting with conference expenses were the ACLU and the Playboy Foundation which commissioned the conference handbook, a more than 225-page manual-$15-entitled "Pleading, Discovery and Pretrial Procedure for Litigation Against Government Spying," whose principal authors are Robert C. Howard and Kathleen M. Crowley, general counsel and staff counsel, respectively. of the Better Government Association, a plaintiff in the suit against the Chicago police intelligence unit, ACLU v. Chicago, Civ. Action 75 C 6295 <N.D. Ill., Eastern Div.) which has been consolidated with Alliance To End Repression v. Rochford, 74 C 3268.

The manual gives special acknowledgement to Robert J. Vollen, Richard M. Gutman, Constance Glass, David M. Hamlin, Lois Lipton Kraft, Margaret Winter, and Morton Halperin, and states:

We particularly want to acknowledge the continuous assistance and information exchange with the Political Rights Defense Fund (Socialist Workers Party v. Attorney General) and the Project on National Security and Civil Liberties (which is pursuing several lawsuits).