[lbo-talk] Doris Walker and Ann Gagan Ginger

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Thu Sep 24 22:26:25 PDT 2009


In fact, during Nuremberg, Doris Brin Walker wasn't even working as a lawyer. She'd being canned for being a girl or a red or both, and was working at Cutter Labs in SF in "industry" as we used to say -- she was later fired from Cutter for being a union militant.

I think I erred in saying that Mitford mentioned DBW to Rowling -- it seems to be that Rowling is a Mitford fan and read about the Dobbie nickname in one of Mitford's writings.

--- On Thu, 9/24/09, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:


> From: c b <cb31450 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Doris Walker and Ann Gagan Ginger
> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009, 1:16 PM
> andie nachgeborenen
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I see nothing in her obits or biographical info that says
> that Doris
> Brin Walker was a Nuremberg prosecutor. She had only
> graduated law
> school (the only woman in her class at Berkeley) in '42,
> and she was a
> really OUT red. She recruited Jessica Mitford to the CP --
> Mitford was
> the mutual friend who told JK Rowling about her nickname
> "Dobby."
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Yeah, I haven't been able to find it either. But I seem
> to
> remember a picture of her very young there, sitting next to
> the  Mr.
> Justice Robert Jackson..  I went to several
> meetings  in Doris'
> apartment in San Francisco. Maybe I'll call Ann and ask
> her. Or maybe
> Chuck will ask Ann.
>
> Newsflash: I just called Ann Ginger.  She said , no ,
> Dobbie wasn't a
> prosecutor at N. She said I am mixing her up with the late
> Mary
> Kaufman, who I met in those lawyer meetings with Ann and
> Doris.
>
> There's a picture of Mary at this sight:
> http://intlawgrrls.blogspot.com/2007/06/women-at-nuremberg-prosecutors.html
>
> By the way, in the derogatory terminology of some of the
> left she ,
> Doris,  was a "STALINIST" until her death. And she did
> not leave the
> CP when Angela Davis did.
>
> ^^^^^^^
>
> The Davis case was her most high profile one, but her
> lonely defense
> of Communists during the first cold war laid the groundwork
> for Yates
> v. U.S., which essentially made it legal to be a communist
> in the US,
> burying, for practical purposes, the Smith Act under which
> the CP
> leadership was convicted and imprisoned in the late 409s.
> The Smith Act, 18 USC 2385, is still on the books, never
> repealed, in
> case it's needed, making it a crime for anyone to:
>
> knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the
> duty,
> necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the
> Government of
> the United States or of any State by force or violence, or
> for anyone
> to organize any association which teaches, advises or
> encourages such
> an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to
> affiliate with
> any such association.
>
> There has not been a Smith Act prosecution since Yates in
> 1957.
>
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: I agree that it was technically legal to be a Communist
> in the US
> after all that, but it was still _illicit_ , which is
> probably more
> effective in making Communists practically ineffective in
> the US.  The
> threat of being  unable to get work is just as
> effective as the threat
> of being imprisoned, and it allowed the US to retain a
> liberal face,
> have its cake and eat it too.
>
> The other Guild lawyer who was very important in _Yates_
> was Ben
> Margolis.  We were on an economic rights committee in
> the Guild
> together circa 1989.  He lived in LA then.
>
> http://law.jrank.org/pages/12626/Yates-v-United-States.html
>
> ^^^^^^^
>
> As a law student in 1971 Hilary Rodham Clinton interned at
> Walker's
> law firm, Treuhaft, Walker, and Burnstein (Bob Treuhaft was
> Jessica
> Mitford's husband, btw), during the prep for Angela Davis
> trial.
> Obviously it didn't take.
>
> Ray Ginger, Ann Fagan Ginger's husband, wrote the classic
> bio of
> Eugene Debs, The Bending Cross.
>
> Andie
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>



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