Co-Chairs and Organizer

The International Committee is led by a Steering Committee representing our Subcommittees, and annually elects three co-chairs to organize the work of the IC, represent the IC at the NLG’s National Executive Committee, and lead the development of the Guild’s international work.

Our co-chairs are:

Jeanne Mirer is Co-Chair of the International Committee.  She is currently President of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, a founding Board Member of the International Commission for Labor Rights and a Board Member of the Sugar Law Center. Additionally, Jeanne is a member of the Core and the National Board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign. She has been a member of the NLG for 42 years and has held numerous positions in the Guild. She practices labor, employment and civil rights law  in New York City. Among her clients are Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange who have taken to court the U.S. chemical companies that profited from manufacturing the poison. In addition to the Guild and the IADL, she is a member of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee, the National Employment Law Association, and the NAACP.  Jeanne has a deep and extensive history of work in both the international and domestic sphere, including the application of international laws, standards and treaties to the United States. She has authored and co-authored countless white papers, briefs, and articles on everything from the human right to peace, to Agent Orange, to drones, to women’s rights, to labor law and international law.

Suzanne Adely is a graduate of City University of New York School of Law. Co-chair of the International Committee, she is also a founder of the Middle East, North Africa Labor Solidarity Network in the U.S. Prior to working with the UAW she was a civil rights coordinator with Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) in Queens, NY, and a legal worker with the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (Cairo). Suzanne is also a longtime organizer. In Chicago, she worked on campaigns with the Arab American Action Network and the Chicago Coalition to Protect People’s Rights, challenging War on Terror policies. Suzanne has been active in anti-war and Palestine solidarity organizing in the U.S. since her youth. Suzanne is the daughter of Jordanian workers and grew up in Yonkers, New York. For 10 years, she worked as a high school teacher in New York City and Cairo. She is a long-time member of Al-Awda-NY, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Defend the Egyptian Revolution Committee of New York. This past spring Suzanne organized an NLG delegation which brought U.S. lawyers to Egypt.

Jackelyn Mariano was introduced to the National Lawyers Guild when she was a legal intern for the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) in the Philippines, with whom she drafted an impeachment complaint against then-President Benigno Aquino III on grounds of corruption and betrayal of public trust. Since then, she has been active in the NLG’s Philippines Subcommittee, later serving as its chair, and leading the NLG’s participation in the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP). Jackelyn decided to join the legal profession after several years of organizing as a member of the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON) against labor trafficking of Filipino migrant workers to the United States. Born and raised by Filipino immigrant parents in Queens, NY, her activist and professional work is deeply informed by her personal experiences. Jackelyn is dedicated to international struggles that aim to solve the root problems causing systemic oppression, and particularly targets imperialist plunder and wars that force poor and working people to migrate from their homes in order to survive. Jackelyn is a graduate of CUNY School of Law. She is one-half of a small, two-person law firm in Queens, NY, and specializes in immigration and estate planning. She also serves as the chairperson of NY Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (NYCHRP).

Charlotte Kates is the part-time organizer of the NLG International Committee. A graduate of Rutgers University School of Law, she managed the education and advocacy work of the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative before working as a disability rights and inclusion advocate in Vancouver, BC. She is the international coordinator of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a member of the organizing collective of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and a long-time organizer with Al-Awda-NY, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.

Contact us at international@nlg.org.