We believe that access to legal help is a human right. Please call us to arrange for a free in person or virtual consultation to discuss your legal issue. If we can’t handle your case, we’ll point you in the right direction. You can count on us to try our best to answer all of your questions and address all of your concerns. You can call us at 718-261-8114, email us at law@wittenstein.com or use the form below.
The Resistance Is Open Source
Every successful movement for justice has learned the same lesson the hard way: no single group gets to win alone — and no single group gets to control the win. understood this deeply. He did not build the civil-rights movement by consolidating power, branding ownership, or guarding access. He built it by insisting on coalition — across churches, synagogues, mosques, labor, students, artists, and neighborhood leaders — and by reminding people that moral authority collapses when ego takes the wheel. History bears him out. The modern labor movement offers one of the clearest examples of both success and failure. Labor’s greatest gains came during the 1930s and 1940s, when industrial unions [...]
What to Do When You See an ICE Rumor Online
What to Do When You See an ICE Rumor Online Rumors about ICE raids and immigration enforcement can spread quickly online and cause unnecessary fear, missed work or school, and real harm to families and neighborhoods. In moments of uncertainty, sharing unverified information can escalate panic rather than protect people. This guide explains how to slow the spread of rumors, verify claims responsibly, and document observed activity safely—so communities stay informed without creating fear. Why ICE Rumors Cause Real Harm False or exaggerated alerts about immigration enforcement can lead people to avoid hospitals, schools, houses of worship, or local businesses. Even well-intentioned posts can have serious consequences when they turn out [...]
Reject the Evidence of Your Eyes and Ears: Orwell’s 1984, Trump, ICE, and the Loyalty Test of Fascism
George Orwell’s 1984 warned that authoritarian power ultimately demands one thing above all else: loyalty proven by denying reality itself. That warning is no longer abstract. From January 6 to the killing of Nicole Good by ICE, Americans are being asked to reject what they can plainly see and hear—and to treat that denial as a civic duty. “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”—George Orwell, 1984 The second sentence is the point. Orwell was not describing secret propaganda or subtle mind control. He was describing a system in which truth becomes subordinate to loyalty. Once people can [...]
Queens Says No Kings: The Making of a Queens-Wide Resistance Coalition
Queens Says No Kings is a Queens-based activist coalition formed in late 2024 in direct response to the reelection of Donald Trump. From the beginning, it brought together leaders of existing Queens activist groups who understood that the political moment demanded coordination across neighborhoods and organizations, not isolated actions. What followed was not a smooth or linear process, but a sequence of actions, leadership transitions, and creative breakthroughs that reshaped how large-scale resistance organizing took form in Queens. Formation: Stop the Steal for Real (Late 2024) The coalition began in late 2024 under its original working name, Stop the Steal for Real. The name reflected a clear rejection of authoritarian narratives [...]
Community Is Not a Brand — It’s a Practice
Community doesn’t appear fully formed. It’s built through repetition, trust, and showing up when it would be easier not to. In Queens, community work rarely announces itself as something grand. It looks like folding tables carried out early in the morning. It looks like hand-lettered signs drying on the floor. It looks like people learning each other’s names slowly, sometimes awkwardly, over weeks and months. It looks like neighbors deciding that the conditions they’re living under are not inevitable — and that they’re willing to do something together. That kind of community doesn’t come from aesthetics or slogans. It comes from practice. Place Matters Community organizing is always shaped by where [...]
What Is an Art Build?
How Art Builds Strengthen Protest Movements Through Visual Language An art build is a gathering that happens before a protest, march, or rally to create large-scale, coordinated visual elements that will be deployed together in public space. Rather than focusing on a single object, an art build brings people together to construct a shared visual language—one that can hold across streets, crowds, architecture, and cameras. Some kinds of political expression can’t be made by one person, at one table, in one afternoon; they require planning, shared labor, and agreement about how a movement wants to appear when it shows up. Art builds are a core practice in contemporary protest movements, especially [...]
Queens, Brooklyn, and the Geography of Resistance Art
Art movements are shaped by geography — not just aesthetics. For decades, Brooklyn functioned as New York’s shorthand for experimental political art. That reputation was earned. Poster workshops, print collectives, underground presses, and radical galleries played a real role in anti-war organizing, labor movements, and later global justice actions. But movements migrate. Queens is where political art now intersects most directly with lived conditions. It is where organizers, immigrants, students, workers, and artists share space without insulation. The art is less polished, less ironic, and more accountable to consequence. That shift mirrors global patterns. In cities worldwide, the most effective protest art emerges not from cultural centers, but from pressure points [...]