Buck Dinner Grants
The Buck Dinner has funded many organizations and causes since 1929. As Maurice Sugar once stated, the purpose of the Buck Dinner is, “To give money and moral support to people and organizations involved in ongoing struggles and who are unlikely to obtain aid from conventional sources.”
There are three core organizations that receive funding on an annual basis and the most substantial grants: the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the Detroit Justice Center (DJC), and the Maurice and Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice (Guild Law Center).
National Lawyers Guild, NLG
The NLG, founded in 1937 as the first integrated bar association in the country, is dedicated to the fundamental principle “...that human rights shall be held more sacred than property interests.” The NLG, throughout its history, has maintained its commitment to this mission and to the need for basic changes in our political and economic system. It provides one of the few outlets for progressive legal workers, law students and lawyers to become part of an effective political and social force in service of the people.
Since 1937, when founded, by among others Maurice Sugar and Ernie Goodman, the NLG has provided direct legal and coalition political support to the grassroots and political movements for social change. For example, the NLG has provided direct representation of and support to:
The burgeoning labor and workers’ rights movement of the 1930s-1940s;
Those hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of the 1940s-1950s, and of those illegally prosecuted under the Smith Act;
The civil rights, anti-war, Native American, women’s, LGBT, affirmative action, and prisoner rights movements starting in 1960s-1970s — including direct representation of:
Wounded Knee activists;
Black Panthers wrongfully prosecuted and killed;
The Attica prisoners wrongfully charged during the rebellion of 1970;
The Black activists wrongfully arrested and prosecuted during the Detroit rebellion of 1967;
The movement against nuclear weapons in the 1970s-1980s;
The anti-Iraq War protest movements of the early 2000s;
The movements for Palestinian rights/self-determination, affirmative action, Central American and Cuban solidarity, immigrant rights and housing rights, from the 1970s to the present;
The fight against police brutality and misconduct;
The fight against the anti-democratic and unconstitutional Emergency Manager law; and
The fight for affordable and clean water that is waging in Detroit and Flint.
The NLG has represented civil disobedience arrestees since its founding, starting with — among others — Maurice Sugar’s representation of rank and file union sit-down activists during the 1930s-40s, the representation of thousands of arrestees during the Walled Lake/Williams International protests of nuclear weapons production of the 1980s, the mass arrests of the Detroit newspaper strikers in the 1990s, and most recently the Homrich 9 arrestees in 2014 protesting the mass water shut-offs in Detroit.
The NLG is also co-counsel — pro bono — with the Sugar Law Center and the ACLU in the longstanding legal battle challenging the unconstitutional Emergency Manager law, (having been at the forefront of the fight against this right-wing assault on democracy long before it culminated in the mass poisoning of Flint’s water system).
The NLG has also provided all the pro bono legal work on behalf of the Homrich 9, starting with Legal Observers at the initial action and representation of every defendant during their protracted criminal prosecutions. These politically explosive criminal prosecutions have resulted in a nearly two-year battle in the courts to protect the constitutional rights of civil disobedience activists to defend themselves fairly with the defense of necessity and the right to be tried together.
With an ever-increasing strategy of aggressively prosecuting civil disobedience activists who are arrested while protesting the Keystone Pipeline, fracking, police brutality, water deprivation (in both Detroit and Flint) and the like, the NLG, on a shoe-string organizational budget, continues to provide consistent Legal Observer support and pro bono representation to those activists throughout the State of Michigan, at great personal sacrifice to each volunteer lawyer who steps forward.
Sugar Law Center
The Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice is a national non-profit, public-interest law center based in Detroit. The Law Center was founded in 1991 with the generous support of Maurice and Jane Sugar. Driving Sugar Law’s work is the principle that economic and social rights are civil rights, inseparable from human rights.
Sugar Law provides legal assistance, advocacy, organizational, and technical support to individuals, activists, community groups, unions, worker advocates and others who are working for economic and social justice. Project areas directly address workplace justice and community justice issues. Our workplace initiatives focus on wage theft, workplace discrimination, the rights of persons facing job loss, and support to organizing campaigns. Our community initiatives focus on community benefits during large-scale development projects, democratic governance issues in economically distressed communities, and environmental justice.
Throughout our history, we have stood with people and communities throughout Michigan to combat corporate power and government overreach. In the 1990s, Sugar Law pioneered litigation and public policy campaigns to protect workers facing mass layoffs and we developed ground-breaking legal strategies in support of the environmental justice movement.
In the 2000s, we provided critical support to the living wage movement and following the recession of 2008, the Sugar Law Center along with a coalition of attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights and private law offices filed the first federal and state lawsuits challenging Michigan’s emergency manager laws.
In recent years, we have also provided ongoing support to local community benefits campaigns, workers centers, wage theft activists, and filed the first federal lawsuit challenging Michigan’s unemployment insurance policies that punish and criminalize the unemployed. To learn about our work, please visit us at www.sugarlaw.org, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter at @SugarLawJustice.
Detroit Justice Center American, DJC
The Detroit Justice Center (DJC) is a nonprofit law firm dedicated to creating economic opportunities, transforming the justice system, and building just and equitable cities. DJC works alongside communities to dismantle systemic barriers and envision a future where safety and justice are rooted in collective care rather than incarceration and policing.
Founded on principles of movement lawyering, DJC supports grassroots organizing by providing legal counsel, policy advocacy, and economic empowerment tools. Through its Defense, Offense, and Dreaming framework, DJC defends individuals impacted by the criminal legal system, builds community wealth through cooperative economic structures, and engages in visionary narrative work to reimagine justice.
DJC embraces Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s framework of abolition as presence, recognizing that justice requires not just dismantling harmful systems but also investing in community-driven solutions. It works to redistribute power and resources, cultivate leadership among marginalized communities, and train the next generation of movement lawyers.
Committed to racial and economic justice, DJC stands with social movements to challenge oppression and build a society where every person’s humanity is honored.
American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan
ACLU of MI
Since our founding in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union has led the fight to conserve our most precious liberties. Through the passion of our supporters, we have grown from a roomful of civil liberties activists to an organization of more than 500,000 active members and supporters with 54 state affiliate offices as well as a legislative office in Washington, DC.
Here in Michigan, our story begins as early as 1955, when social justice advocates came together and began to plan for a state organization. The ACLU of Michigan was officially established in 1959 to defend our civil liberties.
Our Mission
Freedom, Equality, and Justice
The Bill of Rights declared that we have rights and liberties that the government shouldn't interfere with. Rights like the freedom of speech and our right to a speedy trial that are the cornerstone of our democracy and define what makes us American.
Protecting these liberties and pushing for more freedom and equality in our lives is our job.
The ACLU of Michigan's mission remains realizing the promise of the Bill of Rights for all and expanding the reach of its guarantees to new areas through all the tools at our disposal: public education, advocacy, organizing, and litigation.
We Represent Everyone
Rich or poor; straight or gay; black, white, or brown; urban or rural; pious or atheist; American-born or foreign-born; able-bodied or living with a disability; every person in this country has the same basic rights. For 90 years, we have been working diligently to ensure that no one takes those rights away.
The defense of civil liberties knows no party bounds, which is why the ACLU remains nonpartisan. We have joined in coalition with conservatives and progressives alike on a wide array of issues – from reforming the intrusive powers of the Patriot Act to blocking infringements upon our First Amendment rights.
Organizations we have proudly stood with include the American Conservative Union, People for the American Way (PFAW), the Eagle Forum, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, Planned Parenthood, the National Rifle Association, Amnesty International, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Family Research Council.
Learn more and join the ACLU.
See a list of many of the grant recipients over the past eight decades