Attorney for legal needs of cooperative formation

The attorney has been added to the players who are involved with creating this movement.  Her name is Valeria Gheorghiu and she facilitated a launch meeting on Sunday afternoon, 27th May 2018.  There were about 15 attendees, with Nadette doing secretarial function.  The particulars and essence should be posted in this blog, when possible.  A steering commitee is to proceed.  Valeria has legally advised of the structure to form a holding company LLC (the land owners, headed by Dominick initially) and to associate it with a cooperative LLC, which encompasses official members of the group cooperative.

Herein, is included some background info about the attorney:

from https://elightenlaw.wordpress.com/about/ Valeria Gheorghiu is an environmental and civil rights attorney integrating restorative justice into the practice of law.  She currently practices cooperative, environmental and civil rights law at her office in Kingston, New York.  Her more notable cases include representing the Ramapough Nation, Occupy New Paltz and advancing pagan rights in the Matter of Maetreum of Cybele, Magna Mater, Inc. v. McCoy et al. As a multi-lingual contract attorney, Valeria co-founded United Contract Attorneys drawing from her prior work as a global justice organizer, and as a workers’ rights attorney at NGOs such as South Jersey Legal Services.  She also serves on the Taskforce for the Ulster County Restorative Justice and Community Empowerment Center, the  National Lawyers Guild NYC Chapter Executive Committee, for which she co-founded the Restorative Justice Committee, and the Center for World Indigenous Studies.

At Vermont Law School, she was an Albert Schweitzer Fellow related to her summer internship with Alburnus Maior’s efforts to stop a gold mine in Rosia Monta, Romania.  Her 3L summer policy work on farmers’ rights at Gene Campaign in India as a Fellow for the Center for World Indigenous Studies resulted in a publication in the Fourth World Journal.  She also initiated a legal text drive to several developing country law school libraries worldwide as Co-Chair of the International Law Society.

Valeria also holds certificates in Ecovillage and Permaculture Design, as well as Restorative Justice and Kundalini Yoga.  She is in Year Two of the Priestess Path, a woman’s leadership development path mostly rooted in indigenous european traditions.  She is currently founding the Sacred FireSchoolhouse Collective through which she hopes to teach Ecovillage Design and Restorative Justice and facilitate collective intentional community cocreative design for more sustainable living, integrating land use law as needed.  She owns land in High Woods, Saugerties, New York, where she is experimenting in creating a forest farm and teaches ginseng and goldenseal growing workshops.  As a Master Gardener trainee, she founded the Sojourner Truth Memorial Community Garden at the Ulster County Family Courthouse.

PUBLIC SERVICE

• City of Kingston Conservation Advisory Council, Commissioner, June 2009 – June 2011
• Ulster County Bar Association, Secretary, June 2010 – June 2011: Won grant for and founded Sojourner Truth Community Garden at Ulster County Family Courthouse with Cornell Cooperative Extension

BAR ADMISSIONS, PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS, CERTIFICATIONS, LANGUAGE SKILLS, CITIZENSHIP

• Admitted to New York Bar, June, 2009, Southern District Court of New York, June  2017 and New Jersey State Bar and District Court, December 2007
• Associate Scholar and Board Member, Center for World Indigenous Studies
• Member of the Executive Committee and Chair and Co-Founder of the Restorative Justice Committee of the NYC Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild
• American Immigration Lawyers Association Member
• Restorative Justice Certificate, Simon Fraser University, December ‘16
• Kundalini Yoga Level 1, Kundalini Research Institute, June ‘13
• Ecovillage Design Education certificate, Gaia Education, June ‘14 – team lead for “Living Justice” case study
• Permaculture Design Course, Center for Bioregional Living, July 2016
• Land Use Leadership Alliance Training Program graduate, Pace Law School, November 2010
• Languages: Fluent Romanian, French and Spanish; Reading Italian
• Dual U.S. / Romanian citizenship

Valeria A. Gheorghiu‎ to Occupy Poughkeepsie

https://www.facebook.com/occupypk/posts/337283226310663

*PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY*
Greetings Occupiers, supporters, and lovers of liberty,
Join the National Lawyer's Guild and Occupy Poughkeepsie for a Know Your Rights Training with Valeria Gheorghiu, Esq.
Sunday, February 19th
5:30 - 7:00 pm (right before General Assembly)
Christ Episcopal Church
20 Carroll Street, Poughkeepsie NY, 12601
RSVP: Andrew at (401) 338-6219 or andrewsawtelle@riseup.net
About Know Your Rights Trainings
Learn about your Constitutionally-protected rights to free speech and lawful assembly, and your protections against undue search and seizure and self-incrimination. Understand the procedures that police and federal agents are obligated to follow, and how to conduct yourself if you encounter law enforcement or become the subject of a investigation. Learn about the expansion of government procedures and powers under the PATRIOT Act and subsequent legislation.
Donations are requested for Valeria, Christ Episcopal, and the NLG Legal Observers Fund. Please help us support our fellow workers for justice. NLG's pamphlet "You Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement Encounters" will be available. Download it and other resources are online at www.nlg.org/resources/know-your-rights/.
About the Trainer -**Valeria Gheorghiu, Esq.
Valeria Gheorghiu practiced immigration, non-profit, environmental and criminal defense law out of her office in Kingston, New York. She formerly worked as a workers’ rights attorney at the Worker's Rights Law Center of NY, Inc. and South Jersey Legal Services, Inc. She is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and has organized and served as a legal observer for the Occupiers. She has spoken and led workshops at the U.S. Social Forum, the Left Forum, Folk Seeds, and for the Chatham Peace Initiative. She is published in the Fourth World Journal on her work in India as a Fellow for the Center for World Indigenous Studies with Gene Campaign. In 2011, as Secretary of the Board of Directors for the Ulster County Bar Association, she founded the Sojourner Truth Community Garden at the Ulster County Family Courthouse with the Relatives as Parents Program of Cornell Cooperative Extension. She also served as Commissioner of the Conservation Advisory Council of the City of Kingston, and is a Master Gardener volunteer.
Gheorghiu graduated from Vermont Law School in ’06 with a Juris Doctor and a Masters’ of Studies in Environmental Law. While in law school, she served as co-chair of the International Law Society, creating the annual legal book drive, which shipped donated new and used legal texts to universities of lesser developed countries such as Guatemala, Romania and India. As an Albert Schweitzer fellow at Vermont Law School, she taught international environmental justice to high school students, using Rosia Montana as a case study. In Rosia Montana, Romania, with Alburnus Maior, she helped their campaign to save Rosia Montana from a proposed cyanide leachate gold mine during the summer of 2004. She also researched the feasibility of a River keeper as a George Perkins Marsh Fellow in 2003.
Gheorghiu is a founder of Occupy Kingston, and ran for County Executive of Ulster County as a write-in candidate, promising Occupy-inspired General Assemblies if elected.