See my previous coverage here. The comments on this post show the pattern to watch out for. See this for more information the parent group, NATLFED.

On Sunday, I noticed a poster in the lounge for one of their legal info sessions on "Civil Rights" (in big letters.) Monday afternoon, the poster was gone; it may be that the event was just this past weekend. I almost wish I had been in the lounge when it was posted. Almost.

I just want to put in a good word for CCLP, which helped out every single person I ever referred. They helped my son who was getting taken advantage of because of his student loans, they helped several other students of mine who I have sent over for legal help and they did so without ever charging a fee. They are a non-profit group in need of more volunteers to help, but if the people who get help would turn around and offer just a little bit of time, the organization could continue to help many more people in need.

CCLP is also helping clients in the Metropolitan Fresh Start House, a drug and alcohol recovery program for men who need a fresh start in life. CCLP has helped many of the men with legal issues like back child support, driver's license issues and many others. When people need to clean up their records, CCLP has helped in those areas also. They have come to Fresh Start and conducted legal workshops to offer help and show clients how to protect themselves against being taken advantage of by the police and the legal system.

I have nothing to say but good things about CCLP and I will continue to refer my students, my clients, my children and others who I know need legal help.

God bless you all at Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals because you are truly making a difference.

I am very familiar with CCLP and probably know some of the very people that you have encountered with CCLP. I helped to found the CCLP office in Sacramento.

Obviously, CCLP volunteers provide services to people. In building the "legal benefit" with California Homemakers and CCLP, I was involved in plenty of sessions where we assisted people. I had a nice time doing that.

The problem with CCLP is that it is a dangerous organization to get involved with. To call it a "communist front group" is to probably give it more credit than it deserves. It is a cult.

I could give you a long discussion about the "TVTV process," which, at least in my day, was what they called the recruitment process for people. It is based on the gradual revelation of CCLP's hidden agenda, which is to recruit people to a group that fancies itself to be dedicated to the violent overthrow of the Government. It is probably better described as a group that seeks to maximize the number of people who can take part in a communal delusion.

Yes, the people are well motivated and often highly intelligent and educated. They have a great time working together and generally can honestly say that they enjoy working seven days a week, 16 hours a day. They have great comrades and all they while they get to share a titillating secret. This does not make it a good place to wile away ones life.

Many cults do good works: The Unification Church and Scientology comes to mind. But the fact that they do good works does not make it a good idea to avail oneself of a cult's largess. I would certainly not send vulnerable people to this group. People who get too close to a fire can get burned.

Agreed. Dangerous. My favorite part is the secret note-keeping on volunteers that tries to profile and pigeonhole people's politics. Stated and actual philosophies and practices do not mesh. Hypocritical, cynical, and manipulative -- while providing some legal and medical aid to low-income people. Sorry, but these means don't justify these ends.

I was involved with them for a period of several weeks. I was looking for some volunteer experience for school, and my professor had invited them to speak about their work, and I took the opportunity to volunteer. I'll start by saying I think they really do good legal work for target populations - they work with good lawyers, give good advice, and do good advocacy work. That said, I also think they are a cult.

The first thing that bothered me is that they absolutely refused to use computers or the internet for their day-to-day work; all documents were type-written on an old typewriter without a backspace, all their contacts were kept on 3X5 cards, and all communication had to be by phone - no email. They only used computers to publish their newsletters and promotional items. In fact, they had a closet full of nearly new macs which were donated to them by a school, but they had never used. And when they were out promoting themselves, even though almost every person (especially young college students, or busy lawyers) asked them for a website or email, they would patiently explain that it was against their organizational philosophy.

But the real kicker for me was when they pressured me to take a high position with them before I could have had any idea what I was doing. I had only come to the office a few times, helping them file documents and organize the next legal advice session. Suddenly out of the blue, the two people in charge of the office tell me that they are going out of town for two weeks and ask me to take over as the volunteer coordinator - responsible for organizing public recruiting tables, speaking at local schools, organizing people to work at the legal advise session, etc... I was shocked by this - I had no formal volunteer experience, had not yet been to my first legal advise session and had only just learned their filing system - in other words, this was an insane request because I was in no way qualified to represent their organization. I told them as much, and they found someone else (a lawyer they work with, a much better choice) but kept encouraging me to take on extra responsibility until they left. I kept doing my same work, but that event continued to bother me.

Then they started to pressure me in other ways. They started holding "educational sessions" for their volunteers, including myself and a handful of others, where they talked about some extremely radical politics using highly questionable, often un-sourced information. Initially they held such meetings weekly, but after I had been there a while they started to casually discuss the issues with me more often, asking probing questions about not only my own political philosophy, but that of my family as well.

Finally, while I was helping the new temporary volunteer coordinator set up an information table, he invited me to take a trip with him the next weekend into a remote part of central California to help farm workers unionize, one of their projects at the time. When I politely declined, he started to pester me about it, demanding an explanation for why I didn't want to go - and apparently lack of time and lack of interest were simply not good enough. And even after I had declined, he went so far as to call the coordinator for the project and tell him that I *might* be coming. That was too creepy for me, because all I could see is that a man I just met and barely knew had developed a fixation with taking me far away to a remote farm community.

I then came home and looked them up online, and found much of their treatment of volunteers to match classic cult behavior - secretive, exclusionary, sowing seeds of doubt about family members, instant friendship and bonding based on nothing, busy-work, encouraging prematurely high levels of responsibility, fixation on personal beliefs. I called in sick the next day and never went back.

I have since turned to another organization for my volunteer work and see what a good volunteer experience should be like - focused on accomplishing the work efficiently, friendly but professional, allowing for differences of personal beliefs, grateful for volunteers' time instead of demanding more, and assignment of tasks that match one's skill level. I only hope your blog can help more people before they get too involved.