David B. Rankin has been actively involved in numerous first amendment cases and in the defense of protesters and bystanders arrested at or around demonstrations.  During the Republican National Convention in 2004, he helped lead the National Lawyers Guild’s legal response to unconstitutional police practices by organizing nearly 1,000 lawyers and legal workers in what has been described as the largest legal organizing effort in New York City’s history.  Currently, Mr. Rankin is litigating numerous federal civil rights cases against the New York City Police Department and defending those arrested and accused of criminal acts. Mr. Rankin received a B.A. from Reed College and a J.D. from New York Law School.  He was an assistant to the President of the ACLU. He is a member of the New York City Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

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Mark C. Taylor is a graduate of Reed College and Brooklyn Law School. He is a member of the New York City Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and sits on the Board of Trustees for Rowe Camp & Conference Center in Rowe, Massachusetts. During law school Mr. Taylor interned for the Innocence Project advocating on behalf of prisoners seeking DNA testing to review their convictions.  Also during law school Mr. Taylor helped organize opposition to the New York City Police Department’s attempts to restrict public protest through changes to New York’s parade permitting scheme. Prior to Law School Mark worked as a bicycle messenger, a security guard, a nursing assistant, and a handyman. His wife, Stephanie, is an attorney with Legal Services of New York and they are the proud parents of a baby girl, Helen. Mark is a Zen Buddhist and an avid cyclist.

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Robert M. Quackenbush is a graduate of Brooklyn Law School. He received his undergraduate degree in History and graduate degree in Secondary Education from the University of Florida. Before law school, Robert worked as a public school teacher in Gainesville, Florida and later in Northeast Washington, DC.   While at Brooklyn Law, Robert focused on indigent criminal defense and the defense of civil liberties in the New York City area.  In addition to working with the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division and Prisoners Rights Project, Robert was an active member of the National Lawyers Guild, serving on the executive boards of both the New York City chapter and the national organization.  Robert joined Rankin & Taylor shortly after graduating from law school and passing the New York Bar exam.

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Deborah B. Diamant graduated from Brooklyn Law School in June 2010. She is admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey. Deborah is an executive committee member of the National Lawyers Guild’s New York City chapter and serves on its Street Law, Muslim Defense, Next Generation and Website Committees.  She is also a member of the Legal Support Team for Organizing for Occupation (O4O), which is a group of New York City residents from the activist, academic, religious, homeless, arts, and progressive legal communities who have come together to respond to the housing crisis.  In law school, Deborah was an active student organizer and co-chaired her school’s National Lawyers Guild and Student Animal Legal Defense Fund (SALDF) chapters. She has worked with a number of organizations, including The Legal Aid Society and Legal Services NYC, in the areas of housing and public benefits law. Prior to law school, Deborah earned a B.A. with honors from Rutgers College and double majored in studio art and art history. She earned a M.A. from the City University of New York-Hunter College in art history and wrote her Master’s thesis on artists’ organizing tactics during the Vietnam War era. Deborah also spent nearly a decade working in a national women’s health non-profit organization.

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Roger S. Goldfinger is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law. He is dedicated to pursuing social and economic justice, whether by advocating for civil rights, both online and off, or assisting green and socially responsible companies and non-profits. Roger came to Rankin & Taylor after a brief stint in the world of corporate law and several years of traveling to obscure and wonderful places in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America. He’s also an avid cyclist and bike mechanic, and can be found teaching at Time’s UP when he has the chance.

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Jane L. Moisan graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in May 2010. She is admitted to practice law in New York. In law school, Jane focused her work and studies on homelessness and housing, through externships with housing and human rights organizations including the Centre on Human Rights and Evictions (COHRE) in Geneva, Switzerland, and with the Washington, D.C.-based National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP). During her time with the COHRE, her work included filing complaints within international human rights bodies under international housing rights and non-discrimination law, and assisting in the drafting of the U.N. Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty. While with NLCHP, Jane coordinated national written and oral testimony from housing campaigns across the country for submission before the United Nations Special Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik, during her first United States mission. She also worked to ensure the rights homeless children and youth in New York City to equal access to education by seeking enforcement federal McKinney-Vento laws. Before law school and after receiving her bachelors of arts in politics from Mount Holyoke College, Jane worked for the homeless as a counselor and an advocate in New York City, Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, conducting intake and street-based outreach. Additionally, Jane volunteered for over five years as an intake counselor at the American Civil Liberties Union in Portland and San Francisco, providing referrals and advocacy to persons seeking ACLU assistance. As an activist, she has worked on many campaigns for access to basic resources, women’s issues and activists’ rights. Jane is currently a very active member of the New York City Chapter National Lawyers Guild.

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Steve Vaccaro is Of Counsel to the firm.  He primarily represents seriously injured cyclists and pedestrians, as well as plaintiffs in civil rights and employment disputes.  He has settled or taken to trial numerous personal injury claims involving complex scientific evidence and millions of dollars in damages.  For his civil rights clients, Mr. Vaccaro won a judgment after trial establishing that the MTA discriminated on the basis of disability, and court orders requiring sign language interpreters for hearing-impaired hospital patients and basic medical care for a statewide class of prisoners.  On behalf of cyclists, he has questioned several high-ranking City officials under oath, including NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly.  A daily cyclist and committed cyclists’ advocate, Mr. Vaccaro serves on the Transportation Alternatives Advisory Council, is the elected Chair of TA’s East Side Volunteer Committee, and was named TA 2010 Volunteer of the Year for his work to bring bike lanes to East Harlem.  He is a graduate of Wesleyan University (B.A. ’86, Women’s Studies & Government), and of the Rutgers School of Law-Newark (J.D. ’96, summa cum laude, Moore Prize in Employment Law).  From 1986 through 1994, Mr. Vaccaro worked as an organizer and business representative for two New York City unions.

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Paula Z. Segal, law clerk, is a graduate of City University of New York School of Law, where she was a Haywood Burns Scholar in Human and Civil Rights. She received her undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science from Brown University. Before law school, Paula taught English to Speakers of Other Languages, developed curricula and ran an all-volunteer adult English school on the Lower East Side. While in law school, Paula was the Events Editor of the New York City Law Review; she interned at the Main Street Legal Services Economic Justice Project, the Community Service Society of New York, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest Environmental Justice Unit, Legal Aid Juvenile Rights Practice Special Litigation Unit. Paula is a member of the National Lawyers Guild NYC Chapter (NLG-NYC) and a founding member of the NLG-NYC Street Law Team. She has been published in the New York City Law Review and Occupy Writers and has been a regular contributor to Our Rights, Our Future, the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights Blog. She is the founder of 596 Acres, a project that works to connect communities to vacant public land resources in Brooklyn and remove barriers to vibrant and democratic public spaces throughout New York City. Paula is awaiting admission to the New York State Bar.

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Photos by Andrew Hinderaker