Shahid Buttar

Executive Director, Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Shahid Buttar, executive director, leads the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) and the People’s Campaign for the Constitution (PCC) in our efforts to defend civil liberties and rule of law principles threatened by the war on terror. Previously director of a program to combat racial and religious profiling by federal authorities, an associate director of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, and a litigator in private practice with a prolific public interest docket, Buttar has long advocated in defense of the Constitution. He graduated from Stanford Law School in 2003, where he served as executive editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal and as Professor Lawrence Lessig’s teaching assistant for Constitutional Law.

In addition to his work leading BORDC, Shahid supports populist constitutionalism as a civil rights lawyer, independent columnist, community organizer, and hip-hop and electronica MC. He was among the organizers of several grassroots groups around the country, including the Resistance Media Collective, the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency, and the Stanford Spoken Word Collective. As a musician, he frequently facilitates workshops for young people and emerging artists, has performed around the world for audiences as large as 50,000, and released his debut CD, Get Outta Your Chair, in 2008. Shahid’s music and articles, including his commentary for Huffington Post, are available at his website.