Shahid Buttar is a civil rights lawyer, hip-hop MC, independent columnist, grassroots community organizer, singer and poet. Professionally, he directs a program combating racial & religious profiling at a non-profit legal advocacy and educational organization representing the American Muslim community. He also leads a U.S.-based organization supporting the Pakistani lawyers movement in its struggle to defend the Rule of Law.
Before returning to the Bay Area in 2008, Shahid lived and worked in Washington, DC, where his organizing and commentary supported the progressive movement in several capacities. While in DC, Shahid organized the first litigation seeking marriage equality for same-sex couples in the State of New York; represented the campaign finance reform community in an ultimately successful appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and built the media and communications operations of the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, as well as the groundbreaking ACS ResearchLink program.
Shahid also served as a spokesperson for grassroots resistance at the 2005 Counter-Inaugural and the 2004 Republican National Convention where Democracy Now! named one of his public addresses among "The Best of 2004." As an organizer, Shahid founded a variety of grassroots groups across the country, including the Stanford Spoken Word Collective; the San Francisco Collaborative Arts Insurgency; the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency; and the DC Resistance Media Collective.
Shahid graduated in 2003 from Stanford Law School, where he served as Executive Editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, as well as the sole Teaching Assistant for Constitutional Law. He worked while pursuing his undergraduate degree from 1991 until 2000, when he graduated summa cum laude from Loyola University Chicago and was invited to join the Foreign Service of the U.S. State Department.
As a musician, Shahid has performed around the world for audiences as large as 50,000. His debut CD, Get Outta Your Chair, was released in 2008 and features music from the funk, blues, hip-hop, house, drum 'n bass, and South Asian fusion traditions, including Bumpin' in My SUV and the Baghdad Blues.
A comprehensive list of Shahid's prior publications, as well as his music, is available at www.shahidbuttar.com.
