Hewlett High graduate is defending the alleged Monsey attacker

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Known for pursuing causes to defend the oppressed, Hewlett High School alumni, class of 1971, Michael Sussman is the attorney of record defending alleged Monsey attacker Grafton Thomas. On Dec. 28, Thomas allegedly stabbed five people at a rabbi’s home in the upstate community.

Sussman, who ran for state attorney general as a Green Party candidate in 2018, has represented the Yonkers Branch of the NAACP between 1981 and 2007, and won more than $400 million from Yonkers, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and New York state to repair the damages those entities caused by promoting school and housing segregation in Yonkers. The legal battle was dramatized in the 2015 HBO miniseries, “Show Me a Hero.”

He also won $45 million from New York state for black and Latino civil service workers who suffered discrimination in promotions due to biases in civil service tests, and a $6 million settlement for the family of DJ Henry, a black student at Pace University killed by a white village cop in Westchester County in 2010.