Rebellious Lawyering Conference

Panelist Bios
(Organized by Panel Title)

Emerging Issues in Environmental Justice Advocacy

Anhthu Hoang is General Counsel of West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT), a community-based environmental justice organization that is committed to achieving environmental and social justice for communities of color and low income. She uses public health and legal research to develop legislative and policy strategies aimed at achieving a safe, healthy and sustainable environment for low-income communities of color, especially those in Northern Manhattan. In addition, she collaborates with WE ACT’s organizing team to host workshops, trainings, and public meetings informing community members about the legal and political factors that influence land use and economic development in their area. Prior to joining WE ACT, Anhthu worked with the environmental justice organizations Communities for a Better Environment and the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment advocating for clean air and clean water for low-income communities in the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Joaquin (Central) Valley in California and beyond. Before launching her legal career, Anhthu was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley where she studied the biological impacts of agricultural pesticide contamination on wild populations of amphibians. Anhthu holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology and a J.D.

Monique Harden has provided legal counsel and advocacy support since 1996 that have helped community organizations win important environmental justice victories. In 2003, Ms. Harden, along with Nathalie Walker, co-founded Advocates for Environmental Human Rights. Ms. Harden is a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law (1995), and received a B.A. from St. John’s College (1990). Ms. Harden has authored and co-authored numerous reports and papers on environmental justice and human rights issues. Her advocacy work has been featured in television, radio and print news, as well as books, magazines, and documentaries.

Mark Mitchell is a physician specializing in epidemiology and public health, including environmental health. He earned his M.D. degree at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and his Masters Degree in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Mitchell served as Deputy Director of the Kansas City, Missouri Health Department for seven years, before coming to Hartford where he was Director of Health for four years. He is founder and President of the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice. He has been a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, in addition to serving on the Board of Directors of the American Lung Association of Connecticut and the Hispanic Health Council.

Robin Schafer is a member of the New Haven environmental movement, a committed urban gardener and a year round commuter cyclist. She serves on the steering committee for the New Haven Environmental Justice Network and on the organizing committee for the New Haven Bioregional Group.

Challenging Immigration Detention Conditions

Malik Ndaula is a Junior at the Harvard Extension School, real estate developer/investor/financier and record label executive. He spent over 3 years in immigration custody battling federal immigration deportation charges to Africa. He secured his release from federal prison in the summer of 2004 as a self-litigator. While in prison Malik successfully organized with fellow prisoners to challenge conditions of confinement at Concordia Parish Prison in Ferriday, Louisiana and later at Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama. Upon his release, he immediately accepted an internship position as a legal fellow/prison letter program coordinator at the National Immigration Project in Boston, Massachusetts. Later on in the year Malik was awarded the Soros Justice Fellowship of 2005-2007 to provide direct assistance to immigrants facing deportation in detention. At the end of his fellowship term, Malik returned to Families for Freedom, a New York immigrant network of support for people directly affected by deportation as a staff member. In Fall of 2007 Malik became a serving board member on Families for Freedom board of directors. In prison and out side of prison Malik has litigated numerous federal civil and criminal issues covering 28 United States Code Section 1983, the criminal code, habeas corpus, and statutory construction questions in the immigration context.

Judy Rabinovitz has worked at the ACLU since 1988, litigating class action and impact cases on a variety of issues affecting the rights of immigrants. In recent years her work has focused largely on advocacy and litigation challenging immigration detention policies and practices. She played a leading role in the indefinite detention litigation that resulted in the Supreme Court's Zadvydas v. Davis decision, and in subsequent litigation to ensure application of that decision to indefinitely detained Mariel Cubans. In addition, she coordinated a nationwide litigation campaign to challenge the mandatory immigration detention statute that Congress enacted as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), culminating in Demore v. Kim, which she argued before the Supreme Court in 2003. She has twice received the Jack Wasserman Memorial Award for Excellence in Litigation from the American Immigration Lawyers Association; and last year, she received the Carol King Award from the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.

Kerri Sherlock Talbot is the Associate Director of Advocacy for family and due process issues at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Formerly, she was Director of Policy and Planning for Rights Working Group where she managed the coalition's advocacy efforts on immigration due process and detention issues. Prior to her position with the Rights Working Group, Kerri was Managing Attorney of Break the Chain Campaign, where she represented her clients in immigration and federal court proceedings. She also served as Co-Chair of the Legislative Committee of Freedom Network, USA, a national network of anti-human trafficking organizations. Previously, she was Staff Attorney for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and prior to law school, she was a Program Associate for Physicians for Human Rights where she coordinated the organization's asylum network. Ms. Talbot is a graduate of Tufts University with a B.A. in International Relations and a graduate, cum laude, of Harvard Law School. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.

Michael Wishnie is a Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He was Professor of Clinical Law and co-director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program at New York University School of Law. He has served as a Skadden Fellow, representing New York City taxi drivers, garment, construction, restaurant and domestic workers in their efforts to vindicate basic labor and employment rights. Previously, Professor Wishnie worked as a staff attorney at the Brooklyn Neighborhood Office of The Legal Aid Society, and as a law clerk to Judge H. Lee Sarokin, Justice Harry A. Blackmun, and Justice Stephen G. Breyer. Before earning his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1993, Professor Wishnie spent two years teaching in the People's Republic of China.

“Make Them Go Away:” The Supreme Court, the Court of Public Opinion, and the Backlash Against the Americans with Disabilities Act

Christine M. Griffin was unanimously confirmed by the Senate and sworn in on January 3, 2006, as a Commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under President George W. Bush. As one of five members of the Commission, Ms. Griffin participates with other Commissioners on all matters which come before it, including the development and approval of enforcement policies, authorization of litigation, issuance of Commissioners’ charges of discrimination, and performance of such other functions as may be authorized by law, regulation, or order. She has served as the Executive Director of the Disability Law Center in Boston and as Attorney Advisor to the former Vice Chair of the EEOC, Paul M. Igasaki. A native of Boston, Ms. Griffin is a graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and served as its Interim President from 1993 to 1994. She is also a graduate of Boston College Law School as well as a Skadden Arps Fellow at the Disability Law Center. In December 2005, Ms. Griffin was selected as one of the nation’s eleven “Lawyers of the Year” by Lawyers Weekly USA newspaper.

Andrew J. Imparato is the President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), a national non-profit organization for the political and economic empowerment of all people with disabilities based in Washington, DC. Prior to joining AAPD, Mr. Imparato was general counsel and director of policy for the National Council on Disability, an attorney advisor with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, counsel to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Disability Policy, and a staff attorney/Skadden Fellow with the Disability Law Center in Boston. Mr. Imparato’s perspective is informed by his own experience with bipolar disorder. His essay on the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings relating to disability rights appears in The Rehnquist Court: Judicial Activism on the Right. Mr. Imparato graduated with distinction from Stanford Law School and is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale College.

Jim Weisman has been General Counsel for the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, now called United Spinal Association, for the past 27 years. He was a key negotiator with members of Congress in drafting and supporting the passage of the ADA and was integral to the development of the transportation provisions of the ADA through litigation in New York City and Philadelphia. Mr. Weisman was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the American Association of People with Disabilities, and in 2003 was elected Chairman of the Board. He is widely recognized for his many contributions to the disability rights movement.

Christine Jolls teaches and writes about employment law, behavioral law and economics, and contracts. She holds a Ph.D. in economics as well as a J.D., and she served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Her activities outside of Yale Law School include serving as Director of the Law and Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD): Race and the State of the Union

Harold Hongju Koh is Dean of Yale Law School and Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law. He began teaching at Yale Law School in 1985 and has served since 2004 as its fifteenth Dean. From 1998 to 2001, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Before joining Yale, he practiced law at Covington and Burling and at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. Dean Koh is a leading expert on international law and a prominent advocate of human and civil rights. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court and testified before the U.S. Congress more than twenty times. He has been awarded ten honorary doctorates and two law school medals and has received more than twenty-five awards for his human rights work. He is author of eight books, including Transnational Legal Problems (with H. Steiner and D. Vagts) and The National Security Constitution, which won the American Political Science Association's award as the best book on the American Presidency. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, a former Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, a member of the Council of the American Law Institute, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Century Foundation. He sits on the Boards of Overseers of Harvard University and on the Board of Directors of the Brookings Institution, Human Rights First, the American Arbitration Association, and the National Democratic Institute. He has been named one of America's “45 Leading Public Sector Lawyers Under The Age of 45” by American Lawyer magazine and one of the “100 Most Influential Asian-Americans of the 1990s” by A magazine. A Korean-American native of Boston, he holds a B.A. degree from Harvard College and B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was Developments Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and served as a law clerk for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Blurring the Lines Between Labor and Employment Law

David P. Dean has successfully represented labor unions and employees for more than ten years before federal courts and agencies. He has been particularly active in aggressively defending against employer efforts to interfere with union organizing and bargaining in the airline industry. He is currently co-lead counsel in five putative class actions on behalf of hospital Registered Nurses in Albany, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis and San Antonio in lawsuits alleging that their employers colluded to suppress their wages in violation of the federal antitrust laws. Mr. Dean received his Juris Doctorate from Columbia University Law School in 1990, and in law school was an Ella Baker intern at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Before receiving his law degree, Mr. Dean was the Executive Director of the Neighborhood Action Council of Troy, New York, which organized and provided services to low-income tenants, and he also directed the East Bay organizing project for the California ACORN affiliate, Citizens Action League.

Cathy Ruckelshaus is the Litigation Director at the National Employment Law Project. Her areas of specialization are workplace discrimination, wage and hour law, the rights of nonstandard workers, work and family, and the employment rights of workfare participants. She has spent twenty years working with and on behalf of low-wage workers across the country, and is one of the most creative minds in pushing the envelope of Fair Labor Standards Act actions today. She graduated from Stanford Law School in 1989, and won one of the first Skadden fellowships ever offered.

Benjamin Sachs is the Joseph Goldstein Fellow and a Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, where he teaches Emerging Trends in Labor Law. He has served as Assistant General Counsel to the Service Employees International Union in Washington, D.C. and as Staff Attorney for the Workplace Justice Project in Brooklyn, NY. In 2007, he won the Yale Law School Teaching Award from Yale Law Women, and was also chosen by the students to give the opening address at this conference. Mr. Sachs received his J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1998.

What is Progressive Family Lawyering: Lessons from the Field

Maureen Murphy earned her J.D. from the Quinnipiac School of Law and her LLM from the New York University Law School. Ms. Murphy is a partner in the firm of Murphy, Murphy, and Nugent, LLC. She currently practices in the areas of civil litigation, civil rights and family law. Attorney Murphy brought the first in the nation peer to peer sexual harassment case under Title IX in 1992. As a result of that case and its successful resolution, school districts around the state began implementing and enforcing sexual harassment policies. With co-counsel, Kristen Galles of Virginia, Attorney Murphy also pursued a number of successful Title IX athletic equality cases. In addition, Attorney Murphy has represented numerous LGBT plaintiffs in family and civil rights matters and is a frequent guest speaker on issues that impact same sex couples, particularly on the issue of Civil Unions and marriage for same sex-couples. She authored “Connecticut’s Civil Union Law: A Look Forward”, which appeared in the October 2005 issue of Connecticut Lawyer Magazine and is a frequent speaker at educational forums, CLEs and bar association meetings. Attorney Murphy is cooperating attorney with GLAD in Kerrigan v. State of Connecticut, the Connecticut marriage equality case. She was the founder and co-chair of the Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Law Association, former counsel to the Connecticut Coalition for LGBT Civil Rights and she is currently a member of the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund (CWEALF) Law And Public Policy Committee, President of Liberty Community Services (formerly C.A.R.P.), and the former Vice President of and current legal advisor to Love Makes a Family. Maureen was the 2005 recipient of the Connecticut Chapter of the National Organization for Women Harriet Tubman award for social justice, the 2006 recipient of the New Haven Gay and Lesbian Community Center Dorothy Award, and the 2007 Maria Miller Stewart Award from CWEALF.

Elizabeth Saylor is an associate at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, a small civil rights firm whose practice includes police misconduct, free speech, discrimination (including discrimination against domestic violence victims), whistleblower, employment, election, education, historic preservation, class actions, and prisoners' rights litigation. Prior to joining Emery Celli, Ms. Saylor worked at The Legal Aid Society's Brooklyn Neighborhood Office. Ms. Saylor began as a Skadden fellow at Legal Aid, where she represented victims of domestic violence in public benefits, family, and housing cases. After her fellowship, Ms. Saylor continued this work at Legal Aid and brought a class action § 1983 lawsuit in the Southern District of New York that challenges the city and state's practice of systemically denying public benefits to eligible immigrants, including battered immigrant women and children. In 2006, the Court granted class certification and ordered the city to stop illegally denying public assistance, Medicaid, and food stamps to eligible immigrants and to overhaul the error-plagued computer programs and training manuals that lead welfare workers to illegally deny them these subsistence benefits. Prior to joining Legal Aid, Ms. Saylor clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Ms. Saylor is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Camille Carey is a Robert M. Cover Clinical Teaching Fellow at Yale Law School. Ms. Carey worked at The Legal Aid Society of New York from 2001-2007, first as an Equal Justice Works Fellow and then under the sponsorship of Mayer, Brown, Rowe and Maw. At Legal Aid, Ms. Carey created a project providing comprehensive legal services to immigrant victims of domestic violence. She represented clients in immigration, family law, and public benefits cases and appeared in family court, state court, administrative law hearings, immigration court, federal court, and in affirmative cases with the immigration service. She was counsel on MKB v. Eggleston, a class action lawsuit that successfully challenged New York City and State's systemic denial of public benefits to eligible immigrants. Ms. Carey is admitted to practice in New York, Connecticut, and the U.S. District Court, Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. Ms. Carey co-teaches the new Domestic Violence Clinic.

Lynda Munro is a judge of the Superior Court of the State of Connecticut; she is presently Presiding Judge over Family Matters in the Judicial District of Stamford. Her wide range of experiences includes serving on the bench in Family, Juvenile, Criminal and Housing courts. She has also presided over the innovative Regional Family Trial Docket. She just finished serving over 6 years as Chairman of the Education Committee of the Connecticut Bench, and now is the designer and overseer of the Mentoring Program initiative of the state's new Chief Justice. She is an Adjunct Law Professor at Quinnipiac Law School teaching Advanced Family Law. She has taught many courses to the bench and bar with including many family courses and same sex legal relationships in Connecticut. She trains all judges in Connecticut in family law. She has lectured in several other sates on innovations in Connecticut's processes in family court. She is President of the Alumni Association of Connecticut College and serves on the college's Board of Trustees.

Election 2008: The Ongoing Struggle for Minority Ballot Access

Kristen Clarke is the Co-Director of the Political Participation Group at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. where she oversees and coordinates the activities of the organization's legal program in the areas of voting rights and election law. She provided significant legal advocacy during Congress's 2006 reauthorization of the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act. She is currently defending the recently renewed Section 5 pre-clearance provision from a constitutional challenge in a case that remains pending before a three-judge panel in the D.C. District Court.

Laughlin McDonald is the Director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project. He is a veteran voting rights litigator, and has directed the Southern Regional Office of the American Civil Liberties Union for over thirty years. In addition to his wealth of experience in voting rights litigation, McDonald has published several important books, including A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia.

The War Against the War on Drugs: Just Say Yes to Decriminalization

Jeff Kaufman began his criminal-justice career in 1980 as a beat cop for the NYPD, where he was assigned to the 75th Precinct in Brooklyn - one of the busiest in New York City. In his first year on the job, Mr. Kaufman was a responding officer to the "Palm Sunday Massacre," in which 11 persons were killed by a man who had taken cocaine. As a police officer, Mr. Kaufman was quickly introduced to the harsh effects that drugs can have, but also to the harsh effects that the "War on Drugs" was having on his community. In his free time, Jeff attended law school, and he was later transferred to the NYPD's Legal Bureau, where, among other duties, he brought cases against drug dealers and drug users for forfeiture of their property. Mr. Kaufman quickly found himself disagreeing strongly with the policies he was implementing. He soon left the NYPD and became a defense attorney for the indigent, where he was able to view the "war against drugs" from yet another perspective. In the mid 1990s, Kaufman began teaching criminal law to adolescents facing life sentences for violent crimes and drug felonies, in which capacity he continues today.

Gabriel Sayegh directs the State Organizing and Policy Project of the Drug Policy Alliance. The Project seeks to reform state drug policies by building political power within the communities most affected by the drug war, and is currently engaged in multiyear campaigns in Alabama, Connecticut, and New York. Prior to joining the DPA in 2003, Mr. Sayegh worked as a session aide for Washington State Senator Debbie Regala, where he analyzed criminal justice, drug, and welfare policy. Previously, Mr. Sayegh worked as a research assistant at The Evergreen State College, where he focused on global trade issues. As a long time activist and organizer, Mr. Sayegh has developed numerous workshops, political training programs, and educational curricula, including the Olympia Antiracism Workshop and an anti-domestic violence/healthy relationship program for secondary and middle school students in California. He received a B.A. with a focus on economics and history from The Evergreen State College.

Adam Wolf is a Staff Attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Drug Law Reform Project. Mr. Wolf has litigated numerous prominent drug law issues in both federal and state courts, including the United States Supreme Court. Before working for the ACLU, Mr. Wolf was a Frankel Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, where he taught in an environmental law clinic and conducted environmental policy research. Mr. Wolf has also worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and the public interest law firm Altshuler Berzon. Upon graduating from law school, Mr. Wolf clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and a United States District Court. He received his B.A. from Amherst College in 1998 and his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 2001, where he was editor-in-chief of the Michigan Journal of Race and Law.

Steven B. Duke is a professor of criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and drug policy at Yale Law School. He has written extensively on drug policy and the need for alternatives to prohibition, including a book entitled America's Longest War: Rethinking our Tragic Crusade (with Albert Gross), and numerous articles: Drug Prohibition: An Unnatural Disaster, End the Drug War, Prohibition Hurts Rather than Helps, and Legalizing Drugs Would Reduce Crime, among others. Professor Duke is also an accomplished and seasoned litigator, having briefed and argued numerous cases in both federal and state courts, including three oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court. In 1967, in United States v. Jackson, Professor Duke successfully argued the first constitutional challenge of the death penalty to reach the Supreme Court. Professor Duke received his B.S. from Arizona State University and his J.D. from the University of Arizona, where he was editor-in-chief of the first Arizona Law Review. He received an LL.M. from Yale Law School, and served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

Seeking Shelter and Protection: Class-Action Advocacy for the Homeless

Steven Banks has dedicated his professional life to fighting for the rights of low-income New Yorkers. As Attorney-in-Chief of the Legal Aid Society of New York, he is responsible for leading all of Legal Aid’s practice areas, including Criminal, Civil, Law Reform, and Juvenile Rights. In addition, Banks is the coordinating attorney of the Legal Aid’s Homeless Rights Project, which has litigated landmark cases establishing the right to shelter in New York, and requiring the provision of safe, suitable, and adequate housing, assistance, and services to homeless New Yorkers. Through the ongoing McCain v. Bloomberg class-action litigation, which began over 20 years ago as McCain v. Koch, Banks and the Homeless Rights Project continue daily to defend and maintain the right to shelter by challenging city policies and procedures that unlawfully deny emergency shelter to homeless people in need. After graduating from the NYU School of Law, he began his career at the Legal Aid Society in the Staten Island Neighborhood Office, and has previously served as the head of the Civil Practice Area and Associate Attorney-in-Chief before taking on the role of chief lawyer of the organization. In his 26 years at Legal Aid, Banks has been responsible for the overall provision of criminal defense, representation of children in family law proceedings, and civil legal services for survivors of domestic violence, tenants, senior citizens, working families, unemployed workers, disabled children and adults, immigrants fleeing oppression, persons living with HIV/AIDS, and homeless New Yorkers. Banks has helped shape the modern conception of a public interest lawyering by incorporating other mediums like State, City and federal legislative advocacy, engagement in state and city governance, and working with the news media. The American Lawyer has listed him as one of the top 45 public interest lawyers in the United States, The Daily News described him as “perhaps the City’s most legendary Legal Aid attorney in this generation,” and New York Magazine has called him one of the most influential New Yorkers.

Catherine Bendor is the Deputy Legal Director at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP) in Washington, DC. At NLCHP, Ms. Bendor has served as co-counsel in two national level class action lawsuits in federal court challenging FEMA’s policies and procedures--and its failure to provide due process--in the distribution of housing assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina. She also currently serves as co-counsel in a class action lawsuit to enforce the rights of homeless children in Suffolk County, NY to attend public school, and has been involved in several lawsuits challenging the criminalization of homelessness. Ms. Bendor has over 15 years of experience as a public interest lawyer working to enforce the rights of low-income persons and victims of various forms of discrimination. Prior to joining NLCHP, Ms. Bendor served for over 7 years as a Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she represented the United States in numerous federal court lawsuits under the Fair Housing Act and other federal civil rights statutes. Her previous work includes litigation and other advocacy in the areas of employment discrimination, prisoners’ rights, and international human rights. Ms. Bendor is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School.

Tracie Washington is President & CEO of The Louisiana Justice Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to fostering social justice campaigns across Louisiana, concentrating in the Gulf Coast region. Tracie previously led the NAACP’s Gulf Coast Advocacy Center, which closed in April 2007. The Louisiana Justice Institute will continue to partner with NAACP in advocacy efforts in Louisiana. Ms. Washington received her Masters in Public Administration from Drake University in 1986 and her J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law in 1989. She is a native of New Orleans and has maintained a general civil practice there for eighteen years. After evacuating New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, Ms. Washington returned to New Orleans in 2005 and has litigated numerous cases on behalf of Katrina survivors, including Kirk v. City of New Orleans and Ray Nagin, litigating the rights of all New Orleans home-owners to constitutionally guaranteed notice and opportunity to be heard prior to their houses being bulldozed; Powell v. Quality Inn Maison St. Charles, litigating the rights of evacuees living in hotels funded by FEMA to adequate notice prior to eviction; Lott v. Orleans Parish School Board, litigating the rights of returning New Orleans Public Schools students to immediate re-enrollment and admission to publicly funded Orleans Parish Schools; McWaters v. FEMA (intervention on behalf of Louisiana FEMA hotel residents), seeking a restraining order against FEMA from evicting Louisiana evacuees on February 13, 2006; Anderson v. Jackson, suing on behalf of public housing residents fighting for their rights to return home; and Castellanos-Contreras, et al. v. Decatur Hotels, LLC, and Patrick Quinn, a collective action case on behalf of immigrant guest-workers suing major Louisiana hotel chain and its owner for Fair Labor Standards Act violations.

Carol Walter was appointed Executive Director of The Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness in November 2006. She has worked throughout the state of CT in the field of homeless services since 1987 as a service provider, manager, administrator and community leader. She has operated shelter programs throughout Connecticut, designed supportive housing programs in Hartford and East Hartford, and served on the Boards of the CT Coalition to End Homelessness and the CT AIDS Residence Coalition. In her capacity as a senior manager for a community action agency, she oversees homeless programs as well as a myriad of ancillary anti-poverty programs such as employment, energy assistance, youth services, and neighborhood services. Ms. Walter has authored and or assisted in the development of several of CT’s Ten Year Plans to End Homelessness. In her capacity at CCEH, she works statewide as a leader of change efforts to prevent, reduce and end homelessness among CT’s citizens. Ms. Walter currently sits on the statewide Reaching Home Campaign Executive Committee, CT’s campaign to build 10,000 units of supportive housing, and is an appointed member of the Hartford Commission on the Homeless.

Federally-Funded Ignorance: How Abstinence-Only Sex Education Fails Students

Brigitte Amiri has played a key role in several cases since joining the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project in April 2005. She is currently leading the Project’s challenge to a ban on abortions in Michigan, and is litigating a challenge to prohibitions on access to abortions in a county jail in Arizona. She was also part of the Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood legal team in the U.S. Supreme Court. She is also the Project's point person for legal issues related to abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. Before joining the Project, Ms. Amiri was a staff attorney at South Brooklyn Legal Services in the Foreclosure Prevention Project, dedicating her time to litigating on behalf of low-income homeowners who were facing foreclosure as a result of predatory mortgage lending. Prior to joining Legal Services, Ms. Amiri worked as an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights. Ms. Amiri graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 1999 and from DePaul University with honors in 1996.

Maxwell Ciardullo began working with SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US, in 2004. In 2006 he moved to the New York office to start as the Information Associate and coordinate SIECUS’ Community Advocacy Project. Maxwell monitors controversies around the country related to sexuality education as well as providing assistance to local advocates. In addition, he is responsible for SIECUS’ domestic opposition monitoring and research tracking. Maxwell also worked with the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) in the spring of 2005 to organize and coordinate the first Youth Action Institute. While in Washington, D.C. he volunteered at HIPS, a community organization that conducts HIV prevention outreach to sex workers in the DC area and currently works with the Door doing outreach to LGBTQ young people in Manhattan.

John Santelli is a Heilbrunn Professor and Chair of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the School of Public Health at Columbia University and a Senior Fellow at the Guttmacher Institute. John is a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist. Prior to moving to New York 3 years ago, he held a variety of positions of increasing responsibility at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the Divisions of Reproductive Health, Adolescent and School Health, and STD/HIV Prevention. He has conducted research on HIV/STD risk behaviors, programs to prevent STD/HIV/unintended pregnancy among adolescents and women, school-based health centers, and research ethics. He has been a national leader in insuring that adolescents are appropriately included in health research. John has been enjoying his newfound freedom at Columbia to speak out about the serious medical and ethical problems with abstinence-only education. Dr. Santelli received his MD from the Buffalo School of Medicine in 1982 and his MPH degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1986. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Adolescent Health, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health and AIDS Education and Prevention.

Janice Irvine is a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is the author of Talk About Sex, a comprehensive history of the culture wars over sex education.

Hospital Flight from Minority Neighborhoods

Kistine Carolan has a Master’s in Social Service from Bryn Mawr’s Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, with a concentration on Public Policy and Advocacy. While studying at Bryn Mawr, she interned for a queer-rights group providing legal information. She later worked with an international Quaker organization engaged in community organizing to protect social services funding in the Federal budget. At Maternity Care Coalition, her efforts have increased public awareness of maternal and child health issues in Southeastern Pennsylvania through community organizing and legislative advocacy. Recently, she has focused on access to insurance and maternity services. She volunteers with the Media Mobilizing Project to organize communities around labor, poverty, and immigration issues, as well as with Philly Student Union, a youth-led group pushing for equal access to quality educational services.

Jin Hee Lee is a staff attorney at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), a civil rights law firm that provides community lawyering in the areas of disability rights, environmental justice, and access to health care. As part of NYLPI’s access to health care program, Ms. Lee works with health advocates and community-based organizations to address racial and ethnic discrimination in New York City’s health care system. Most recently, Ms. Lee has been working with community groups in Southeast Queens, East Bronx, and Central Brooklyn to prevent hospital closures and other forms of health care disinvestment in those medically underserved communities of color. Ms. Lee was previously a litigation associate in Morrison & Foerster’s New York office, where her cases included a federal habeas petition for ineffective assistance of counsel, a class action based on the unconstitutional discharge of NYC high school students, and an application to the September 11th Victim Compensation. Ms. Lee also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Martha Vazquez, U.S. District Judge for the District of New Mexico. Ms. Lee received her undergraduate degree in 1995 from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, majoring in African Studies and receiving a Fulbright Fellowship to South Korea. She graduated from Columbia Law School in 2000, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar and a recipient of the Emil Schlesinger Labor Law Prize and the Lance Liebman public interest award. She was also Executive Editor of the Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual, a 1000-page legal resource for state and federal prisoners that is published and distributed by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.

Barbara Siegel has a Master’s in Public Health and a law degree. She is currently a managing attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County. Ms. Siegel supervises the work performed at the Health Consumer Center, a health rights advocacy project of Neighborhood Legal Services. The Health Consumer Center (HCC) operates a multi-lingual health rights hotline and advocacy program for low-income residents of Los Angeles county, offering everything from telephone assistance to representation at administrative and court proceedings. In addition, HCC offers outreach and education on health benefit programs and does health policy work at the local, state and federal levels.

Sabi Ardalan is currently a law clerk for the Honorable Michael A. Chagares, U.S. Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. She previously served as the Equal Justice America fellow at The Opportunity Agenda and focused on promoting health care equity and human rights in New York State. She was also a litigation associate at Dewey Ballantine LLP, where she represented pro bono clients seeking asylum and challenging deportation for criminal convictions. In addition, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Raymond J. Dearie, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of New York. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in History and International Studies from Yale College. While at Harvard, she served as an Executive Editor of the Human Rights Journal and a Senior Editor of the International Law Journal. She worked on litigation to enforce the right to health care in Ghana and on legal and judicial reform in Croatia. She also represented clients in immigration/asylum and criminal proceedings. Before law school, Sabi was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and also worked in the Child Abuse Bureau of the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

No More “High-Tech Lynchings:” Reforming the Judicial Appointment Process

Nan Aron is President of the Alliance for Justice, a national association of public interest and civil rights organizations. The Alliance, which she founded in 1979, played a large role in defeating Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 and organizing support for the ten Senate filibusters against President George W. Bush's most extreme judicial nominees. Before founding the Alliance, Aron worked at the ACLU's National Prison Project and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Leslie Proll is the Director of the Washington office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. She has worked for the Legal Defense Fund since 1997. Her work has focused on judicial and executive nominations, economic justice policy and litigation, affirmative action and legislative civil rights issues. Prior to joining the Legal Defense Fund, Leslie was a civil rights lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama for ten years.

Mark Tushnet is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard University. He's the author of far too many books and articles on a diverse set of issues including comparative constitutional law, civil rights, and American legal history. Professor Tushnet received his JD at Yale Law School and clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Reva Siegel is Deputy Dean and the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law and Professor of American Studies at Yale University. Professor Siegel’s writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality, and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. Her publications include Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (with Brest, Levinson, Balkin & Amar, 2006) and Directions in Sexual Harassment Law (edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon, 2004). She is currently co-editing a collection of essays by progressive legal scholars entitled the Constitution in 2020, and writing several articles examining the role of social movement conflict in guiding constitutional change, with special attention to questions of abortion. Professor Siegel received her B.A., M.Phil, and J.D. from Yale University, clerked for Judge Spottswood Robinson on the D.C. Circuit, and began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. She is on the boards of the American Society for Legal History, the Law and History Review, and the National Constitution Center, and is active in the American Constitution Society, in the national organization and as faculty advisor of Yale’s chapter.

Challenging Immigration Raids

Emily Creighton is a staff attorney at the Legal Action Center of the American Immigration Law Foundation. She has represented amicus curiae in federal court litigation and contributes to the work of the AILF Litigation Clearinghouse. Emily joined AILF in 2006. She received her law degree from American University Washington College of Law in 2006.

Dan Kesselbrenner is a nationally recognized expert in immigration law. Dan also represents the National Immigration Project on coalition projects such as the Defending Immigrants Partnership, funded by the Ford Foundation, Open Society Institute, and the JEHT Foundation, and the BIA Pro Bono Appeals Project. He is the co-author of Immigration Law and Crimes and numerous articles on immigration law. In 1992, he served on the Clinton-Gore Department of Justice Immigrant Transition Team. He has also received the American Immigration Lawyers Association's Jack Wasserman Award, the National Immigration Project's Carol King Award, and Central American Refugee Center's Achievement Award for his work advancing and defending immigrants' rights.

Hope Metcalf is a Cover-NLP Teaching Fellow at Yale Law School. She is one of the supervising attorneys involved in the Law School's representation of the individuals seized in the Fair Haven raids on June 6, 2007. Hope previously worked as an associate at Wiggin and Dana in New Haven, CT. Hope received her J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

Prison Abolition: An Introduction to the Theory and Praxis of the New Abolitionists

Dylan Rodriguez is an Associate Professor at UCR, where he began his teaching career in 2001. He received his Ph.D. and his M.A. degrees in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned two B.A. degrees from Cornell University in Africana Studies (Magna Cum Laude) and the College Scholar Program, as well as a Concentration Degree in Asian American Studies. Dr. Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary scholar-activist whose interests traverse the fields of critical race studies and cultural studies, with focal attention to the intersections of race, state violence, and community/identity formation. His work attempts to engage the field of radical and revolutionary praxis that has emerged in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, across the different sites and moments of struggle against global racism, white supremacy, and other forms of institutionalized dehumanization. His political, philosophical, and theoretical interests are especially devoted to visualizing notions of freedom, liberation, community, and justice that productively, creatively critique and disarticulate dominant definitions. Among other political-intellectual collectives, he has worked with and/or alongside such organizations as Critical Resistance (a leading force in the contemporary prison abolitionist movement, see criticalresistance.org), INCITE! (a progressive antiviolence movement led by radical women of color, see incite-national.org), the Critical Filipino and Filipina Studies Collective (cffsc.focusnow.org), and the editorial board of the internationally recognized journal Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict, and World Order.

Chino Hardin is a Community Organizer at the Prison Moratorium Project. Chino joined PMP as an intern in the summer of 2001, and came on to PMP's full-time staff as a Youth Organizer in February 2002. Chino brings personal experience with the New York City juvenile justice system to her organizing work. Chino has appeared in Off Our Backs!, Village Voice, Caribbean Life and numerous other community-based publications.

Kyung Ji Kate Rhee is Director of the Prison Moratorium Project (PMP). Kyung Ji joined the Prison Moratorium Project in 1999 as the organization's first full-time staff member. Kyung Ji has been widely recognized for her work at PMP and has been featured in The Utne Reader as one of 30 Visionaries under 30, the Source as one of Top 10 Artists, Albums, & Political Players of the Year!, the KoreAm Magazine, The Scholar and Feminist of the Barnard Center for Research on Women among many other publications. She has lived in New York City, Provo, and Chicago, where she received her degree in Philosophy with an emphasis on ethics and feminist philosophy from the University of Chicago.

David Stein is a member of the imprisonment industrial complex abolition organization, Critical Resistance. He is a Ph.D. student in the joint program in African American Studies and American Studies at Yale. His research focuses on how rehabilitative paradigms are deployed in order to sustain and grow the imprisonment regime in the United