CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
8:30 – 9:00 a.m. REGISTRATION (Main Lobby)
  BREAKFAST (Outside of Auditorium, Room 2-301)

9:00 – 9:30 a.m. WELCOME REMARKS (Auditorium, Room 2-301)
  Purvi Shah, Director, Bertha Social Justice Institute, Center for Constitutional Rights

9:30 – 9:45 a.m.BREAK

9:45 – 11:30a.m.PANEL DISCUSSIONS (CONCURRENT)

Victory With & Without Success:  Strategic Litigation to Advance Movements (Room 3-116 )
Moderated by Baher Azmy, Legal Director, Center for Constitutional Rights
Panelists:

• Charles Elsesser, Director, Community Justice Project of Florida Legal Services
• Teboho Mosikili, Director of Litigation, Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa
• Sunita Patel, Staff Attorney, Government Misconduct/Racial Justice, Center for Constitutional Rights
• Joo-Hyun Kang, Director, Communities United for Police Reform
• Harry Roque, Attorney & Chair, CenterLaw, Philippines

Serve the People: Direct Legal Services & Movement Lawyering (Room 3-114)
Moderated by Chaumtoli Huq, Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School
Panelists:

• Pooja Gehi, Director of Immigrant Justice, Silvia Rivera Law Project
• Garrett Wright, Staff Attorney, Community Development Project, Urban Justice Center & President, National Lawyers Guild – New York City Chapter
• Helena Wong, Executive Director, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities
• Omar Farah, Staff Attorney, Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, Center for Constitutional Rights
• Sin Yen Ling, Attorney, Queens Law Associates

From the Block to the Top: Policy & Legislative Advocacy to Build Power (Room 2-112)
Moderated by John Whitlow, Clinical Law Professor & Supervising Attorney, CUNY Law School
Panelists:

• Chris Newman, Legal Director & General Counsel, National Day Laborer Organizing Network
• Haeyoung Yoon, Senior Staff Attorney, National Employment Law Project
• Barbara Young, National Organizer, National Domestic Workers Alliance
• Marika Dias, Managing Attorney, Make the Road New York

Protecting Movements: Defending Organizations, Activists, and the Right to Organize (Room 2-116)
Moderated by Annette Dickerson, Education & Outreach Director, Center for Constitutional Rights
Panelists:

• Dima Khalidi, Attorney, Palestine Solidarity Legal Support Initiative
• Jennifer Rosenbaum, Legal & Policy Director, National Guest Workers Alliance & New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice
• Mario Joseph, Executive Director, Bureau Des Avocats Internationaux, Port-Au-Prince, Haiti
• Rachel Meeropol, Senior Staff Attorney, Government Misconduct/Racial Justice, Center for Constitutional Rights

Beyond Borders: Using International Law & Solidarity to Support Movements (Room 2-119)
Moderated by Meena Jagannath, Staff Attorney, Community Justice Project, Florida Legal Services
Panelists:

• Pam Spees, Senior Staff Attorney, International Human Rights, Center for Constitutional Rights
• Frank Mugisha, Executive Director, Sexual Minorities Uganda
• Claudia Müeller-Hoff, Legal Advisor, Business & Human Rights Program, European Center for Constitutional & Human Rights
• Brian Concannon, Director, Institute for Justice & Democracy, Haiti
• Meetali Jain, Senior Researcher, Centre for Applied Studies ad Director, Constitutional Literacy and Service Initiative

 

Knowledge is Power:  Demystifying the Law through Education & Outreach (Room 3-302)
Moderated by Ian Head, Legal Worker, Center for Constitutional Rights
Panelists:

• Norris Henderson, Former Jailhouse Lawyer at Angola Prison & Director, Voice of the Ex-Offender
• Fahd Ahmed, Legal & Policy Director, Desis Rising Up and Moving
• Max Rameau, Organizer & Director, Take Back the Land
• Andrea Ritchie, Co-Coordinator, Streetwise & Safe
• María Poblet, Executive Director, Causa Justa :: Just Cause

11:30 – 11:45 a.m.BREAK

11:45 – 12:30 p.m.KEYNOTE ADDRESS (Auditorium, Room 2-301)
  Pablo Alvarado, Executive Director, National Day Laborer Organizing Network
 Introduced by Baher Azmy, Legal Director, Center for  Constitutional Rights
12:30 – 1:45 p.m. LUNCH (on own)

1:45 – 4:00 p.m. REFRESHMENTS (Outside of Auditorium, Room 2-301)

1:45 – 3:45 p.m. WORKSHOP SESSIONS (Concurrent)

In It to Win It: Community Organizing & Campaign Strategy (Room 2-116)
Facilitated by Angelique Gonzales, Executive Director and Tina Bartolome, Program Director, School of Unity & Liberation

Join SOUL, the School of Unity & Liberation, for an introduction to community organizing and campaign strategy. This workshop will explore community-based organizing theory and practice, with an emphasis on campaigns as an effective method for building people's power and advancing our work. We'll look at the elements of a strong campaign, and examine current and historical examples of what it takes to fight and win.

Anti-Oppression Reflection & Practice: An Interactive Workshop (Room 2-119)
Facilitated by Sonny Singh, Musician, Educator & Organizer

This session will give participants the opportunity to reflect on their own multiple identities and examine the ways they experience power, privilege, and oppression in their own lives based on race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, and other social identities. We will come to a common definition of oppression and engage in dialogue about how it plays out in legal work and what we can do to confront oppression in our personal and professional lives.

Communicate Justice: Media Strategies to Build Grassroots Power (Room 2-112)
Facilitated by Alison Roh Park, Training & Technical Assistance Coordinator, Center for Media Justice 

This interactive communications workshop elevates the necessity of strategic, participatory communications work in movement lawyering. Participants will emerge with a basic understanding of framing and effective messaging, audience targeting, media planning basics and concrete spokesperson skills to build towards a long-term culture shift.  The Center for Media Justice is a national capacity building organization working for media rights and access and strategic communications for racial and economic justice. CMJ believes the power to communicate should belong to everyone.

 

Storytelling for Lawyers (Room 3-114)
Facilitated by Bryonn Bain, Prison Activist & Spoken Word Poet and Co-Facilitated by Omar Farah,Staff Attorney, Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, Center for Constitutional Rights

We communicate and interpret the world in diverse ways, but often privilege analysis over narrative.  Analysis uses critical reasoning and evidence to examine the world.  Narrative uses story and emotion to engage how we experience the world and to expose why we act as we do. Lawyers often use analysis to persuade, despite evidence that people are effectively moved by stories. When it comes to getting people to take action, sometimes a well-reasoned analysis is simply no match for a well-told story. Effective stories raise consciousness, mobilize resistance, influence public policy, popular discourse and sway decision-makers.  Join Harvard trained lawyer, prison activist, spoken word poet, hip hop theater innovator, author and educator Bryonn Bain in a creative workshop exploring the use of storytelling as a tool for advancing social justice.

Intro to Embodied Leadership (Room 3-302)
Facilitated by Rusia Mohiuddin, Principle, Universal Partnership

Is your leadership aligned with your core principles & values? Is your day-to-day work & actions representative of the kind of world you are striving to create? Often we find ourselves struggling to keep our humanity, our principles, & values at the forefront of our work. The daily stress & trauma of our important work can get the best of us and we find that we longer hold in our centers that which truly fuels are work. This interactive workshop will leave participants with concrete tools and strategies to strengthen their teamwork and leadership skills to ensure that our actions align with our values towards creating more balance in work & lives.

3:45 – 4:00 p.m. BREAK

4:00 – 4:45 p.m. CLOSING REMARKS (Auditorium, Room 2-301)
 Vince Warren, Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights

5:00 – 6:30 p.m.RECEPTION (Thurgoods)