The State Of Female Justice in America: Meet the Panelists
11/05/2013
This Thursday, November 7th, we are so proud to bring you The State of Female Justice in America, a one-night-only panel discussion at Columbia Law School exploring why women experience economic, racial, and cultural violence; and ask ourselves what might real justice look like for women in America?
Tickets are $10 and available at www.vday.org/sfja
If you are a STUDENT you can come for free, however you MUST RSVP at [email protected]
WHAT: THE STATE OF FEMALE JUSTICE IN AMERICA
WHEN: Thursday, November 7, Doors: 7:30pm, Program:8pm
WHERE: Jerome Green Hall, Columbia Law School, 435 W 116 St, NYC
Meet the Women Behind The State of Female Justice in America
We have an inspirational group of women who will take part in this discussion, here's some brief information about each, make sure to check out their work!
LAURA FLANDERS (event host)
Best-selling author and broadcaster Laura Flanders is the founder and host of GRITtv, a multi-media platform for in-depth, solutions-focused interviews with the smartest thinkers & doers of our time. She is the 2013 local economies reporting fellow at Yes! and a contributing writer to The Nation magazine. Author of BUSHWOMEN; Tales of a Cynical Species and Blue Grit!... Flanders is a regular guest on MSNBC. Find out more at GRITtv.org or follow her @GRITlaura
CATHERINE ALBISA
Ms. Albisa is a constitutional and human rights lawyer with a background on the right to health. Ms. Albisa also has significant experience working in partnership with community organizers in the use of human rights standards to strengthen advocacy in the United States. She co-founded NESRI along with Sharda Sekaran and Liz Sullivan in order to build legitimacy for human rights in general, and economic and social rights in particular, in the United States. She is committed to a community-centered and participatory human rights approach that is locally anchored, but universal and global in its vision. Ms. Albisa also litigated constitutional challenges to laws limiting access to reproductive health services as a senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights and staff attorney at the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. She co-taught the International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic at CUNY law school and was the Associate Director at the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School. Ms. Albisa clerked for the Honorable Mitchell Cohen in the District of New Jersey. She received a BA from the University of Miami and is a graduate of Columbia Law School.
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW
Kimberlé Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School, is a leading authority in the area of Civil Rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. Her articles have appeared in theHarvard Law Review, National Black Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, and Southern California Law Review. She is the founding coordinator of the Critical Race Theory Workshop, and the co-editor of the volume, Critical Race Theory: Key Documents That Shaped the Movement. Crenshaw has lectured widely on race matters, addressing audiences across the country as well as in Europe, India, Africa and South America.
Crenshaw has worked extensively on a variety of issues pertaining to gender and race in the domestic arena including violence against women, structural racial inequality, and affirmative action. A specialist on race and gender equality, she has facilitated workshops for human rights activists in Brazil and in India, and for constitutional court judges in South Africa. Her groundbreaking work on “Intersectionality” has traveled globally and was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution.
In 1996, Crenshaw co-founded the African American Policy Forum, a gender and racial justice legal think tank, which houses a variety of projects designed to deliver research-based strategies to better advance social inclusion. In 2011, Crenshaw founded the Center for Intersectionality & Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School, which aims to foster critical examination of how social structures and related identity categories such as gender, race, and class interact on multiple levels, resulting in social inequality. Crenshaw currently serves as Executive Director of both organizations.
EVE ENSLER
Eve Ensler is a Tony award winning playwright, performer and activist. She is the author of international phenomenon, The Vagina Monologues, which won an Obie and has been published in 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries. Eve wrote the New York Times Bestseller, I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life Of Girls Around The World. She then adapted it as a play which ran successfully in South Africa, Paris, Berkeley and Off-Broadway. She is the founder of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls, which has raised over 100 million dollars for grassroots organizations around the world. On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, it launched it's most ambitious campaign One Billion Rising which inspired one billion people in 207 countries to Strike Dance and Rise on Feb 14, 2013 for the freedom, safety and equality of women. With the women of Congo, V-Day opened and supports City of Joy In Bukavu, Congo, a revolutionary center where survivors of gender violence Turn Their Pain to Power.
MONIQUE C. HARDEN
Monique Harden is the co-director and attorney of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights (“AEHR”), a nonprofit, public interest law firm in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA that she co-founded with attorney Nathalie Walker in 2002. AEHR is dedicated to upholding our human right to live in a healthy environment. AEHR holds companies and the government accountable when this right is violated, and advocates for public policy that supports this right. With every step, AEHR educates people about their right to live in healthy communities.
On behalf of African Americans living in the historic community of Mossville, Louisiana, Ms. Harden and AEHR legal staff filed the first ever human rights petition that seeks fundamental change of the United States environmental regulatory system. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States recently deemed the petition to be admissible for a review on the merits, marking the first time the Commission has taken jurisdiction over a case of environmental racism in the United States. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil drilling disaster, AEHR is spearheading advocacy aimed at protecting the basic right of people harmed by a disaster to recover with dignity and justice. AEHR has raised public support for U.S. adoption of human rights standards for persons displaced by climate-induced disasters and protection of the human right to health for people exposed to toxic pollution from the BP disaster. Ms. Harden coordinates diverse international, national, and regional coalitions advocating for environmental justice and climate justice.
DONNA HYLTON
Donna Hylton is a Community Health Advocate for the Coming Home Program of St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in NYC. Coming Home is a special transition case-management and support program designed specifically for people who have been incarcerated and are returning to the community. In her capacity, Donna identifies and addresses the needs of clients transitioning home from prison and jail. Donna is also an active member of the Coalition for Women Prisoners, a statewide alliance of individuals and organizations dedicated to reforming the criminal justice system as it affects women, children and communities. Donna spent 27 years in prison where she was a key member of the Coalition’s “Violence Against Women Committee on the Inside.” She has participated in numerous panel discussions and public presentations, and has attended multiple lobby days with legislators in Albany since coming home. Donna is also an advocate with STEPS to End Family Violence, the state’s only Alternative-to-Incarceration program for survivors-defendants. Donna has a Bachelor of Science degree in Behavioral Science and a Master of Arts degree in English from Mercy College.
SARU JAYARAMAN
Saru Jayaraman is Co-Director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United) and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley. Initiated after 9/11, ROC has grown into a national restaurant workers’ organization with 10,000 members in 30 cities, 100 employer partners, more than two dozen published reports, more than a dozen campaign victories, and two cooperatively-owned restaurants. The story of ROC’s work has been chronicled in the book The Accidental American by Rinku Sen with Fekkak Mamdouh. Saru is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She was profiled in the New York Times “Public Lives” section, and as one of Crain’s “40 Under 40”, and one of New York Magazine’s “Influentials” of New York. She authored Behind the Kitchen Door, (Cornell, 2013), a national bestseller, and has appeared on CNN, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, MSNBC, the Today Show, and Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO.
SYLVIA MCADAM
Sylvia McAdam was born and raised on the Big River Reserve in Treaty Six Territory. She holds degrees in law and human justice and teaches at the First Nations University.
Sylvia McAdam is the author of the book Cultural Teachings: First Nations Protocols & Methodologies, a guide to appropriate traditional etiquette for individuals attending ceremonial activities of indigenous peoples in Saskatchewan.
Sylvia McAdam is one of four founders of the Idle No More movement which has gained world-wide recognition as a positive and “peaceful revolution to honour Indigenous sovereignty, and to protect the land and water.”