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Eddie Acosta,
AFL-CIO (5.4 Worker Centers: Organizing and Representing Day Laborers).
Eddie Acosta is responsible for coordinating the National Worker
Center-AFL-CIO Partnership, which encourages affiliation of worker centers
into central labor councils and state federations of labor. The
partnership’s goals are to identify and develop collaborative campaigns that
are mutually beneficial to unions and worker centers. For over 14
years prior to working with the AFL-CIO, he had been an organizer for
various unions, organizing in a number of sectors, including health care,
building services, public services, universities and hospitality.
Marisa
Aguayo,
National Immigration Law Center (NILC) (4.4 Countering the Rise of Nativist
Influence). Marisa Aguayo, NILC’s grants manager, develops
fund-raising strategies, researches funding prospects, and coordinates all
development-related communications activities for NILC. Prior to
joining NILC in 2004, she worked as a program director for the MultiCultural
Collaborative, a social justice organization created after Los Angeles’s
1992 civil unrest. Prior to that, she was a development associate for
El Rescate, a legal and social services agency serving immigrants in Los
Angeles.
Isabel
Alegria, California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC) (5.1 Framing
the Debate on Immigrants and Benefits). Isabel Alegria has been
CIPC’s communications director since 2001. Previously, she was
regional director for the MALDEF Census Outreach and Education Campaign for
northern California, Nevada, Washington, and Oregon. Before working in
policy advocacy and public affairs, Ms. Alegria pursued a career in
broadcasting for more than 20 years, most recently as a staff reporter based
in San Francisco from 1990-1995 for National Public Radio and, previous to
that, as an editor at NPR in Washington, DC. She cofounded the Latin
American News Service (LANS), a nationally syndicated program of news on
Latin America that originated at KPBS-FM in San Diego and was subsequently
based at radio station KXCR-FM in El Paso, Texas, until the late 1980s.
Joan C. Alker,
Center for Georgetown Children and Families, and Health Policy Institute of
Georgetown University (4.2 Addressing Immigrant Issues within a Children’s Health
Campaign). Joan Alker is the
deputy executive director of the Center for Georgetown Children and Families
and a senior researcher at the Health Policy Institute of Georgetown
University. Before coming to Georgetown, Ms. Alker worked as the
associate director of government affairs at Families USA. Her work
focuses primarily on public coverage for low-income families through
Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), state
Medicaid waivers, immigrants, and the intersection of public and private
coverage. Recent publications include a two-part primer on immigrants
and health coverage for the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured,
and she has conducted research for the Packard Foundation on states that
cover undocumented children.
Marcony Almeida, Massachusetts Immigrant
and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) (2.5 Best Practices/Lessons Learned
from Raids). Marcony Almeida is a policy associate at MIRA.
Before coming to MIRA, Mr. Almeida was the assistant director of the
Brazilian Immigrant Center in Boston, working primarily on workers’ rights
issues. At MIRA, Mr. Almeida is responsible for analyzing federal
immigration policy, coordinating advocacy actions among MIRA’s 100 member
organizations, providing training in citizenship and advocacy, and
coordinating the work of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Committee.
Sonal
Ambegaokar, National Immigration Law Center (NILC) (2.4
Preserving Access to Emergency Medicaid; 4.2
Addressing Immigrant Issues within a Children’s Health Campaign; 5.1 Framing the
Debate on Immigrants and Benefits; 7.3 Forging a New Policy Agenda on
Immigrants and Benefits: Strategy Session).
NILC health policy attorney Sonal Ambegaokar monitors, analyzes and makes
recommendations concerning federal, state and local policies affecting
low-income immigrants’ access to affordable health care. Prior to
joining NILC in 2005, she served as supervising attorney of the Health
Consumer Center of Los Angeles, a project of Neighborhood Legal Services of
Los Angeles County, overseeing a multi-language consumer hotline that
provides callers with help on a variety of health-related issues.
Prior to her law career, Ms. Ambegaokar worked for several years as a
business analyst. She earned her juris doctor degree from the
University of California at Davis.
Brooke
Anderson, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE)
(5.5 Responding to the Use of Social Security “No-Match” Letters). Brooke Anderson is the organizing director at EBASE, which works to
raise standards and build power for working families. She heads up
EBASE’s interfaith, living wage, and workplace immigrant and civil rights
organizing. Ms. Anderson recently led a campaign for a living wage
ordinance in Emeryville, California, where the Woodfin Suites Hotel locked
workers in an attic, fired 12 workers, and used its wealthy owner’s
connections to encourage U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to
intervene in a labor dispute. Currently, she is working to defeat the
Dept. of Homeland Security’s regulation on “no-match” letters and organize
worker resistance to other forms of ICE intervention in labor campaigns.
Before moving to Oakland to join EBASE in 2005, Ms. Anderson worked for nine
years as an organizer in Illinois.
Liz Arjun,
Center for Children and Families (CCF) (4.2 Addressing Immigrant Issues
within a Children’s Health Campaign). Liz Arjun is a state health policy analyst at CCF. She provides
assistance to state efforts to cover uninsured children, focusing on the
intersection between states activities and what is happening at the federal
level. Prior to joining CCF, Ms. Arjun was the lead health policy
staff at the Children’s Alliance in Washington State. At the
Children’s Alliance, she worked with other state advocates to develop a
proposal that eventually became the blueprint for Washington’s legislation
to cover all children that was signed into law in March 2007. Ms.
Arjun also served as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Spokane,
Washington, from 1997 to 1998. She holds master’s degrees in public
health and social work from the University of Washington and an
undergraduate degree in theological studies and psychology from Saint Louis
University.
Ana L.
Avendaño, AFL-CIO (6.5 Worksite Raids: Advocacy Strategies for
Protecting Workers). Ana Luisa
Avendaño serves as an associate general counsel and director of the
Immigrant Worker Program at the AFL-CIO. She provides legal and
technical analysis on matters related to immigration and workers’ rights to
labor unions and their members in all sectors of the U.S. economy, from
agriculture to high tech. Ms. Avendaño also handles international
matters related to migration for the AFL-CIO. She served as the U.S.
worker representative to the International Labor Organization (ILO)
Committee on Migration in 2004 and was appointed to serve on the ILO’s Panel
of Experts on Migration in 2005. Prior to joining the AFL-CIO, Ms.
Avendaño served as assistant general counsel to the 1.4 million-member
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, where she was
actively involved in the development of the labor movement’s historic call
for legalization and immigration reform. Ms. Avendaño also served in
the Appellate Court Branch of the National Labor Relations Board, and in
private practice in San Francisco, Calif., and Washington, DC. She is
a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and U.C. Berkeley.
Ruchika
Bajaj, Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF)
(3.3 Working Together to Bridge Immigrant Communities).
Ruchika Bajaj, health
policy coordinator for
CACF since 2005, is
responsible for implementing CACF’s Health Advocacy Project, which focuses
on improving access to health and mental health services for the Asian
Pacific American community. She
also
is involved in
conducting research on language barriers in the APA community, including
assessing the impact of language brokering on APA children and their
families. Ms. Bajaj also directed and produced a documentary film,
Recording Voices: Communicating with
Immigrant Families, to inform decisionmakers and community
members about the critical need for translation and interpretation services
in the public education and healthcare systems. She
also
has facilitated mental
health forums targeting South Asian communities and conducted trainings on
cultural competency for graduate students. Ms. Bajaj received her
masters in public health from Boston University School of Public Health, her
masters of science in social work from Columbia University School of Social
Work, and her bachelor of science from Xavier University.
Hope Bastian, Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC)
(3.2 Fighting State and Local Restrictions on Services for Immigrants).
Hope Bastian is the communications coordinator at FLIC, a statewide,
immigrant-led movement that brings together diverse organizations and
individuals in Florida to create an amplified voice for immigrants’ rights.
In 2006, FLIC succeeded in defeating one of the first local anti-immigrant
ordinances in the nation. Before joining FLIC, Ms. Bastian lived in
Cuba and Mexico, working with Witness for Peace, connecting Latin American
activists with U.S. citizens interested in learning first-hand about the
effects of U.S. foreign policy on people in Latin America and using their
power as voters to guide the U.S. towards a more positive role in the
region. Ms. Bastian has also worked as a freelance journalist.
She graduated from Guilford College in North Carolina, where she studied
sociology/anthropology and Spanish, researching and writing about the
growing Latino population in the rural South. As a student she spent
three summers with the UFCW in rural North Carolina, organizing black,
white, Indian, and Latino immigrant workers at Smithfield Foods, the world’s
largest pork slaughterhouse and packing plant.
Mary Bauer, Immigrant Justice Project of the
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) (7.4 Organizing and Advocacy Efforts for
Guest Workers). Mary Bauer is the director of the SPLC’s
Immigrant Justice Project, located in Montgomery, Alabama. The
Immigrant Justice Project represents farm workers and other low-wage
immigrant workers in high-impact cases in nine states in the South.
Ms. Baur graduated from the University of Virginia Law School in 1990.
Since that time, she has worked as an attorney representing low-wage
immigrant workers in employment and civil rights cases. Prior to
joining SPLC, she was the legal director of the Virginia Justice Center for
Farm and Immigrant Workers and the legal director of the Virginia ACLU.
Tim Bell, Chicago Workers’ Collaborative (5.5
Responding to the Use of Social Security “No-Match” Letters; 7.2
Train-the-Trainer: Social Security “No-Match” Letters).
Tim Bell has worked in popular education, worker rights, and organizing
projects in the Latino community of Chicago for 20 years. Prior to
becoming director of the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative, he worked as adult
education director at Erie Neighborhood House. In May of 2002, Erie
House was bombarded on a daily basis by hundreds of calls from workers who
were being fired due to Social Security “no-match” letters. Since that
time, Mr. Bell has worked with some degree of success to create strategies
that have enabled thousands of workers to keep their jobs.
Rebecca
Bernhardt, American Civil Liberties Union of Texas (7.1
Litigation and Policy Strategies Challenging State and Local Anti-Immigrant
Measures).
Rebecca Bernhardt is interim policy director for the ACLU of Texas. Immediately prior to joining the ACLU of Texas, she was a senior staff
attorney at the ACLU’s Drug Law Reform Project. A 1997 graduate of the
Yale Law School, Ms. Bernhardt began her legal career at Texas RioGrande
Legal Aid (TRLA), representing migrant and seasonal farm workers in cases
addressing nonpayment of wages and employment conditions. She then
clerked for Senior U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice and was a Liman
Public Interest Fellow at the Texas Lawyers’ Committee, drafting the legal
sections of a human rights manual for documenting immigration law
enforcement abuse. In 2001, Ms. Bernhardt returned to TRLA to start
the Border Issues Team, addressing immigration law enforcement abuse and
misconduct through litigation and in immigration proceedings. Later,
she directed TRLA’s program-wide individual rights litigation.
Josh Bernstein, National Immigration Law
Center (NILC) (4.5 Fortress America). Josh Bernstein, director
of federal policy for NILC, monitors, analyzes, and makes recommendations
regarding federal legislative and administrative developments affecting
immigrants, particularly in the areas of immigration law and the employment
and public benefits rights of low-income immigrants. Before joining
NILC in 1994, he served as a judicial clerk to the Hon. Harry Pregerson of
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Bernstein’s advocacy on behalf
of low-income persons dates back to 1982, when he was director of
Californians for a Fair Share, a statewide coalition of low-income families
and their allies that was formed to combat welfare cuts. He
subsequently served as a welfare advocate for the Legal Aid Foundation of
Los Angeles and the Inner City Law Center, a Los Angeles skid row legal
clinic. Mr. Bernstein holds a juris doctor from the University of
California (Boalt Hall).
Andrea Black, Detention Watch Network (DWN) (6.4 Locked Away).
Andrea Black is the coordinator of DWN, a national coalition working to
educate the public, media and policymakers about the injustices of the U.S.
immigration detention and deportation system and advocate for positive
reform. Previously she was executive director of the Florence
Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project in Arizona. She has over eight
years of field experience in immigration detention, working in a range of
capacities, including legal services, client empowerment, program
development, administration, and advocacy. As an Equal Justice Works
(formerly NAPIL) fellow in 1996, Ms. Black developed a pro se legal service
program for detained immigrants that was awarded the 2001 Peter F. Drucker
Award for Nonprofit Innovation. She also produced a bilingual
know-your-rights video that is broadcast in detention centers nationwide.
Ms. Black received a B.A. in history from Harvard-Radcliffe University and
is a 1996 graduate of New York University Law School.
David Blatt, Community Action Project (CAP)
(3.2 Fighting State and Local Restrictions on Services for Immigrants).
David Blatt has been the director of public policy for CAP since November 2000.
The public policy program he oversees is committed to providing timely and
effective information and advocacy on issues affecting low and
moderate-income Oklahomans. Mr. Blatt’s conducts research, writes
papers, and gives public presentations on topics including state budget and
tax policy, the legislative process, family economic self-sufficiency,
health care, child care, food assistance, immigration, and consumer
protection. He led a statewide committee that helped develop and
release The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Oklahoma and chairs the Alliance
for Oklahoma’s Future, a broad-based coalition geared at promoting fair and
adequate budget and tax policy. Mr. Blatt was a budget analyst for the
state Senate for three years prior to joining CAP. He has a Ph.D. in
political science from Cornell University and a B.A. from the University of
Alberta.
Jonathan Blazer, National Immigration Law Center (NILC) (3.2
Fighting State and Local Restrictions on Services for Immigrants; 4.1
Preventing the Dismantling of Social Security).
See
“101 & 102 Session (Basic Training)
Presenters” for profile.
Tanya Broder, National Immigration Law Center (NILC) (3.2
Fighting State and Local Restrictions on Services for Immigrants;
5.2 Access
to Child Care and Early Education for Immigrant Families). Tanya
Broder, NILC’s public benefits policy director, focuses primarily on
analyzing the ways in which federal, state, and local governments have been
implementing the welfare and immigration laws passed in 1996. She
writes articles and policy analyses, provides technical assistance,
co-counsels litigation, and presents trainings to legal and social service
providers, legislative staff, and community-based organizations.
Before joining NILC in 1996 she worked as a policy analyst for the Northern
California Coalition for Immigrant Rights and as a staff attorney for the
Legal Aid Society of Alameda County in Oakland. Ms. Broder holds a
juris doctor from Yale Law School.
Devin Burghart, Center for New Community (4.4
Countering the Rise of Nativist Influence). Devin Burghart is
director of the Center for New Community’s Building Democracy Initiative, a
Chicago-based national program to defend civil and human rights. Mr.
Burghart is an internationally recognized expert on nativism and white
nationalist movements. He has researched, written, and organized on
all facets of the anti-immigrant movement for more than a decade. His
latest book, Lady Liberty No More: The New Nativism in the United States,
will be published later this year. In 2002, he helped develop the
groundbreaking Welcoming Iowa Coalition, a statewide organizing model for
addressing anti-immigrant sentiment that has now been emulated in several
states. He is also campaign director for the Campaign for a United
America. In 2007, Mr. Burghart was named a Petra Foundation Fellow for
his distinctive contributions to the rights, autonomy, and dignity of
others. He presently serves on the board of the Institute for Research
and Education on Human Rights and the advisory board of the Institute for
the Study of Academic Racism.
Carly Burton, Massachusetts Immigrant and
Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) (2.5 Best Practices/Lessons Learned from
Raids). Carly Burton is a policy associate at MIRA. A
graduate of the Boston University School of Social Work, Ms. Burton works to
improve access to public programs for immigrants and refugees in
Massachusetts. At MIRA, she has focused on legislative advocacy to
restore MassHealth benefits for immigrants and increase funding for services
for immigrant victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. She
also works to increase funding for the Citizenship for New Americans
program, which funds community-based organizations to help immigrants
naturalize. Ms. Burton currently is on the board of African Community
Health Initiatives, and has participated in the Massachusetts Institute for
Community Health Leadership. Prior to working at MIRA, she coordinated
a literacy tutoring program at the Bird Street Community Center in
Dorchester. Her experience also includes research on improving
training in social policy and legislative advocacy for geriatric social
workers at the Institute for Geriatric Social Work of Boston University.
Gabriel Camacho, American Friends Service
Committee (AFSC) (7.4 Organizing and Advocacy Efforts for Guest Workers).
Gabriel Camacho, a regional organizer for Project Voice of the AFSC, works
with undocumented workers on labor rights campaigns and wage recovery
actions. He also is involved in media work, local and national
mobilizations, and international forums on migrant workers’ rights.
Mr. Camacho has worked for SEIU in upstate New York, and in Massachusetts as
a business agent and contract negotiator in the 1990s, and later as an
organizer with HERE. He founded the Massachusetts chapter of the Labor
Council for Latin
American Advancement, an AFL-CIO constituency group, in 1999. He also
is currently an active member of UNITE HERE Local 66L. Born in
the South Bronx, Mr. Camacho was raised by his Colombian mother, a longtime
garment worker, and Mexican father, a former Bracero and longtime cook, in
the 1960s. While a student at the SUNY in Albany, Mr. Camacho was
conducting his archaeological field work in El Ki'che, Guatemala, in 1979
when he witnessed the military occupation of the Maya highlands. He
also has attended Suffolk University’s School of Advanced Law Studies in
Boston.
Elizabeth Camargo, Border Network for Human
Rights (BNHR) (4.5 Fortress America). Elizabeth Camargo is a
program coordinator for BNHR, having begun working at the organization eight
years ago as a human rights promoter. She now oversees different
projects, including the annual Documentation Campaign, in which human rights
promoters in each region document abuses by government authorities against
members of immigrant communities. She was responsible within BNHR for
coordinating the Youth for Human Rights Project, which consisted of
teenagers (ages 13 to 19) who are concerned about human rights and the
issues affecting their communities. With this experience of organizing
a variety of committees and youth, she joined BNHR’s Organizing Committee
and has continued to contribute to the struggle for comprehensive
immigration reform.
Kristina M. Campbell, Mexican American
Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) (7.1 Litigation and Policy
Strategies Challenging State and Local Anti-Immigrant Measures).
Kristina Campbell is a staff attorney with MALDEF in Los Angeles, California.
Her litigation focuses on the intersection of employment, immigration, and
constitutional law in both state and federal court. She is the author
of “Anti-Immigrant Ordinances: A Legal, Policy, and Litigation Analysis,” 84
Den. U.L.R. 1041 (2007), and has given numerous presentations across the
country on immigrants’ rights. Prior to joining MALDEF, Ms. Campbell
worked for the statewide farm worker programs at Community Legal Services in
Phoenix, Arizona, and Central Virginia Legal Aid Society in Charlottesville,
Virginia. She received her bachelor of arts from Saint Mary’s College
(Indiana) in 1997 and her juris doctor from the University of Notre Dame Law
School in 2002.
Daniel Castellanos, New Orleans
Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (7.4 Organizing and Advocacy Efforts for
Guest Workers). Daniel Castellanos, who is from Peru, is an
organizer with the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. Mr.
Castellanos came to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina on an H-2B visa to
work for a hotel tycoon. He soon organized his coworkers for better
conditions. When he was fired for his organizing, he became a major
spokesperson on the realities of the guest worker program. In January
2007, Mr. Castellanos and other guest workers founded the Alliance of
Guestworkers for Dignity, a membership organization of guest workers that
works against international human labor trafficking. Daniel enjoys
organizing, football, and the Harry Potter saga.
Rini Chakraborty, Sweatshop Watch (4.3
Industry-specific Strategies in the Greater Struggle for Workers’ Rights).
Rini Chakraborty is the executive director of Sweatshop Watch, a
California-wide coalition committed to eliminating the exploitation and
abuse that occur in sweatshops. Founded in 1995 after a
slave-sweatshop was discovered in El Monte, Calif., Sweatshop Watch employs
public policy advocacy, worker leadership development, consumer education,
and corporate accountability campaigns to counter sweatshops’ root causes.
Previously, Ms. Chakraborty was a senior policy analyst/post 9-11 organizer
for the ACLU of Southern California. She also served as director and
principle policy advocate for the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative
(now called the California Immigrant Policy Center), a statewide partnership
of immigrant rights organizations dedicated to promoting the health and
well-being of immigrant communities. Prior to that, Ms. Chadraborty
worked with the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the
ACLU of Northern California.
Kathy Chan, Illinois Maternal and Child Health
Coalition (IMCHC) (4.2 Addressing Immigrant Issues within a Children’s
Health Campaign). Kathy Chan is policy director for IMCHC,
where she directs the agency’s advocacy efforts for its four main projects.
Ms. Chan also worked at IMCHC as the project director for Covering Kids and
Families Illinois. Her duties included coalition building, supervising
two local outreach projects, and creating and implementing strategies to
institutionalize SCHIP and Medicaid outreach and enrollment. Ms. Chan
took a break from working with IMCHC to work for the Illinois Dept. of
Healthcare and Family Services (HFS), where she assisted with the
implementation of All Kids, Illinois’ universal coverage program for
children. At HFS, she also was involved with policy development and
strategic outreach for other health care programs offered by the state of
Illinois. Prior to her job with IMCHC, Ms. Chan was an organizer for
Green Corps, a field school for environmental organizing. She
graduated with a B.A. in English from Northwestern University.
Camila Chávez, Dolores Huerta Foundation
(DHF) (7.1 Litigation and Policy Strategies Challenging State and Local
Anti-Immigrant Measures). Camila Chávez is co-founder and
executive director of DHF. From DHF headquarters in Bakersfield,
California, Ms. Chávez oversees training for low-income community members in
the areas of leadership and organizing skills specific to civic and
electoral participation so that they can become catalysts for change in
their own communities. Among her accomplishments while at DHF, Ms.
Chávez helped establish grassroots community organizations in Lamont, Arvin,
and Weedpatch, California; engaged in a successful collaboration with the
Kern County Board of Elections to place a bilingual poll worker at every
polling site in Kern County; and helped defeat an anti-immigrant resolution
proposed in the Bakersfield City Council in September 2007. She is a
graduate of Mills College in Oakland, California, where she served as a
campaign coordinator for the Stop Prop. 209 Campaign, which fought to save
affirmative action in California.
Shiu Ming Cheer, South Asian Network (4.5 Fortress America).
Shiu-Ming Cheer is the civil rights coordinator for South Asian Network,
where she works with the South Asian community in the areas of immigration,
detention/deportation, hate crimes/discrimination, police brutality, workers
rights, and tenants’ rights. Her unit pays particular attention to
organizing youth and raising awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, queer, and intersex rights and issues. Previously, she
worked with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) and with the
Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project in Florence, Arizona. Ms.
Cheer also has worked with grassroots groups on issues such as affirmative
action, garment workers’ rights, prison abolition, and opposition to the
deportation of Central American and Southeast Asian gang members. She
has participated in international mobilizations against the World Trade
Organization and the proposed South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
Ms. Cheer received her B.A. in ethnic studies and English from U.C. Berkeley
in 1996 and her J.D. from UCLA School of Law in 2000, graduating from the
Program in Public Interest Law & Policy.
Sarah
Cherin, Children’s Alliance (4.2 Addressing Immigrant Issues
within a Children’s Health Campaign).
Sarah Cherin has been at the Children’s Alliance since 2005. She
serves as the agency’s lobbyist and brings a great passion for children and
families. In her role, Ms. Cherin represents the Alliance in Olympia,
Washington, by leading staff governmental relations, and oversees the
staffing of the volunteer Public Policy Council. This past session she
was the lead lobbyist on the Cover All Kids initiative in Washington State.
Ms. Cherin was born in Long Beach, California, and attended New York
University, receiving her undergraduate degree in communication studies.
Before coming to the Alliance, she worked in the state legislature as a
legislative staff person.
Steve
Choi, YKASEC – Empowering the Korean American Community (2.2
Representing Immigrant Workers: Rights & Remedies). Steve Choi is program director at YKASEC and is director of the Korean
Community Law Project, which provides direct legal services free of charge
to low-wage Korean immigrants. Since Sept. 2004, the Project has filed
over 25 cases in conjunction with the Asian American Legal Defense and
Education Fund (AALDEF) and represented more than 50 workers against
employers who have violated the rights of Korean immigrant workers.
The Project has secured nearly $700,000 in total settlements, court
victories, and awards on behalf of these workers. Through community
education and outreach, the Project seeks to protect the rights of Korean
immigrant workers and to help them achieve social and economic justice.
Mr. Choi was formerly a staff attorney at AALDEF, and his previous legal
experience includes working for the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center in
Massachusetts, Greater Boston Legal Services, and the Asian Pacific American
Legal Center (APALC) of Los Angeles. He received his B.A. from
Stanford University in history and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Mr. Choi was selected as a Skadden Fellow in 2004-2006.
D.
Michael Dale, Northwest Workers’ Justice Project (4.6
What’s Law Got to Do With It? How Organizers & Lawyers Collaborate to
Advance Social Justice).
D. Michael Dale is executive director of the Northwest Workers’ Justice
Project, a non-publicly funded legal services program to represent immigrant
and contingent low-wage workers, which he founded in 2003. He was a
Legal Services lawyer from 1975 until 2001, during which time he was at
various points the director of Oregon’s migrant law program, and director of
litigation at both Oregon Legal Services and the Oregon Law Center.
Since 2001, he has been representing farm workers as a private lawyer and is
“of counsel” to Texas Rio Grande Legal Assistance and the Southern Migrant
Legal Services programs. Mr. Dale has worked for many years as counsel
to Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) and is currently advising
the VOZ Day Labor Education Project.
Krista DelGallo, Texas Council on Family Violence (3.6 Legal
Remedies and Access to Benefits for Immigrant Survivors of Violence). Krista DelGallo is a policy manager at the Texas Council on
Family Violence. Her work focuses primarily on the laws, policies and
services impacting the economic stability of survivors of violence.
She also dedicates research and time to the intersection of public benefits
and immigration law as it impacts immigrant survivors’ ability to achieve
safety. Ms. DelGallo has been working within the domestic violence and
sexual assault movements for over 13 years. She has done case
management, children’s advocacy, legal advocacy and training at crisis
programs in rural Indiana, the Rosebud Lakota Reservation in South Dakota,
and in Austin, Texas. She is a graduate of Indiana University and
holds an interdisciplinary bachelor’s, with a concentration in social work
and minors in gender studies, sociology and philosophy.
Jennifer Deng-Pickett, DC Language Access Coalition (3.5 Advocating for Language Access).
Jennifer Deng-Pickett is the community
organizer for the DC Language Access Coalition. Her professional
experience includes being the Maryland program manager at Asian American
LEAD (Leadership, Empowerment and Development), events and communications
manager for the Leadership for a Changing World program at the Advocacy
Institute, Spanish teacher at Bladensburg High School, and Paralegal at
Vinson & Elkins, LLP. She has experience in grassroots fundraising,
coalition building, education and training, personal and organizational
sustainability, executive transitions, communications and media, event
planning and policy advocacy. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Jennifer
received her undergraduate degrees in Spanish and international studies from
Austin College, and her master’s degree in peace and development studies
from the University of Limerick in Limerick, Ireland.
Kéren E. Charles Dongo, Tenants and Workers United (TWU) (5.6
Building Bridges Between Immigrant and Citizen Communities of Color).
Kéren E. Charles Dongo is the policy and communications director for TWU.
Her current work at TWU allows her to work with African Americans and
Latinos daily on issues such as education, health, and immigration.
Previously, Ms. Dongo has worked with members of Congress representing the
needs of diverse communities. Her multicultural work and background
continues to demonstrate that economic, social, and political power is
gained when diverse cultural groups work in unity. She holds a
B.A. in political science and an M.A. in government.
Francisco Dueñas, Lambda Legal (6.6 Gender, Identity, and Sexual
Orientation: Distinctive Challenges for Immigrant Populations).
Francisco Dueñas is the national Proyecto Igualdad outreach associate for
Lambda Legal’s Western Regional Office. He is responsible for
informing the many Latino communities about Lambda Legal’s cases and the
rights of LGBT and HIV-positive people. He helps create and implement
Lambda Legal’s Latino-specific public education campaigns aimed at
persuading and challenging the Latino public to support the expansion of
civil rights for LGBT and HIV-positive people. Mr. Dueñas also tracks
and reports the needs of Latino LGBT and HIV-positive communities across the
country. Prior to joining Lambda Legal, Mr. Dueñas worked as a
community and political organizer with Los Angeles ACORN, organizing
low-to-moderate-income residents of South Los Angeles, and was an AmeriCorps
VISTA member, working at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center’s Safe Haven
Project, organizing LGBTQ youth against antigay violence in three L.A.
Unified School District high schools.
Gloria
Contreras Edin, Centro Legal, Inc. (2.5 Best Practices/Lessons
Learned from Raids).
Gloria Contreras Edin is executive director of
Centro Legal, Inc., the largest Latino nonprofit legal institution in the
Midwest. The Minnesota law firm not only provides legal services to
low-income Latinas/os in the areas of immigration and family law, it also
seeks to empower the community through legal education and the promotion of
civic engagement. Ms. Contreras Edin’s vision has directed the firm
toward litigation that seeks to influence policy affecting immigrants at the
local and national levels and to educate the community on the benefits of
cultural diversity and positive cross-cultural relationships. Ms.
Contreras Edin also serves on several boards, including that of the Latino
Economic Development Center, a nonprofit whose mission is to further
economic justice within the Latino community. Currently, she leads
litigation in two federal lawsuits regarding immigration raids that occurred
in Worthington, Willmar, and Austin, Minnesota. Ms. Contreras Edin was
born to Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles, California, and raised there.
Gabriela Flora,
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) (3.2 Fighting State and Local
Restrictions on Services for Immigrants).
Gabriela Flora is Project Voice regional organizer for AFSC, a Quaker
international peace and social justice organization. Project Voice
works to strengthen immigrant rights in the U.S. and mitigate the factors
that force people to leave their home countries. Ms. Flora’s work
encompasses public education, including media work; community organizing;
policy education; and alliance-building with a range of immigrant rights,
community, labor and faith groups. She is on the steering committees
of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition and Colorado Jobs with Justice,
and is a board member of the Denver Justice and Peace Committee. Prior
to joining AFSC, Ms. Flora was a program associate at the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis. She has conducted
research on globalization and migration in the U.S. Midwest, Ecuador,
Brazil, and the Philippines. Born in Colombia, Ms. Flora has also
lived in Nicaragua and Bolivia. She obtained her master’s degree in
environmental anthropology from the University of Georgia.
Adam Francoeur, Immigration Equality (6.6
Gender, Identity, and Sexual Orientation: Distinctive Challenges for
Immigrant Populations). Adam Francoeur is policy coordinator at
Immigration Equality, a national organization fighting for equal immigration
rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive
community. Mr. Francoeur leads the national effort to pass the Uniting
American Families Act, a family fairness bill that would end immigration
discrimination against same-sex couples. In addition, he works with
immigration coalition partners to analyze and publicize how pending
immigration proposals would affect LGBT and HIV-positive immigrants.
Mr. Francoeur received his bachelor’s degree in international affairs from
George Washington University. Before joining Immigration Equality, he
worked for immigration attorneys Richard S. Bromberg and Elizabeth H.
McGrail, assisting them in preparing asylum claims based on sexual
orientation, Violence Against Women Act petitions, naturalization and green
card applications, and nonimmigrant visa petitions.
Larry Frankel, American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania
(3.2 Fighting State and Local Restrictions on Services for Immigrants).
Larry Frankel is legislative director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, where he
began working in the fall of 1992. From 1996 through 2001, he served
as the organization’s executive director. Throughout his affiliation
with the ACLU, Mr. Frankel has been its lobbyist in Harrisburg, the state
capital, and its primary spokesperson on legislative matters in
Pennsylvania. He lobbies on issues such as the death penalty,
reproductive freedom, gay and lesbian rights, the First Amendment, criminal
justice reform, voting rights, and racial profiling. Mr. Frankel
attended the University of California at Berkeley for his undergraduate
education as well as his legal education.
Tim
Freilich, Immigrant Advocacy Program of the Legal Aid Justice
Center (1.4 Electronic Employment Verification Systems: No Magic Bullet; 6.3 Challenging Efforts to Turn Local Police into Immigration Agents).
Tim Freilich is legal director of the Legal Aid Justice Center’s Immigrant
Advocacy Program (formerly known as the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and
Immigrant Workers). LAJC supports low-wage immigrant workers in their
efforts to find justice and fair treatment in the workplace. Mr.
Freilich earned his B.A. and law degrees at the University of Virginia,
where he received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Public Service.
Following graduation from law school in 1999, he began representing migrant
farm workers with LAJC in Charlottesville, Virginia, on a fellowship from
the law firm of Skadden Arps. In September 2001, he opened LAJC’s northern
Virginia office to work with the region’s day laborers and other low-wage
immigrant workers. He returned to Charlottesville in September 2005, where
he continues to work with Virginia’s low-wage immigrant workers.
Shawn
Fremstad, Inclusion, and Center for Economic and Policy Research
(5.1 Framing the Debate on Immigrants and Benefits). Shawn
Fremstad is co-director of Inclusion, a new progressive policy think tank in
Washington, DC, and interim director of the Bridging the Gaps project at the
Center for Economic and Policy Research. He worked for many years at
the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, DC, and before
that as an attorney and policy specialist for legal aid programs in
Minnesota. Mr. Fremstad is a graduate of the University of Minnesota
Law School and has studied art and design at the Maryland Institute College
of Art and the Corcoran College of Art + Design.
Joan Friedland, National Immigration Law
Center (NILC) (1.6 Driver’s Licenses and IDs: Profound Problems for
Immigrant Families;
3.4 Increased Criminalization, Decreased Rights: Part I;
6.3 Challenging Efforts to Turn Local Police into Immigration
Agents). Joan Friedland, NILC’s immigration policy director,
focuses on post-9/11 documentation, data base, and information-sharing
policy issues affecting low-income immigrants. Before joining NILC in 2002,
she had a long career as a lawyer for nonprofit organizations and in private
practice in New Mexico and Florida, and has litigated many civil rights and
immigration cases. Ms. Friedland holds a juris doctor from Harvard Law
School.
Elias
Garcia, Kansas Department of Corrections (1.5 Taking the Offensive in
Support of Immigrant Rights). Elias Garcia has over 25 years of
experience in the areas of public service, education, nonprofit
organizations, and the private sector. Currently, he serves full-time
as diversity recruitment coordinator for the Kansas Dept. of Corrections,
and part-time as a consultant to the University of Kansas provost. His
previous positions include executive director, Kansas Hispanic and Latino
Affairs, Office of the Governor; executive director, Topeka Human Relations
Commission; instructor, Kansas State University, Manhattan; and private
consultant, counselor/grant-writer, SER Corp. Mr. Garcia was born in
Pueblo, Colorado, one of thirteen children, to undocumented parents from
Mexico, and raised in a migrant/farm-worker family. He has a B.A. in
liberal arts from Wichita State University, and an M.S. in education from
Kansas State University.
Keila
Garcia, Oklahoma Child Care Resource and Referral Association
(5.2 Access to Child Care and Early Education for Immigrant Families). Keila Garcia is the Hispanic services coordinator for
the Oklahoma Child Care Resource and Referral Association. She has
developed the Hispanic project to serve Spanish-speaking families and
providers. She helps families with referrals to child care options and
information about what quality care is. She also supports providers
that serve Hispanic families with cultural awareness information and assist
Spanish-speaking providers with technical assistance and training needs.
Ms. Garcia has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and several years’
experience working with Latino immigrant families in various settings.
She was born and raised in Mexico and immigrated to Oklahoma in 1999.
She is proud to be the mother of three beautiful and very active children:
Rachel who is 6 years, Haziel who is 5 years, and Jafet who is 3 years old.
Lilia
García, Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund (MCTF) (4.6 What’s Law
Got to Do With It? How Organizers & Lawyers Collaborate to Advance Social
Justice). Lilia García is executive director of MCTF, a
watchdog organization with offices in Los Angeles, Orange County (Calif.),
and San Diego that investigates janitorial contractors for employment law
violations. To accomplish its mission of abolishing illegal and unfair
business practices from the industry, MCTF applies a four-prong approach:
impact employment law investigation, agency reform, legislative reform, and
education and outreach. These strategies’ long-term objective is to
increase accountability among companies that contract janitorial services.
MCTF has helped collect more than $27 million for immigrant janitors in the
U.S. and Mexico, and has brought more than 4,000 jobs from the exploitive
predatory economy into compliance with minimal standards, thereby increasing
employment stability for janitors and creating a more level playing field
for responsible contractors throughout California. In June 2007, Ms. García was appointed by California’s governor to the labor seat of the
California Dept. of Insurance’s Fraud Assessment Commission.
Rosa M. García, Hispanic Association of
Colleges and Universities (HACU) (7.5 Keeping the DREAM Alive: Next Steps). As
HACU’s executive director of legislative affairs, Rosa M. García advocates
at the federal level on behalf of 260 Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs)
and more than 450 HACU member institutions on higher education policy issues
affecting HSIs and Latino student achievement. Formerly, Ms. García
served as a senior legislative aide to Montgomery County (Maryland)
Councilmember Tom Perez, for whom she covered immigration, health care,
adult education, early childhood education and civil rights issues. Ms.
García also has taught youth and adults in numerous educational settings.
She holds a master’s from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she
was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellows in Teaching scholarship in urban
education reform. Ms. García also received a master’s in public
administration from Baruch College, City University of New York. Most
recently, she was appointed to the Maryland State Board of Education by Gov.
Martin O’Malley. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrants.
Patrick
M. Garland, Youngstarz, LLC (4.4 Countering the Rise of Nativist Influence).
Patrick M. Garland currently is a teacher for Prince William County
(Virginia) schools. In addition to teaching, Mr. Garland is the
managing partner of Youngstarz, LLC, a mentoring program that works with
at-risk students throughout the Washington, DC, metropolitan community.
Mr. Garland was born in Richmond, Virginia, the son of John A. Garland, a
native of Kingston, Jamaica, and Beatrice L. Garland. He graduated
from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in criminal justice and
a concentration in pre-law. He then began a graduate degree program in
education at George Mason University.
Matt
Ginsburg, Employment Opportunity Project of the Chicago Lawyers’
Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (1.4 Electronic Employment Verification
Systems: No Magic Bullet). Matt Ginsburg is a staff attorney
and Skadden Fellow in the Employment Opportunity Project, where he focuses
on the workplace rights of immigrants. During this past year, he
helped the Illinois AFL-CIO and area worker centers get state legislation
passed that protects the workplace and privacy rights of workers whose
employers use the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security’s Basic Pilot/E-Verify
employment eligibility verification program.
Jacinta
Gonzalez G., Congress of Day Laborers, and New Orleans Workers’
Center for Racial Justice (6.3 Challenging Efforts to Turn Local Police into
Immigration Agents). Jacinta Gonzalez G. is an organizer with
the Congress of Day Laborers and the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial
Justice. A recent Wesleyan graduate and New Voices Fellow, Ms.
Gonzalez moved to New Orleans this past summer. Previously, she worked
as a youth educator and organizer with the Center for Adolescents of San
Miguel de Allende (CASA) in Guanajuato, Mexico. The Congress of Day
Laborers is an organization of workers dedicated to building power to find
solutions that address problems such as police brutality and harassment,
wage theft, unsafe working conditions, trafficking, and restricted access to
health services.
Monica Guizar, National Immigration Law Center (NILC) (3.1
Overview of Employment-related Immigration Enforcement Tools; 5.5
Responding to the Use of Social Security “No-Match” Letters; 7.2
Train-the-Trainer: Social Security “No-Match” Letters).
See
“101 & 102 Session (Basic Training)
Presenters” for profile.
Adam Gurvitch, The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) (3.5 Advocating for Language Access).
Adam Gurvitch is the director of health
advocacy at NYIC, a nonprofit umbrella policy and advocacy organization for
more than 200 groups in New York State that work with immigrants and
refugees. At the NYIC, Mr. Gurvitch directs legislative, civil rights,
and policy advocacy campaigns aimed at improving access to health care and
defending immigrants’ rights at the local, state, and national levels.
He has led successful campaigns to expand health insurance coverage,
hospital financial assistance, and interpreter services for immigrants.
Prior to joining the NYIC, Mr. Gurvitch established the first national
HIV/AIDS prevention program in Hungary, and earlier worked with the American
National Red Cross to create community-based and workplace-centered health
promotion programs across the U.S. He holds a master of science degree
from the New School University - Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban
Policy, and earned a bachelor of business administration degree from the
Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison.
Lucas Guttentag, ACLU Immigrants’
Rights Project (ACLU/IRP) (5.3 Increased Criminalization, Decreased Rights:
Part II). Lucas Guttentag is the founding national director of the
Immigrants’ Rights Project of the ACLU, with offices in San Francisco and
New York. The IRP recently won a legal challenge against Hazleton,
Pennsylvania, to strike down its anti-immigrant ordinance; joined NILC and
the AFL-CIO to enjoin the Dept. of Homeland Security’s new Social Security
“no-match” regulation; and is litigating numerous cases to remedy
naturalization delays, challenge immigration detention policies, and
preserve access to the courts for non-U.S. citizens. Mr. Guttentag is
a nationally recognized expert on immigration law and civil liberties who
has argued cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts nationwide,
testified before Congress, spoken throughout the country, and received many
awards for his work. He also teaches at Boalt Hall and Stanford Law
Schools. He is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and Harvard Law School.
Jack Holtzman, North Carolina Justice
Center (1.6 Driver’s Licenses and IDs: Profound Problems for Immigrant
Families). Jack Holtzman is a staff attorney with the
North Carolina Justice Center, in Raleigh. He has worked with
immigrant community groups and state officials to promote greater immigrant
access to education and public benefits in North Carolina. Mr.
Holtzman has practiced civil rights law since 1985.
J. Traci Hong, Immigration Subcommittee,
Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives (3.4 Increased
Criminalization, Decreased Rights: Part I). J. Traci Hong is a
counsel for the Immigration Subcommittee, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S.
House of Representatives. Before she joined the subcommittee, Ms. Hong
directed the Immigration Program at the Asian American Justice Center.
At AAJC, she advocated for the rights of Asian American immigrants and their
families before Congress, administrative agencies and federal courts.
Prior to joining AAJC, Ms. Hong worked as a staff attorney at the American
Immigration Law Foundation, where she engaged in impact litigation on behalf
of immigrants and provided technical assistance to immigration litigators
nationwide. She began her career as an attorney at the law firm of
Tidwell, Swaim & Associates in Dallas, Texas, where she practiced in all
aspects of immigration law.
Mireya
Hurtado,
Deputy Chief of Staff for Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich (1.5 Taking
the Offensive in Support of Immigrant Rights).
In her role as deputy chief of staff for Governor Blagojevich, Mireya Hurtado
supervises the Illinois Depts. of Labor, Financial and Professional
Regulation, and Human Rights, as well as the Illinois Commerce Commission
and Workers’ Compensation Commission. She also supports the governor’s
initiatives on immigrant integration, including the New Americans
Initiative, a partnership with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and
Refugee Rights dedicated to assisting eligible applicants file for
naturalization. To date, the program has assisted over 20,000 Illinois
residents in applying for U.S. citizenship. Previously, Ms. Hurtado
was director of the Office of Hispanic/Latino Affairs at the Illinois Dept.
of Human Services (IDHS), working to ensure that the Latino and immigrant
communities had access to IDHS’s services. Born in the Chicago
neighborhood of Pilsen to Mexican immigrant parents, Ms. Hurtado is the
youngest of six children and a first generation college graduate. At
Williams College, she majored in political science and minored in women’s
and gender studies.
Omar Jadwat,
ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project (ACLU/IRP) (7.1
Litigation and Policy
Strategies Challenging State and Local Anti-Immigrant Measures).
Omar Jadwat is staff counsel with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, where
he has worked since 2002. He is IRP’s primary counsel in numerous
challenges to state and local anti-immigrant initiatives, including the
Hazleton, Pennsylvania, case. His practice also includes litigation on
a number of other due process, enforcement, and judicial review issues.
Benita Jain,
New York State Defenders Association (NYSDA) Immigrant Defense Project (IDP)
(3.4 Increased
Criminalization, Decreased Rights: Part I). Benita Jain is a
staff attorney at the NYSDA Immigrant Defense Project, where she advises
criminal defense lawyers, community-based organizations, and families on the
immigration consequences of criminal dispositions. She is also on the
board of directors for Families for Freedom, a multi-ethnic network by and
for immigrants facing and fighting deportation. Ms. Jain graduated
from NYU School of Law and joined IDP as a Soros Justice Fellow in 2003.
Prior to law school, she spent several years doing media, alliance building,
grassroots fundraising, and field mobilization around environmental and
campaign finance reform issues in New Jersey.
Deeana Jang, Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum (3.5 Advocating for Language Access). See
“101 & 102 Session (Basic Training)
Presenters” for profile.
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