Speaker Bios
Azadeh Shahshahani
Azadeh Shahshahani is the Director of the newly launched National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Georgia. The project is aimed at advocating for immigrant communities in Georgia who have experienced grave erosion of their civil liberties in the post 9/11 atmosphere.
Shahshahani previously served as Interim Legal Director for the ACLU of Georgia. Before her move to Atlanta, she worked with the ACLU of North Carolina as Muslim/Middle Eastern Community Outreach Coordinator. In that capacity, she initiated a statewide campaign against racial profiling; coordinated a Continuing Legal Education seminar to train attorneys to represent Muslim and Middle Eastern clients facing civil liberties violations; and led a statewide campaign calling for the investigation of a North Carolina-based air carrier which has transported foreign nationals to torture and detention.
Shahshahani is a 2004 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, where she was a participant in the Third Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law and served as Article Editor for The Michigan Journal of International Law. While in law school, Shahshahani completed a fellowship with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington, DC; a research fellowship with a women’s rights organization in Iran; as well as an internship with an immigrants’ rights organization in Los Angeles.
Hernan Taylor & Lee
Hernan Taylor & Lee is a full service law firm focused on defending the rights of immigrants. The firm was formed in 2002 by Jamie Hernan, Chris Taylor and Jerome Lee, who had met while practicing law at King & Spalding and who shared a mutual desire to represent the underserved immigrant community in Georgia.
Jamie Hernan is a native of Atlanta and a graduate of the University of Georgia (BBA), Auburn University (BA) and Duke University (JD). He is a member of the ACLU of Georgia’s Legal Committee. Chris Taylor was born in Alabama and moved to Georgia as a teenager. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University (BA) and Emory University (JD). Jerome Lee was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia and is a graduate of Harvard University (AB) and Stanford Law School (JD). Hernan Taylor & Lee serves clients in the areas of immigration, civil litigation, criminal defense, tort litigation (personal injury and workers compensation), family law and business representation.
Hernan Taylor & Lee has been at the forefront of the immigrants’ modern day civil rights struggle for years and has publicly advocated for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level and the withdrawal from consideration or repeal of anti-immigrant legislation at the state and local level.
The firm first started working with the ACLU in 2006 in response to the consideration, and later passage, of an unconstitutional housing ordinance in Cherokee County, Georgia. Hernan Taylor & Lee, the ACLU, MALDEF and Troutman Sanders worked together as a coalition and filed suit in federal court to obtain an injunction halting any potential enforcement against the immigrant community in Cherokee County.
The firm has been profiled in local and national press extensively and has received numerous accolades including MALDEF’s Excellence in Legal Service Award, nomination for Small Business of the Year by the Mexican American Business Chamber, Person of Year nomination for Jamie Hernan by Atlanta Latino magazine and others.
Christopher C. Taylor
Christopher Taylor's practice focuses on immigration and criminal defense as well as civil rights and general litigation. Mr. Taylor is counsel for various Latin American Consulates and has been retained by the Mexican Government to handle sensitive cases in Georgia. Chris is a featured guest on many local radio and television programs and is a guest speaker at many civil rights conferences.
Prior to forming Hernan Taylor & Lee, Chris was an attorney in the Atlanta office of international law firm King & Spalding, working in the Private Equity and Corporate Finance practice groups.
Mr. Taylor is a 2001 graduate of the Emory University Law School and a 1999 graduate of Brigham Young University where he majored in International Politics.
Chris speaks fluent Spanish, having learned the language by living for two years in Mexico City, Mexico. Chris is married and has three daughters. He and his wife Veronica, who is from Mexico actively serve the Latino community within their church.
Adelina C. Nicholls
Adelina Nicholls was born in México City, with studies in Sociology graduated from Political and Social Sciences College at the Autonomous National University of México U.N.A.M.
She has been a high school teacher in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, México, on subjects as Sociology, History of Mexico, and Social Research.
She has developed her academic skills as a Teaching Assistant on subjects as Social Theory, Social Research Techniques, Methodology Workshops and Sociology at the Political and Social Sciences College at the UNAM.
She has been a co-Founder and President of the Coordinating Council of Latino Community Leaders of Atlanta, where for the past five years all her efforts it has been dedicated in the defense of Immigrants civil and human rights, and at the same time she, has been a provider of workshops of Community Organization and Leadership workshops statewide.
She has been the campaign coordinator of signatures statewide requesting driving licenses to the former Governor Roy Barnes, more than 30,000 signatures were delivered to Governor’s Office
She was a MALDEF award winning for her Community Service on 2001
She was a lead Organizer of the First Latino March for Dignity in Georgia, where more than 5000 people gather in demand of driver’s licenses at the occasion of the Freedom Ride arrival to Atlanta.
Activist and Latino Outreach, recently as a spokesperson and co-organizer of the March 17 Alliance (Alianza 17 de Marzo), for Immigration reform that gather more than 70 thousand people on April 10, 2006
Currently she works as the executive director of Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (former Coordinadora de Líderes Comunitarios).
Ms. Benétta M. Standly, MPA
Benétta (pronounced Benita) M. Standly, is originally from Los Angeles, California considers herself a lifelong student of public policy.
Ms. Standly currently serves as the Statewide Organizer and Public Policy Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, a non-profit, non-partisan organization protecting the constitutional, civil and human rights of all persons in the State of Georgia. Ms. Standly’s work focuses on increasing the ACLU’s presence across the state by encouraging members, volunteers, and supporters to participate in civic dialogue, increase their political power, and play an active role in shaping public policy. Specifically, Ms. Standly works toward achieving racial justice for all persons living in Georgia through the following campaigns: abolishing capitol punishment, restoring voting rights to the formerly incarcerated, and dismantling the school to prison pipeline.
Ms. Standly previously worked with L.A. Care Health Plan, the nation's largest public, non-profit Medicaid Managed Care Plan serving approximately 1 million lives, where she served in management capacity in the following departments: community outreach and education, public policy research, legislative analysis, as well as regulatory affairs and compliance. Ms. Standly is most proud of work in organizing eleven (11) regional community advisory committees; comprised of 350 ethnically and linguistically diverse Medicaid beneficiaries and community stakeholders. Through a transfer of skills, these participants became community activists who continue to impact public policy, conduct public education, and serve as a new cadre of local leadership.
Ms. Standly received both her Bachelors of Science in Public Health and Masters in Public Policy & Administration from California State University, Dominguez Hills.
John Holdridge
John Holdridge has fought the death penalty in courtrooms and public forums throughout the country for over twenty years. He is currently director of the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project in Durham, North Carolina. Prior to his appointment at the ACLU, he was a public defender in Connecticut’s Capital Defense and Trial Services Unit. Before returning to his native Connecticut, John spent 11 years as director of the Mississippi and Louisiana Capital Trial Assistance Project in New Orleans. He is a graduate of New York University School of Law and Lawrence University, from which he received the Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award in 2008. He is also the 2001 recipient of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association’s Life in the Balance Achievement Award.
Reverend Carroll Pickett
Reverend Carroll Pickett spent fifteen years as the "death house" chaplain at "The Walls," the Huntsville unit of the Texas prison system. In that capacity, he ministered to 95 men before they were put to death by lethal injection.
Rev. Pickett is the author of the acclaimed memoir, Within These Walls, an eloquent, unflinching look at his unique career and his intensely personal exposure to capital punishment. This first-hand experience gave him unique insight to write an impassioned statement on the realities of capital punishment in America. The book is a thought-provoking and compelling look inside the criminal mind, inside the execution chamber, and inside the heart of a remarkable man who shares his thoughts and observations not only about capital punishment, but about the dark world of prison society.
At the Death House Door, a new documentary from Steve James and Peter Gilbert is a personal and intimate look at the death penalty in the state of Texas through the eyes of Reverend Pickett. He kept his feelings about his work from his family, instead audiotaping an account of each one. Initially pro-execution, he became an anti-death penalty activist. The film has had an award-winning run on the national film festival circuit and premieres on IFC on May 29th.
Pickett was most affected by the execution of Carlos De Luna in 1989. He firmly believed in De Luna's innocence. Evidence uncovered by Chicago Tribune reporters Maurice Possley and Steve Mills strongly supports Pickett's view.
Rev. Pickett is today an outspoken anti-death penalty activist. He is retired from the Department of Corrections but still preaches near Huntsville, Texas.
Michael Mears
Michael Mears is an Associate Professor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School where he teaches Evidence and Advanced Criminal Procedure. He has also recently been appointed to serve as the Associate Dean of the Law School for Academic Affairs in addition to his teaching duties. Michael retired as the Director of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council in May of 2007. Michael also served as the Director of the Multi-County Public Defender Office. He held that position from June 1992 until December 2002 when he was appointed Director of the Public Defender Standards Council. He has personally served as lead trial counsel in over 60 death penalty cases since 1984.
In addition to serving as trial counsel, Michael has authored numerous publications and professional articles dealing with the defense of criminally charged defendants. He is also the several published books including “A Brief History of The Georgia Indigent Defense Counsel,” Twenty-Five Years of Struggle to Provide Adequate Counsel for The Poor, Copyright 1996; “The Death Penalty in Georgia - A Modern History, 1970 -2000, Copyright 2000; and “The Defense Attorney’s Ethical Response To Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claims, Copyright 2002. In 2006, Michael was asked to participate in the W.E.B. DuBois Institute of clark Atlanta University’s Annual Spring Conference where he presented a paper entitled “A Strategy for Confronting Racial Discrimination In the Use of the Death Penalty in Georgia.” His most recent article, “Confronting Racial Discrimination: In Use of the Death Penalty in Georgia,” was published in Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School’s Law Journal in the Spring of 2008.
Michael is a graduate of the Mississippi State University where he received his Bachelors Degree and his Master of Arts Degree. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law (Class of 1977). Michael has also served on the faculty (part-time) of the Georgia State University School of Social Work where he taught Forensic Issues for Social Workers. Michael served as the Mayor of the City of Decatur, Georgia from 1985 until 1993. Michael is currently the Vice-Chairperson of the State Bar’s Indigent Defense Committee and has served as Chairperson of the State Bar of Georgia’s Criminal Law Section.
Sam Brooke
Sam Brooke is a law fellow with the ACLU of Alabama, where he has been monitoring conditions of confinement and issues of indefinite detention at two long-term immigration detention centers in Alabama for the past year. Sam graduated from the NYU School of Law in 2006, and was a staff attorney at the ACLU of Connecticut prior to coming to Alabama. He will be moving to Chicago this fall to begin a federal district-court clerkship.
Mariana Bustamante
Mariana Bustamante is the Public Education Coordinator of the national ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project where she works closely with Spanish language media and immigrants' rights organizations throughout California and other states. Mariana is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and is an experienced organizer in the Latino community. She was the Rapid Response System Director at the California Latino Civil Rights Network and coordinated volunteers in statewide campaigns against Propositions 209 and 227. She has also served on the Board of Centro Legal de la Raza since 1998.
Darryl Hunt
Mr. Hunt is sought after public speaker who details from a very personal account the failing of the American criminal justice system. Mr. Hunt leads the “The Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice” which grew out of his determination to help others after serving more than eighteen years for a crime he never committed. The project is a non-profit organization with three primary goals: 1. To provide assistance to individuals who have been wrongfully incarcerated, 2. To help ex-offenders obtain the skills, guidance, and support they need as they return to life outside the prison system, and 3. To advocate for changes in the justice system so innocent people won’t spend time in prison. An HBO film, "The Trials of Darryl Hunt" documents a brutal rape/murder in the American South, and offers a deeply personal story of a wrongfully convicted man, Darryl Hunt, who spent twenty years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Mr. Hunt has spoken to over 200 conferences, schools, film festivals and religious groups to spread his message of reform and compassion. He has played a pivotal role in the state-wide effort to pass a Death Penalty Moratorium Bill and has appeared before a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the death penalty appeals process.
Glenn Fogle, Jr.
Mr. Fogle, who is the founding member and supervising partner of The Fogle Law Firm, LLC, is in his sixteenth year of practicing Immigration and Nationality Law. Raised in the United Kingdom until he was fourteen, Mr. Fogle returned to the U.S. to attend high school and college. He earned his Bachelors degree in English in 1988 from Davidson College in North Carolina with a year abroad at Edinburgh University in Scotland. Mr. Fogle attainted his Juris Doctorate from The College of Law at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia on June 16, 1991. Three days later he was sworn into the Georgia Bar and opened his Immigration Law practice immediately.
Mr. Fogle is a member of the bars of the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals of the Second Circuit, the Fourth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit. He is a longtime member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) been a speaker at AILA conferences and seminars and as part of their mentor program advises other AILA members regarding their immigration questions. Mr. Fogle has handled Immigration Court cases on a national level handling cases in US Immigration Courts in Arlington, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Elizabeth, El Paso, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Memphis, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Newark, New Orleans, New York, Oakdale, Portland and San Diego. An expert on asylum law and deportation/ removal defense, Mr. Fogle has successfully represented clients in Immigration Court from a multitude of countries encompassing the continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. An expert in Federal Immigration litigation, Mr. Fogle has won numerous appeals at the Board of Immigration Appeals and in 2006 for the Fogle Law Firm won an unprecedented 4 Immigration petitions for review (three published decisions) in the notoriously immigration unfriendly United States Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Over the years has Mr. Fogle has also developed expertise in representing employers petitioning for temporary and permanent employees and has successfully represented several hundred clients in obtaining Permanent Resident Status (Green Card) through family and employment based petitions.
Aside from Immigration Law, Mr. Fogle has also successfully handled numerous Federal and State Criminal cases and Civil Personal Injury Cases.
Alvin J. Bronstein
Alvin J. Bronstein became the founding Executive Director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation in June 1972. He has argued numerous prisoners’ rights cases in federal trial and appellate courts as well as the Supreme Court of the United States. He has been a consultant to state and federal correctional agencies, has appeared as an expert witness on numerous occasions and has edited or authored books and articles on human rights and corrections. He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989 for his contributions in the development of prisoners’ rights and correctional case law. In 1985, 1988, 1991, and 1994, he was listed as one of the one hundred most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal in their triennial publication, Profiles in Power. In recent years he has been honored by various law schools and organizations including the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the Fortune Society, the Pennsylvania Prison Society, Offender Aid and Restoration (OAR), the Southern Center for Human Rights, New York Law School, University of Maine Law School, and the Prison Reform Trust (London, England).
Mr. Bronstein began his career in private law practice in New York before becoming the Chief Staff Counsel of the Lawyers’ Constitutional Defense Committee from 1964 to1968 in Jackson, Mississippi. He litigated civil rights cases during that time in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, and represented the major civil rights organizations in the South. In 1968 he became a Fellow at the Institute of Politics, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and from 1969 to 1971 he was the Associate Director of the Institute of Politics. In 1971 he became a partner in the New Orleans public interest law firm of Elie, Bronstein, Strickler, and Dennis, leaving in 1972 to found the National Prison Project in Washington, D.C.
He directed the National Prison Project until December 1995. In January of 1996 he became Director Emeritus of the Project and a consultant to the National ACLU. He increased his recent activity in international human rights and criminal justice issues primarily as a Board member of Penal Reform International (London) and as a member of the Assembly of Delegates, World Organization Against Torture (Geneva).
Cherry Spencer-Stark
Cherry Spencer-Stark is a Forensic Nurse Consultant with a BSN from the University of Florida and an MN from the Nell Hodgson Woodruf School of Nursing at Emory University. She is a Past President and past Treasurer of the ACLU of Georgia, past Treasurer of the Georgia Nurses’ Association, and Founding Co-Chair of Georgia Equality (Project). She also currently serves as the Georgia representative to the National ACLU Board of Directors and on the Executive Committee of Freedom to Marry. Cherry has been the Emcee for the Bill of Rights Dinner for the ACLU since 2000. Her passions are Civil Rights, Censorship, Ethics in Government, and Separation of Church and State. Spencer-Stark has gone toe-to-toe with Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, Bill Bryne, Sean Hannity, Ralph Reed and Nancy Schaffer….just to name a few!!! Her Mantra is, “We need to be eternally vigilant because Freedom can’t protect itself.” What better way to be vigilant than on the Board of the Georgia American Civil Liberties Union.
Chara Fisher Jackson
Chara Fisher Jackson is Legal Director of the ACLU of Georgia. Chara attended Oglethorpe University and the College of William and Mary School of Law, graduating with a Juris Doctor in 1997. She served as the Executive Director of the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Commission on Equality. Her responsibilities included developing continuing legal education programs, facilitating public hearings, and promoting access to justice initiatives.
She also served as the Executive Director of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys Civil Pro Bono Project, recruiting volunteer attorneys to assist imprisoned mothers with civil legal matters. She has served as Executive Director of the Georgia Breast Cancer Coalition Fund.
Chara began her public interest career as a summer law clerk with the ACLU of Georgia and has served on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the ACLU of Georgia.
Elizabeth V. Tanis
I am a currently First Vice-President, a Board member and an Executive Committee member of the ACLU of Georgia. For the past two years, I have co-chaired the major gifts campaign for the ACLU of Georgia, the first two campaigns of their kind in ACLU of Georgia history. Through those campaigns, we have significantly increased the donor base for the ACLU of Georgia and have gotten law firms in Atlanta far more involved in ACLU of Georgia activities. In addition, as an Executive Committee member, I have been actively involved in ensuring that the ACLU of Georgia adopts and follows best practices of governance for non-profit organizations. I am a partner and litigator in the law firm of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP, which has approximately 450 lawyers, with its largest office in Atlanta. Sutherland Asbill & Brennan has been a long-time supporter of the ACLU of Georgia, with that support including having our attorneys handle ACLU of Georgia cases, sponsoring ACLU of Georgia activities, and being one of the largest donors to the ACLU of Georgia.
The ACLU is an essential part of our democracy. It protects our most fundamental rights and acts as the conscience of the country, ensuring that even in the most difficult and frightening of times, we do not lose sight of the basic freedoms on which this country was founded. The ACLU of Georgia gives voice, form and credibility to the all-important objective of upholding the constitution of the United States and Georgia. To carry out its important mission, the ACLU of Georgia must be a dynamic, progressive, responsible and financially secure organization. As a Board member, I will continue to strive towards ensuring that the ACLU of Georgia has those attributes.
Henry (Chip) Carey
For the past four years, I have been grateful for the opportunity to work with my union board colleagues and ACLU-GA staff on protections of individual liberties and rights. We have fought against unnecessary claims that they should be restricted on behalf of national security, electoral integrity, public safety and other inappropriately applied canards. Our unremitting efforts are more necessary to prevent even worse deprivations of liberty from creeping incrementally into our society,as the Bush administration would like.
As a professor of international human rights, I want to try to use my expertise to help our state focus by using the international legal process to protect rights, to compliment what the lawyers have so effectively done within our legal system. There is no reason not to continue the initial steps that were taken with the Human Rights Committee at the UN offices in Geneva and New York with Georgia's vegan protestors.
Closer to home, I hope to continue working on our new public education and recruitment efforts in the SWAT program, lobbying at the state legislature on crucial legislative attempts to restrict human rights, and helping with our foundation's fundraising, which remains even more vital as our opponents have created new obstacles to liberty, as well as the uncertain nature of our revenue sources.
Michael Weiss
Michael Weiss is an associate with King & Spalding’s Tort Litigation and Environmental Law Practice Group, where he represents corporations and nonprofit organizations in high-exposure product liability cases. Mr. Weiss is currently involved in numerous matters throughout the United States, and has most recently taken an active role in cases pending in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arizona, Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois.
Mr. Weiss’s recent experiences include:
Representing international trade association in nationwide litigation involving the adequacy of consumer protection efforts and safety standards.
Defending major tobacco company in several complex product liability cases in New York and across the Southeast.
Defense of manufacturers of automobiles, medical devices and animal vaccines.
Representing leading textile manufacturer in resolving potential liability issues.
A 1991, magna cum laude, graduate of Syracuse University, Mr. Weiss received his law degree with honors from Emory University in 2003, where he was Executive Articles Editor of the Emory Law Review and a Robert W. Woodruff Fellow. Mr. Weiss is admitted to practice in all the state courts in Georgia as well as in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. He is a member of the American Bar Association and the Atlanta Bar Association.
Neil Kinkopf
Neil is a Associate Professor at Georgia State University College of Law and the Director of the Center on State Law, Legislation and Policy at Georgia State University. He is a former Senior Fellow at Duke University where he taught Constitutional Law II (the separation of powers) and assisted in establishing the Duke University Program in Public Law.
He has a vast and varied professional experience, including Counsel to Senator Biden; Special Assistant, Office of Legal Counsel, United States Department of Justice; Special Consultant, Office of the Counsel to the President; Attorney-Advisor to the Attorney General; Domestic Policy Specialist for the Clinton/Gore Campaign; and Administrative Assistant to the Mayor of Everett, Massachuettes.
Neil received his J.D. Degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He has been published in Academice Journals, gave congressional testimony to committees of the United States House of Representatives, and participated in panels for various Universities or Bar presentations.
Reginald T. Shuford
Reginald T. Shuford is a senior staff counsel in the ACLU Foundation’s Racial Justice Program. An attorney with the ACLU since 1995, he helped pioneer legal challenges to racial profiling nationwide and is the ACLU’s chief litigator in challenges to racial profiling, leading national litigation efforts and consulting with ACLU state affiliates and others in cases of “driving while black or brown,” airport profiling, and profiling related to the War on Terror. Since 2002, working with colleagues around the country, Shuford has filed five landmark lawsuits against four major airlines alleging racial discrimination and a nationwide challenge to the Transportation Security Administration’s management of the No-Fly List. His docket also has included cases involving mortgage lending discrimination, educational adequacy and equity, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the right to counsel for indigents. In addition, he has been involved in advocacy against racism in the use of the federal death penalty and in favor of affirmative action. Along with his litigation duties, Shuford leads the ACLU National Office’s efforts to recruit and retain attorneys of color.
Debbie Seagraves
Debbie Seagraves has been the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia since 1998. Under her leadership, the ACLU of Georgia and the ACLU Foundation of Georgia has more than doubled in the size of its staff, budget, fundraising and membership.
Debbie was formerly the Southeast Regional Director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women. She was a founding member of the Appalachian Women’s Alliance and the first editor of the Mountain Women’s Journal, a collection of original writings of Appalachian women. She also served on the boards of the Appalachian People’s Service Organization, Georgia Rural Urban Summit, Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Georgians for Choice. She is a trainer for the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a nationwide network of anti-racist trainers and organizers.
Debbie is a frequent speaker on issues of Freedom of Religion, racial justice, privacy, and women’s rights and other constitutional issues.
Janvieve Williams Comrie
Janvieve Williams Comrie is the Director Communications at the US Human Rights Network Coordinating Center. She completed undergraduate studies in Sociology and Women's studies in Ontario, Canada. While studying in Toronto she organized the Rooming House Working Group, which prevented rooming house tenants from being illegally evicted.
Janvieve returned to Panama in 1998 and, through her work at the Women's Institute of the University of Panama, she helped organize the National Forum of Rural Women. Along with other oppressed African descendent Panamanians, she formed the first Coalition of Panamanians against Racism in 1999, which is today an active and visible organization that continues to publicly denounce discriminatory practices in the public and private sphere in Panama. Upon moving to Atlanta for graduate school and informed by her experiences with discriminatory and unjust practices at an institutional and social level and the isolation and unjust racial targeting of people of Latino, African, Indigenous and Arab descent in the United States, she helped found the Latin American and Caribbean Community Center, a collective of concerned Afro Latinos (LACCC) with political and cultural ties to Latin America and the Caribbean. LACCC fills the gap of exclusion, division and isolation faced by many of African descent, including low wage workers, undocumented families and immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean in the United States, by building a political and critical consciousness while using a human rights framework.
Dr. Keith Jennings
Keith Jennings is the president and founder of the African American Human Rights Foundation, a United States based organization dedicated to the promotion of international human rights standards. The Rights Foundation functions as a clearinghouse on human rights issues for the African American community and various Black movements led by people of African descent in the Americas. The foundation is especially concerned with economic, social and cultural rights.
Dr. Jennings has worked most recently as a Country Director in Indonesia for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Coordinator of NDI’s Civil Society development programs in Asia. Prior to that, he was the Director of Civic Participation Programs for NDI, serving as the institute’s principal in-house global expert on programs to strengthen the participation of civic groups and citizens in the political process. He has promoted democratic consolidations and good governance programs in Angola, Bosnia, Cambodia, East Timor, Egypt, Haiti, Guyana, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Lesotho, Liberia, Mozambique, Namibia, Slovakia, Thailand, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Dr. Jennings was the National Coordinator of the World Council of Churches’ human rights campaign on racism in the United States. He has held numerous other positions at organizations including Amnesty International USA, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Children’s Defense Fund, National Rainbow Coalition, the American Friends Service Committee, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, NAACP National Voter Fund and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionist. Dr. Jennings holds a Masters and Ph.D degree in Political Science and International Relations.