On June 22 Angela Lang, the executive director of BLOC (Black Leaders Organizing for Communities), and Keisha Robinson, BLOC's deputy director, joined WJI to chat about their organization's activities, which include court watching, canvassing neighborhoods, and developing future leaders in the Black community. BLOC works through coordinated political action to ensure a high quality of life and access to economic opportunity for members of the Black community in Wisconsin and to empower Black leaders with the tools, training, and resources needed to organize and guarantee that their issues, concerns, and values are represented at all levels of government. Over just a few years BLOC has become a forceful nonprofit in the Milwaukee area. If you missed the Salon, or if you want to watch or listen again, click on the link below for the recording. This and recordings of several other past salons are also available on WJI's YouTube channel here.
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Attorneys Eileen Hirsch and Diane Rondini headlined the Oct. 13 WJI Virtual Salon to discuss their request to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to restrict juvenile shackling in court. Five circuit court judges from around the state also signed on to the Supreme Court petition. Under the proposed new Supreme Court rule, children could not be restrained during a court proceeding unless a judge found one of the following:
Video of the Salon is below. There were some Zoom problems, so there are a few cuts of unintelligible audio. Watch or listen to this fascinating discussion with Alec Karakatsanis, who joined WJI April 29, 2021 for a discussion about "Prosecutors, Judges, and Public Defenders: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Mass Human Caging Bureaucracy." Karakatsanis is the founder and executive director of Civil Rights Corps, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization challenging systemic injustice in the U.S. legal system through advocacy and litigation. Karakatsanis, author of "Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System," doesn’t think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings – an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on poor people and people of color and for which the legal system has never offered sufficient justification. |
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