Podcast appearances and mentions of Urban Justice Center

Send us a textNonprofit leaders feeling the weight of challenging times need more than grit to thrive—they need resilient organizations built on sustainable systems and supportive networks. Brooke Ritchie-Babbage shares her S.T.R.O.N.G. framework for building nonprofit stability while growing impact.• Strategic clarity keeps everyone focused on the "cathedral" they're building beyond daily brick-laying work• Well-designed tools and systems create the interstitial tissue connecting teams without bottlenecks• Resources include not just funding but sustainable approaches like monthly giving programs • Ownership means everyone understands their role and has appropriate decision-making authority• Networked capacity extends organizational roots beyond staff to partners, advisors, and collaborators• Governance provides appropriate oversight and accountability that evolves as organizations grow• Growth and stability aren't competing priorities—stability is the foundation for sustained growth• Burnout isn't a badge of honor or personal failing but a structural mismatch requiring systemic solutions• Building recovery and assessment into organizational rhythms is essential for long-term impact• No leader should try to go it alone—find coaches, mentors, and peer communities for supportCheck out Brooke's podcast at https://brookerichiebabbage.com/podcast/Brooke's BioBrooke Richie-Babbage is a nonprofit growth strategist and social impact advisor. She is the founder and CEO of Bending Arc, a social impact strategy firm that supports the launch and sustainable growth of high-impact nonprofits, and the host of Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast.For the past 23 years, Brooke has worked as a lawyer, nonprofit leader, and social entrepreneur. She has founded and led multiple successful organizations and initiatives, including the Resilience Advocacy Project (RAP), where she served as founder and Executive Director for 11 years, the Sterling Network NYC and the NetLab Initiative, both initiatives of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, where she served as Director of Network Initiatives for six years, and the Social Justice Accelerator (SJA), an initiative of the Urban Justice Center, where she has served as SJA Director since 2019.  Brooke received her JD and MPP from Harvard and her BA from Yale. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.Brooke Richie-Babbage | LinkedIn Like what you heard? Please like and share wherever you get your podcasts! Connect with Ann: Community Evaluation Solutions How Ann can help: · Support the evaluation capacity of your coalition or community-based organization. · Help you create a strategic plan that doesn't stress you and your group out, doesn't take all year to design, and is actionable. · Engage your group in equitable discussions about difficult conversations. · Facilitate a workshop to plan for action and get your group moving. · Create a workshop that energizes and excites your group for action. · Speak at your conference or event. Have a question or want to know more? Book a call with Ann .Be sure and check out our updated resource page! Let us know what was helpful. Music by Zach Price: Zachpricet@gmail.com

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions. In The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism (NYU Press, 2025), law professor Ray Brescia explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect people's online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. Surveillance, he suggests, will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and shape the laws that affect our privacy itself. Brescia writes that “The search for identity and communion with others who share it has never been easier in all of human history. At the same time, our individual and collective identity is also under threat by a surveillance state like none that has ever existed before. This surveillance can be weaponized, not just for profit but also to promote political ends, and undermine efforts to achieve individual and collective self-determination” The book identifies the harms to individuals from privacy violations, provides an expansive definition of political privacy, and identifies the ‘integrity of identity' as a central feature of democracy. The Private is Political lays out the features of Surveillance Capitalism and provides a roadmap for “muscular disclosure”: a comprehensive privacy regime to empower consumers to collectively safeguard privacy rights. Professor Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of many scholarly works including Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession (from NYU Press) and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (from Cornell UP). He is also the author of public facing work, most recently “Elon Musk's DOGE is executing a historically dangerous data breach” on MSNBC. He started his legal career at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he was a Skadden Fellow, and then served as the Associate Director at the Urban Justice Center, also in New York City, where he represented grassroots groups like tenant associations and low-wage worker groups. Ray's blog is “The Future of Change” and you can find him on LinkedIn. Mentioned: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, Amy Howe, SCOTUSBLOG Kevin Peter He on “data voodoo dolls” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions. In The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism (NYU Press, 2025), law professor Ray Brescia explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect people's online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. Surveillance, he suggests, will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and shape the laws that affect our privacy itself. Brescia writes that “The search for identity and communion with others who share it has never been easier in all of human history. At the same time, our individual and collective identity is also under threat by a surveillance state like none that has ever existed before. This surveillance can be weaponized, not just for profit but also to promote political ends, and undermine efforts to achieve individual and collective self-determination” The book identifies the harms to individuals from privacy violations, provides an expansive definition of political privacy, and identifies the ‘integrity of identity' as a central feature of democracy. The Private is Political lays out the features of Surveillance Capitalism and provides a roadmap for “muscular disclosure”: a comprehensive privacy regime to empower consumers to collectively safeguard privacy rights. Professor Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of many scholarly works including Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession (from NYU Press) and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (from Cornell UP). He is also the author of public facing work, most recently “Elon Musk's DOGE is executing a historically dangerous data breach” on MSNBC. He started his legal career at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he was a Skadden Fellow, and then served as the Associate Director at the Urban Justice Center, also in New York City, where he represented grassroots groups like tenant associations and low-wage worker groups. Ray's blog is “The Future of Change” and you can find him on LinkedIn. Mentioned: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, Amy Howe, SCOTUSBLOG Kevin Peter He on “data voodoo dolls” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions. In The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism (NYU Press, 2025), law professor Ray Brescia explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect people's online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. Surveillance, he suggests, will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and shape the laws that affect our privacy itself. Brescia writes that “The search for identity and communion with others who share it has never been easier in all of human history. At the same time, our individual and collective identity is also under threat by a surveillance state like none that has ever existed before. This surveillance can be weaponized, not just for profit but also to promote political ends, and undermine efforts to achieve individual and collective self-determination” The book identifies the harms to individuals from privacy violations, provides an expansive definition of political privacy, and identifies the ‘integrity of identity' as a central feature of democracy. The Private is Political lays out the features of Surveillance Capitalism and provides a roadmap for “muscular disclosure”: a comprehensive privacy regime to empower consumers to collectively safeguard privacy rights. Professor Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of many scholarly works including Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession (from NYU Press) and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (from Cornell UP). He is also the author of public facing work, most recently “Elon Musk's DOGE is executing a historically dangerous data breach” on MSNBC. He started his legal career at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he was a Skadden Fellow, and then served as the Associate Director at the Urban Justice Center, also in New York City, where he represented grassroots groups like tenant associations and low-wage worker groups. Ray's blog is “The Future of Change” and you can find him on LinkedIn. Mentioned: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, Amy Howe, SCOTUSBLOG Kevin Peter He on “data voodoo dolls” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions. In The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism (NYU Press, 2025), law professor Ray Brescia explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect people's online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. Surveillance, he suggests, will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and shape the laws that affect our privacy itself. Brescia writes that “The search for identity and communion with others who share it has never been easier in all of human history. At the same time, our individual and collective identity is also under threat by a surveillance state like none that has ever existed before. This surveillance can be weaponized, not just for profit but also to promote political ends, and undermine efforts to achieve individual and collective self-determination” The book identifies the harms to individuals from privacy violations, provides an expansive definition of political privacy, and identifies the ‘integrity of identity' as a central feature of democracy. The Private is Political lays out the features of Surveillance Capitalism and provides a roadmap for “muscular disclosure”: a comprehensive privacy regime to empower consumers to collectively safeguard privacy rights. Professor Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of many scholarly works including Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession (from NYU Press) and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (from Cornell UP). He is also the author of public facing work, most recently “Elon Musk's DOGE is executing a historically dangerous data breach” on MSNBC. He started his legal career at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he was a Skadden Fellow, and then served as the Associate Director at the Urban Justice Center, also in New York City, where he represented grassroots groups like tenant associations and low-wage worker groups. Ray's blog is “The Future of Change” and you can find him on LinkedIn. Mentioned: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, Amy Howe, SCOTUSBLOG Kevin Peter He on “data voodoo dolls” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions. In The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism (NYU Press, 2025), law professor Ray Brescia explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect people's online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. Surveillance, he suggests, will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and shape the laws that affect our privacy itself. Brescia writes that “The search for identity and communion with others who share it has never been easier in all of human history. At the same time, our individual and collective identity is also under threat by a surveillance state like none that has ever existed before. This surveillance can be weaponized, not just for profit but also to promote political ends, and undermine efforts to achieve individual and collective self-determination” The book identifies the harms to individuals from privacy violations, provides an expansive definition of political privacy, and identifies the ‘integrity of identity' as a central feature of democracy. The Private is Political lays out the features of Surveillance Capitalism and provides a roadmap for “muscular disclosure”: a comprehensive privacy regime to empower consumers to collectively safeguard privacy rights. Professor Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of many scholarly works including Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession (from NYU Press) and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (from Cornell UP). He is also the author of public facing work, most recently “Elon Musk's DOGE is executing a historically dangerous data breach” on MSNBC. He started his legal career at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he was a Skadden Fellow, and then served as the Associate Director at the Urban Justice Center, also in New York City, where he represented grassroots groups like tenant associations and low-wage worker groups. Ray's blog is “The Future of Change” and you can find him on LinkedIn. Mentioned: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, Amy Howe, SCOTUSBLOG Kevin Peter He on “data voodoo dolls” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions. In The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism (NYU Press, 2025), law professor Ray Brescia explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect people's online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. Surveillance, he suggests, will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and shape the laws that affect our privacy itself. Brescia writes that “The search for identity and communion with others who share it has never been easier in all of human history. At the same time, our individual and collective identity is also under threat by a surveillance state like none that has ever existed before. This surveillance can be weaponized, not just for profit but also to promote political ends, and undermine efforts to achieve individual and collective self-determination” The book identifies the harms to individuals from privacy violations, provides an expansive definition of political privacy, and identifies the ‘integrity of identity' as a central feature of democracy. The Private is Political lays out the features of Surveillance Capitalism and provides a roadmap for “muscular disclosure”: a comprehensive privacy regime to empower consumers to collectively safeguard privacy rights. Professor Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of many scholarly works including Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession (from NYU Press) and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (from Cornell UP). He is also the author of public facing work, most recently “Elon Musk's DOGE is executing a historically dangerous data breach” on MSNBC. He started his legal career at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he was a Skadden Fellow, and then served as the Associate Director at the Urban Justice Center, also in New York City, where he represented grassroots groups like tenant associations and low-wage worker groups. Ray's blog is “The Future of Change” and you can find him on LinkedIn. Mentioned: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, Amy Howe, SCOTUSBLOG Kevin Peter He on “data voodoo dolls” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions. In The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism (NYU Press, 2025), law professor Ray Brescia explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect people's online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. Surveillance, he suggests, will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and shape the laws that affect our privacy itself. Brescia writes that “The search for identity and communion with others who share it has never been easier in all of human history. At the same time, our individual and collective identity is also under threat by a surveillance state like none that has ever existed before. This surveillance can be weaponized, not just for profit but also to promote political ends, and undermine efforts to achieve individual and collective self-determination” The book identifies the harms to individuals from privacy violations, provides an expansive definition of political privacy, and identifies the ‘integrity of identity' as a central feature of democracy. The Private is Political lays out the features of Surveillance Capitalism and provides a roadmap for “muscular disclosure”: a comprehensive privacy regime to empower consumers to collectively safeguard privacy rights. Professor Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of many scholarly works including Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession (from NYU Press) and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (from Cornell UP). He is also the author of public facing work, most recently “Elon Musk's DOGE is executing a historically dangerous data breach” on MSNBC. He started his legal career at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he was a Skadden Fellow, and then served as the Associate Director at the Urban Justice Center, also in New York City, where he represented grassroots groups like tenant associations and low-wage worker groups. Ray's blog is “The Future of Change” and you can find him on LinkedIn. Mentioned: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, Amy Howe, SCOTUSBLOG Kevin Peter He on “data voodoo dolls” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions. In The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism (NYU Press, 2025), law professor Ray Brescia explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect people's online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. Surveillance, he suggests, will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and shape the laws that affect our privacy itself. Brescia writes that “The search for identity and communion with others who share it has never been easier in all of human history. At the same time, our individual and collective identity is also under threat by a surveillance state like none that has ever existed before. This surveillance can be weaponized, not just for profit but also to promote political ends, and undermine efforts to achieve individual and collective self-determination” The book identifies the harms to individuals from privacy violations, provides an expansive definition of political privacy, and identifies the ‘integrity of identity' as a central feature of democracy. The Private is Political lays out the features of Surveillance Capitalism and provides a roadmap for “muscular disclosure”: a comprehensive privacy regime to empower consumers to collectively safeguard privacy rights. Professor Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of many scholarly works including Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession (from NYU Press) and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (from Cornell UP). He is also the author of public facing work, most recently “Elon Musk's DOGE is executing a historically dangerous data breach” on MSNBC. He started his legal career at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he was a Skadden Fellow, and then served as the Associate Director at the Urban Justice Center, also in New York City, where he represented grassroots groups like tenant associations and low-wage worker groups. Ray's blog is “The Future of Change” and you can find him on LinkedIn. Mentioned: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, Amy Howe, SCOTUSBLOG Kevin Peter He on “data voodoo dolls” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Sex Worker Advocate Mariah Grant is this week's guest on Adult Site Broker Talk. Mariah is a human rights expert who focuses on migrant and sex worker rights, freedom of movement, and labor exploitation. She is a highly effective advocate who works to end systems of oppression in collaboration with impacted communities and individuals, including sex workers, drug users, migrants, and people who are currently or were previously incarcerated. Mariah combines her many years of experience providing direct services to migrant and refugee children and families within the United States and Europe and researching and documenting human rights abuses throughout the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific to push for long-term policy solutions at the local, national, and international levels. She is currently a freelance consultant working on projects related to sex worker rights, human trafficking prevention, and service provision for survivors. Before consulting, she was the Director of Research and Advocacy with the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center, where she oversaw research on the harms of sex work criminalization, including police violence, as well as local, state, and federal policy advocacy to decriminalize and destigmatize sex work. She's consulted and worked with the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, the International Organization for Migration, the US Department of State, the US Department of Labor, ICF International, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the Free Speech Coalition, Decriminalize Sex Work, Freedom Network USA, New Moon Network, Protection International, Morrison Child and Family Service, Minority Rights Group International, and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects. In her previous roles, Mariah successfully introduced and helped pass state and federal-US laws and policies to protect the health and human rights of sex workers and survivors of human trafficking. She's also led several groundbreaking research projects on topics ranging from the experiences of sex workers in conflict zones and humanitarian crises to the impacts of district attorney non-prosecution policies in the context of sex work criminalization. Adult Site Broker is the most experienced company to broker adult sites. They've sold and helped people buy more xxx sites than any other broker. Adult Site Broker is the leading company to sell porn sites and buy porn sites. They help their clients work out equitable deals. Check out their brand-new website at www.adultsitebroker.com, the leading destination to broker porn sites. Adult Site Broker also has an affiliate program, ASB Cash, at https://asbcash.com, where you can earn 20% by referring people to buy adult sites and sell adult sites to Adult Site Broker, the porn website broker. For more information, please visit us at www.adultsitebroker.com to help you broker adult sites. Listen to Mariah Grant on Adult Site Broker Talk, starting today at www.adultsitebrokertalk.com

Mohamed Attia, Managing Director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, and City Council Member Pierina Sanchez, a Bronx Democrat, joined the show to discuss efforts to reform street vendor permitting, laws, and rules in New York City. That includes a package of bills currently proposed in the City Council and a push to award thousands of street vendor permits created by a 2021 law. (Ep 459)

Amy is a City University Of New York School of Law Graduate and currently works as the Project Director for the Free to be Youth Project at the Urban Justice Center. Embark on an inspirational journey with Amy as she shares her path to law school and the legal profession in our latest podcast episode. Amy's story epitomizes the diverse routes individuals take to pursue their passion for law, echoing the core message of this podcast.In this enlightening conversation, Amy delves into the motivations and pivotal moments that led her to law school, from heartfelt conversations with old friends to her desire to make a meaningful impact. She candidly discusses the challenges she faced in her first year and how she navigated through them, offering valuable insights into overcoming obstacles on the path to success.Amy reflects on both the highs and lows of her legal journey, sharing her experiences from various internships and the process of discovering her niche within the field. Her journey underscores the importance of self-discovery and resilience in shaping a fulfilling legal career.As she discusses her current role as Project Director for the Free to Be Youth Project, Amy highlights the deeply human aspect of the law, emphasizing the transformative power of legal advocacy.Amy's narrative serves as a testament to the multitude of paths one can take to law school and the legal profession, reinforcing the notion that there is no singular trajectory in this field. Tune in to this captivating episode to gain insight into Amy's journey and discover the diverse possibilities within the legal landscape.Amy's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-leipziger-57378599 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lawyersinthemaking.substack.com

David Shalleck-Klein, founder and executive director of the Family Justice Law Center at the Urban Justice Center, discusses the class-action lawsuit charging the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) uses coercion, traumatizing families, and is joined by Shalonda Curtis-Hackett, a plaintiff in the lawsuit.  

I hope this email finds you in good health and high spirits. As the host of The Intentional Fundraiser Podcast, it brings me immense joy to connect with dedicated fundraisers and nonprofit leaders like you, who are working tirelessly to make the world a more just and equitable place.In our recent episode, we had the privilege of interviewing the incredible Brooke Richie-Babbage, a seasoned nonprofit leader and social entrepreneur with over 23 years of experience. Brooke is the founder and CEO of Bending Arc, a social impact strategy and digital content firm that partners with nonprofit leaders and philanthropic institutions to launch and scale high-impact nonprofits. She is also the host of the Nonprofit Mastermind podcast and serves as the Director of the Social Justice Accelerator at the Urban Justice Center and the NetLab Initiative at the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.During our conversation with Brooke, we delved deep into the core elements of a robust fundraising engine and explored strategies to attract and engage donors effectively. She shared invaluable insights on the importance of aligning your organization's strategic vision with its fundraising efforts and offered practical advice on how to cut through the chaos that often surrounds nonprofit leadership.Brooke's wisdom and expertise are not to be missed, especially as we approach the fourth quarter, a crucial time for fundraising. Her tips on building relationships, focusing on cultivation, and practicing time-blocking will undoubtedly help you navigate these challenges with confidence and purpose.Feel free to share this episode with your fellow fundraisers and nonprofit peers, as we believe that together, we can amplify our impact and create positive change in the world.As always, we deeply appreciate your support and dedication to the nonprofit sector. If you have any questions or suggestions for future podcast episodes, don't hesitate to reach out. We value your feedback and are committed to bringing you the most valuable content possible.Thank you for being an integral part of The Intentional Fundraiser Podcast community. Together, we will continue to uplift and empower one another to achieve transformative fundraising success.Wishing you a successful and fulfilling fundraising journey ahead!Take a listen.RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODENonprofit Mastermind PodcastSuperfans: The Easy Way to Stand Out, Grow Your Tribe, and Build a Successful Business by Pat FlynnRaise More Together ConferenceChatGPT (OpenAI)PunkpostCONNECT WITH OUR GUEST ONLINELinkedin / Instagram / Website / EmailTHANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORThank you to our friends at Bloomerang for being a sponsor of The Intentional Fundraiser podcast.Bloomerang gathers the best tools, resources, and people in a single place and, through its donor management platform, empowers nonprofit organizations...

In this episode, I speak with Paula DiPerna. Paula is a strategic advisor and consultant, who draws upon a diverse leadership background, having served as the president of the Chicago Climate Exchange International, which pioneered global emissions trading, as well as the president of the Joyce Foundation, a leading US private philanthropy. Prior to these positions, she was vice president of the Cousteau Society for nearly 20 years, and worked with governmental organizations across the globe to establish sustainable business and governmental policies. As a noted public policy analyst, she served as a consultant to the World Bank, LEAD International, The Urban Justice Center, and is currently a Special Advisor to the Carbon Disclosure Project. She is also a widely published author of non-fiction books, a novel and is currently working on a memoir addressed to emerging leaders. We discuss:

Eighteen people incarcerated in New York City jails have died in 2022, the most since 2013. We discuss the continuing crisis in the city's jail system with Darren Mack, co-director of the Urban Justice Center's Freedom Agenda, a member-led project organizing communities impacted by incarceration, and Lezandre Khadu, mother of Stephan Khadu, who died in custody at Rikers Island last year.

Mariah Grant is the Director of Research and Advocacy for the Sex Worker Project at the Urban Justice Center. The midterms are coming, and if the blue wave succeeds, the conversations around decriminalizing sex work could result in action. In the meantime, we discussed ways that everyday people can reduce harm for sex workers. We also covered topics like the Safe Sex Worker Study Act, how to speak to legislators to drive change at the state level, and how cops aren't the answer in solving the current issues. Also, pay attention to where you spend your dollar. Lots of big corporations and banks discriminate against SWs. Find your way over to the Urban Justice Center's website and give them a donation!Visit rejuvenateintimacy.com for more information about my couples intimacy retreat in Puerto Vallarta, MX April of 2023.

On today's Deep Dive, Melissa and Dorian take an in-depth look at sex work and how it's been criminalized in the United States, starting off with journalist and former sex worker Melissa Gira Grant, who discusses the history of criminalizing sex work in the U.S. Then Cecilia Gentili, principal consultant and founder of Trans Equity Consulting, and LaLa B. Holston-Zannell, trans justice campaign manager in the National Advocacy Department at the ACLU, explain the idea of sex work as work and why some advocates are calling for full decriminalization. Yasmin Vafa, executive director of Rights 4 Girls, discusses concerns that sex work increases opportunities for sex trafficking, particularly the trafficking of children.   RJ Thompson, managing director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, helps break down some of the stigma surrounding sex work as well as how and why male sex workers are often left out of conversations around sex work. And finally Elexus Jionde, author, content creator and founder of Intelexual Media, explores how technology, digital communication and the “realites” of the virtual world will continue to shape the future of sex work. Some of the music on this podcast was made by Touque (https://davidaaron4.bandcamp.com/album/soho-sessions), Hannis Brown (https://www.hannisbrown.com/), James Perry, and j. cowit (https://jcowit.bandcamp.com/)

This week, on Old Pro News, we have an extra long interview with Zola Z. Bruce and Mariah Grant from the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City. We discussed the Safe Sex Workers Study Act, FOSTA-SESTA, OnlyFans, and many other topics related to tech freedom.   For more resources on this episode, visit our website: https://oldprosonline.org/oldpronews-008   Bios   Zola Z. Bruce MSSW is a social worker, activist and artist who focuses on helping people to create the life they  want in all aspects of their career. Originally from Dallas, TX, they moved to New York to  attend Sarah Lawrence College to study psychology and sculpture, in addition they did a  semester abroad with The School for International Training in Kingston, Jamaica where they  studied Gender and Development. Zola received their Masters of Science in Social Work from  Columbia University in 2001. Afterwards they worked for 12 years in youth development with  organizations including the Center for Family Life, McBurney YMCA, and the LGBTQ Center focusing on creating therapeutic art programs for youth and families. Internationally they  started a nonprofit, Unified for Global Healing, where they developed grassroots community  health initiatives in Haiti, Ghana, and India using the arts to communicate beyond language,  class, and cultural barriers. Combining their experiences in art, activism, sex work and social  work, Zola currently works as Director of Communications at the Sex Workers Project of  The Urban Justice Center (SWP) and started a documentary series for and by sex workers,  recently on display at The Museum of Sex. Alongside their work with SWP they continue to create, consult, speak at activist events, teach as an Adjunct Professor at John Jay College of  Criminal Justice, is a BDSM instructor and Vice President for KinkOut (KO).   Mariah Grant (she/her) is the Director of Research and Advocacy with the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center (SWP). She is a human rights and migration specialist with a focus on migrant and sex workers' rights, freedom of movement, and labor exploitation. In her role with SWP, she oversees policy advocacy and development of original research, including ongoing studies on law enforcement violence against sex workers. She has worked throughout the US and internationally on improving anti-trafficking policies to ensure better human rights protections for migrants and sex workers.   The Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City are a national organization that defends the human rights of sex workers by destigmatizing and decriminalizing people in the sex trades through free legal services, education, research, and policy advocacy.    https://twitter.com/UJCSexWorkers https://www.instagram.com/sexworkersproject/ SAFE SEX WORKER STUDY ACT LINKS    Report produced by Hacking//Hustling, authors: Kendra Albert, Elizabeth Brundige, and Lorelei Lee  https://hrlr.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/fosta-in-legal-context/    https://survivorsagainstsesta.org/    https://make-the-switch.org/commercial-sex-online/    https://make-the-switch.org/the-safe-sex-worker-study-act/    Op-Ed by Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer https://www.thedailybeast.com/want-to-fix-big-tech-stop-ignoring-sex-workers    SWP Statements on SSWSA https://swp.urbanjustice.org/news-room/resources/    Senate Bill:  https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3758    House Bill:   https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6928    EARN IT ACT https://surviveearnit.com/  Call your Reps and Senators!  https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/sesta-fosta-anniversary/  Request meetings with your Reps and Senators – and other critical members of Congress – like members of the committees the bill has been referred to:    https://www.house.gov/representatives   https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC  Subscription to a database with contact information   Request to Join: https://make-the-switch.org/join-the-network-subgroup/  Please fill out this form to join the Sex Worker Subgroup of the Federal LGBTQPLHIV Criminal Justice Working Group. Joining the network means being added to the listserv and access to a database of resources for activists and allies, as well as an invite to the monthly working group call.  This group supports the decriminalization of sex work, transparency and accountability in state action, and uplifting the leadership of impacted people.  Donate to organizations working on this issue, including the Sex Workers Project:  https://swp.urbanjustice.org/donate-2/ 

This week, on Old Pro News, we have an extra long interview with Zola Z. Bruce and Mariah Grant from the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City. We discussed the Safe Sex Workers Study Act, FOSTA-SESTA, OnlyFans, and many other topics related to tech freedom.   For more resources on this episode, visit our website: https://oldprosonline.org/oldpronews-008   Bios   Zola Z. Bruce MSSW is a social worker, activist and artist who focuses on helping people to create the life they  want in all aspects of their career. Originally from Dallas, TX, they moved to New York to  attend Sarah Lawrence College to study psychology and sculpture, in addition they did a  semester abroad with The School for International Training in Kingston, Jamaica where they  studied Gender and Development. Zola received their Masters of Science in Social Work from  Columbia University in 2001. Afterwards they worked for 12 years in youth development with  organizations including the Center for Family Life, McBurney YMCA, and the LGBTQ Center focusing on creating therapeutic art programs for youth and families. Internationally they  started a nonprofit, Unified for Global Healing, where they developed grassroots community  health initiatives in Haiti, Ghana, and India using the arts to communicate beyond language,  class, and cultural barriers. Combining their experiences in art, activism, sex work and social  work, Zola currently works as Director of Communications at the Sex Workers Project of  The Urban Justice Center (SWP) and started a documentary series for and by sex workers,  recently on display at The Museum of Sex. Alongside their work with SWP they continue to create, consult, speak at activist events, teach as an Adjunct Professor at John Jay College of  Criminal Justice, is a BDSM instructor and Vice President for KinkOut (KO).   Mariah Grant (she/her) is the Director of Research and Advocacy with the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center (SWP). She is a human rights and migration specialist with a focus on migrant and sex workers' rights, freedom of movement, and labor exploitation. In her role with SWP, she oversees policy advocacy and development of original research, including ongoing studies on law enforcement violence against sex workers. She has worked throughout the US and internationally on improving anti-trafficking policies to ensure better human rights protections for migrants and sex workers.   The Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City are a national organization that defends the human rights of sex workers by destigmatizing and decriminalizing people in the sex trades through free legal services, education, research, and policy advocacy.    https://twitter.com/UJCSexWorkers https://www.instagram.com/sexworkersproject/ SAFE SEX WORKER STUDY ACT LINKS    Report produced by Hacking//Hustling, authors: Kendra Albert, Elizabeth Brundige, and Lorelei Lee  https://hrlr.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/fosta-in-legal-context/    https://survivorsagainstsesta.org/    https://make-the-switch.org/commercial-sex-online/    https://make-the-switch.org/the-safe-sex-worker-study-act/    Op-Ed by Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer https://www.thedailybeast.com/want-to-fix-big-tech-stop-ignoring-sex-workers    SWP Statements on SSWSA https://swp.urbanjustice.org/news-room/resources/    Senate Bill:  https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3758    House Bill:   https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6928    EARN IT ACT https://surviveearnit.com/  Call your Reps and Senators!  https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/sesta-fosta-anniversary/  Request meetings with your Reps and Senators – and other critical members of Congress – like members of the committees the bill has been referred to:    https://www.house.gov/representatives   https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC  Subscription to a database with contact information   Request to Join: https://make-the-switch.org/join-the-network-subgroup/  Please fill out this form to join the Sex Worker Subgroup of the Federal LGBTQPLHIV Criminal Justice Working Group. Joining the network means being added to the listserv and access to a database of resources for activists and allies, as well as an invite to the monthly working group call.  This group supports the decriminalization of sex work, transparency and accountability in state action, and uplifting the leadership of impacted people.  Donate to organizations working on this issue, including the Sex Workers Project:  https://swp.urbanjustice.org/donate-2/ 

Since pandemic eviction moratoriums and other tenant predictions have lapsed, eviction rates have risen to nearly pre-pandemic levels.  Meanwhile, some states and cities have in place "Right to Counsel" laws, guaranteeing legal representation in court to those facing eviction.   We hear from Caroyln Headlam, organizer with the Ithaca Tenants Union in upstate New York, and Lauren Springer, tenant leader with Catholic Migration Services, as well as a member of the Steering Committee of the Right to Counsel New York City Coalition, about what they're seeing in housing courts in their areas. Then, we speak with Marika Dias, Managing Director at the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center in New York City and Ora Prochovnick, Director of Litigation & Policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative in San Francisco, about the importance of Right to Counsel rights for tenants who are facing eviction. Full Rent Stabilization Association statement: After forecasting an eviction tsunami that never materialized, the advocates are at it again – with legal services providers warning that tenants will have to represent themselves because of a shortage of public defenders. The facts tell a different story. Housing Court continues to operate in a limited capacity, with a hybrid of virtual and in-person appearances. Most housing courtrooms are hearing only 25-40 cases per day virtually, compared to about 45-60 pre-pandemic," said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 diverse owners and managers of more than one million apartments that house over 2.5 million New Yorkers in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. "Not all of the pending eviction cases are eligible for free legal services because not all tenants fall at or below 200% of the poverty level ($23,000 annual income for an individual, and $49,000 for a four-person household), and it is still not known how many of these cases will ultimately be discontinued based on tenants having received rental assistance or having otherwise paid the rent," Strasburg continued.   "With Housing Court operating on limited calendars and public defenders representing a fraction of the existing cases – coupled with the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program having stayed eviction for tens of thousands of tenants – why are legal services providers failing to meet their contractual obligation with the City of New York in delivering taxpayer-funded, right-to-counsel services to needy families? Are they manufacturing this crisis to cover up their failures and clog court calendars? Or worse, further delaying proceedings that would enable tenants and owners to resolve problems, and connect families to government-funded rent assistance programs that keep them in their homes and provide owners with the rent-arrears needed to maintain their buildings and pay city property taxes?" Strasburg further stated. "Property owners have been prevented from fully asserting their rights in court for over two years. If legal services providers cannot meet their contractual obligation with New York City and provide these legal services to qualifying tenants, then New York City should reallocate funds and hire private counsel to alleviate the burden from legal services providers and ensure that New York's most financially distressed tenants have representation in court. For decades, the Assigned Counsel Plan – also referred to as 18B Panel attorneys – has provided legal services to indigent persons throughout the city by compensating private attorneys in criminal and family law matters. If legal services providers insist that they are unable to provide the free legal services New York City is paying them to provide, there is no reason why an 18B Panel could not be established for landlord-tenant matters. This would ensure that cases in Housing Court start moving again, while also ensuring that those tenants who qualify get the legal representation as required by law," Strasburg said.

Since pandemic eviction moratoriums and other tenant predictions have lapsed, eviction rates have risen to nearly pre-pandemic levels.  Meanwhile, some states and cities have in place "Right to Counsel" laws, guaranteeing legal representation in court to those facing eviction.   We hear from Caroyln Headlam, organizer with the Ithaca Tenants Union in upstate New York, and Lauren Springer, tenant leader with Catholic Migration Services, as well as a member of the Steering Committee of the Right to Counsel New York City Coalition, about what they're seeing in housing courts in their areas. Then, we speak with Marika Dias, Managing Director at the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center in New York City and Ora Prochovnick, Director of Litigation & Policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative in San Francisco, about the importance of Right to Counsel rights for tenants who are facing eviction. Full Rent Stabilization Association statement: After forecasting an eviction tsunami that never materialized, the advocates are at it again – with legal services providers warning that tenants will have to represent themselves because of a shortage of public defenders. The facts tell a different story. Housing Court continues to operate in a limited capacity, with a hybrid of virtual and in-person appearances. Most housing courtrooms are hearing only 25-40 cases per day virtually, compared to about 45-60 pre-pandemic," said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 diverse owners and managers of more than one million apartments that house over 2.5 million New Yorkers in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. "Not all of the pending eviction cases are eligible for free legal services because not all tenants fall at or below 200% of the poverty level ($23,000 annual income for an individual, and $49,000 for a four-person household), and it is still not known how many of these cases will ultimately be discontinued based on tenants having received rental assistance or having otherwise paid the rent," Strasburg continued.   "With Housing Court operating on limited calendars and public defenders representing a fraction of the existing cases – coupled with the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program having stayed eviction for tens of thousands of tenants – why are legal services providers failing to meet their contractual obligation with the City of New York in delivering taxpayer-funded, right-to-counsel services to needy families? Are they manufacturing this crisis to cover up their failures and clog court calendars? Or worse, further delaying proceedings that would enable tenants and owners to resolve problems, and connect families to government-funded rent assistance programs that keep them in their homes and provide owners with the rent-arrears needed to maintain their buildings and pay city property taxes?" Strasburg further stated. "Property owners have been prevented from fully asserting their rights in court for over two years. If legal services providers cannot meet their contractual obligation with New York City and provide these legal services to qualifying tenants, then New York City should reallocate funds and hire private counsel to alleviate the burden from legal services providers and ensure that New York's most financially distressed tenants have representation in court. For decades, the Assigned Counsel Plan – also referred to as 18B Panel attorneys – has provided legal services to indigent persons throughout the city by compensating private attorneys in criminal and family law matters. If legal services providers insist that they are unable to provide the free legal services New York City is paying them to provide, there is no reason why an 18B Panel could not be established for landlord-tenant matters. This would ensure that cases in Housing Court start moving again, while also ensuring that those tenants who qualify get the legal representation as required by law," Strasburg said.

TJ & Lizzy discuss season 2, episode 1 of Wentworth, maths, Scary & Emma Spice, and the Urban Justice Center. www.urbanjustice.org Sound from zapsplat.com Cover art by Elise Bigley --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/unlockingwentworth/support

The final part of this mini series: Da Homeless Hero's Story is here. In this episode, Shams, an NYC father with lived experience of homeless, shares about his collaboration with different stakeholders, including landlords and the Adams administration. He continues to emphasize the importance of empowering those at risk of or currently experiencing homelessness and ensuring they are a part of the conversations with key decision makers. Check out Part 1 on Apple, Spotify, Anchor Check out Part 2 on Apple, Spotify, Anchor Follow us on Instagram and Twitter: @nyc_hov Follow Shams on Instagram (@dahomelesshero) and Twitter (@homeless_hero) Vocal New York (https://vocal-ny.org/about-us/) Learn more about their work to end homelessness. Urban Justice Center (https://www.urbanjustice.org/) Get help for legal services here Coalition for the Homeless (https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/) Find more information on getting assistance for eviction, disability rights, housing, food, and more here.

On Sunday, February 27, Tarz Youngblood was found dead in his cell on Rikers' Island. His death is the first of the year, but 16th in the last 12 months. All the deaths are of men who are awaiting trial - no one at Rikers has been convicted of their crimes. On Monday, the Black Attorneys of Legal Aid Caucus (BALA), Color Of Change, the Freedom Agenda of the Urban Justice Center, VOCAL-NY, elected officials, impacted New Yorkers and others held a rally outside the gates of Rikers Island calling on judges, District Attorneys, elected officials and others to immediately facilitate the decarceration of the city's jails.

Chris Newbold: Hello, Well-Being friends. Welcome to the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, executive vice-president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. As you know, our goal here on the podcast is to introduce you to though† leaders doing meaningful work in the well-being space within the legal profession and in the process, build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. I'm very excited to be welcomed by my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you today? Bree Buchanan: I'm doing great, Chris. It's great to be back with you. We've taken a little break. Chris Newbold: It is. We are heading into the holidays here. Bree, I think you and I have been on almost a three-month hiatus from the podcast, but that does not mean that we have not been busy and active on the well-being front. I thought we'd take a couple minutes here in the beginning, just to talk about some of the things, Bree, that are happening at the national level, particularly with respect to the Institute for Well-Being and Law. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely, Chris. Yeah, the absence of us from the podcast actually indicates that we've been very busy in the kitchen cooking up and creating this new national think tank. So over the past couple of months, we have done amazing things. We've constituted and oriented a 21-member advisory board of some of the best minds around the country and the well-being movement. We've also opened up applications for our committee structure and God, we had so much interest. It was amazing that there were actually people that we had to turn away, and we now have over 110 people on our committees. So we have really filled out the people that are working on this movement and it's exciting to have so many new folks on board and a little scary, too. Chris Newbold: Yeah. I think it's fair to say that, again, as the topic of well-being continues to take on, it's been in the national forefront for quite a while, but I think one of the things as leaders that we've been looking to do is to welcome more leaders and ambassadors into the movement. Boy, I know it was heartwarming for me to see the level of individuals out there around the country and oftentimes, worldwide, who are saying, "I want to be a part of this. I want to engage in it." When you put out a call for volunteers to join the movement, the fact that we had over 100 responses certainly, to me, indicated that, again, there are folks that really want to work on this issue and we are certainly, encouraging both them to do that and for us to continue to join the movement and there's lots of different ways to be able to do that. Bree Buchanan: Yeah. Absolutely. Another thing that's an indicator of what's going on our first annual conference, which is going to be virtual, is coming- Chris Newbold: Yeah. Big deal, huh? Big deal. Bree Buchanan: It is January 19th through the 21st, three days, three tracks, pricing, so people can pick a day or pick the whole thing. Again, just like with the committees, we put out the RFP and we got so many people wanting to be a presenter at the conference. I know it was incredibly difficult to choose, and so I think that bodes well also just for the quality of what we're going to end up having. So if people are listening to this, please go check out our website at lawyerwellbeing.net and register because it's coming up. By the time you're hearing this, it's around the corner. Chris Newbold: Yeah. Let's say that one more time, so lawyerwellbeing.net. I think that is really the welcoming mat to the movement. Again, there's still opportunities in there to fill out and join the movement to learn more about news and resources going on around the country. The conference that's coming up in January, many of the folks and listeners of this podcast are also very actively involved in Well-Being Week in Law, which was another great success back in May. So as we, Bree and I very much take pride in the fact that we're a little bit facilitating and being dot connectors of the movement. I think that is the glue that still keeps this movement together. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. Absolutely. Chris Newbold: So, well, let's get into the podcast today. Today, I want to circle back to the influence of research and scholarship in the real realm of well-being. We're really excited to welcome Professor Terry Maroney from Vanderbilt University, who specifically has explored, I'm super excited to be able to hear about the intersection of law, emotion and the judiciary, which I don't think we've had a conversation about those particular intersections. Bree, would you be so kind to introduce Professor Maroney to the listeners? Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. I've worked with Terry on a variety projects in the past, so I have the honor of also a part of her introduction is saying that she's a friend and a colleague. So the official introduction is that Terry Maroney is a professor of law and a professor of medicine, health, and society, and the Robert S. and Teresa L. Reder Chair of Law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She's been a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and she researches the interaction of emotion and law with a focus on the role of emotion and judicial experience and behavior, which I just find fascinating. As a leader in state and federal judicial education on these topics, she graduated from Oberlin College and NYU School of Law, summa cum laude; clerked for Honorable Amalya Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and was a litigator at the and are Urban Justice Center and at Global Firm, WilmerHale. So Terry, welcome. So glad you're here with us today. Terry Maroney: Thank you. It's really wonderful to be here. Bree Buchanan: So just before we get started, the idea of judges and their emotions and I think who is listening to this and those phrases who's been in a courtroom, probably has a story to share about the emotional regulation or that lack thereof in the judiciary. But it's not something you hear discussed, and so I'm delighted that we're going to really talk about this today, but Terry, I'm going to start you off with a question that we start all of our guests off, just to give us its view and to our guests and their background. So are there, were there experiences in your life that's really a driver of the passion you have for this work in general, and particularly, in the Well-Being and Law Movement? Terry Maroney: Absolutely. Before I became a lawyer, I was a social services professional, and also worked in community activism in New York City in the early '90s, almost all around the HIV-Aids crisis at that time. Clearly, my passion for people and their experiences and what can make their lives better didn't originate during that era of my life, but it certainly solidified during that era of my life. When I faced a bit of crossroads professionally, when I knew I'd reached a level where I wanted to go to grad school and pursue some different kind of work I really was choosing between, say, a public health career or a social work psychology career or law. Terry Maroney: Really, I could have gone in any those ways, so what I have done is I chose law, but I've circled my way back to all of those things. So I've managed to do them all at once in some way. So I was always very, very interested in psychology and counseling and what makes people tick, how I can, again, be an agent for positive change in people's lives, and in communities then and after a very satisfying career as a litigator, and then also, as a law professor have found a way, I think, to weave all those interests together. Chris Newbold: Yeah. I enjoyed reading your career arc, which was law student to law clerk, law clerk to litigator, litigator supplemented with teaching and then to academia. I'm just curious what your reflections on that and the impact that you're having, and from there, researching the judiciary, how did you get into that particular area? Terry Maroney: Yeah, those are all good questions. Again, the arc of one's life always looks quite tidy and in the rear view mirror it never looks like that in the living of it. But I've described to you one crossroads I took, which result to me going into law at all. A second crossroads was once I was a number of years into my litigation career, I really needed to decide was that what I wanted to stay in for the foreseeable future, or did I want to move into academia? Pardon me, and I chose to go into academia for a number of reasons. One is that I found myself always being intrigued by the big issues and litigation provided me many wonderful opportunities to engage with big issues. I was very lucky in the kind of practice I had, but I found that that's where I was happiest. I thought, "Well, if I go into academia, I can do that all the time." I also love teaching and wanted to be able to build that into my day-to-day life, so that's the choice I made. Terry Maroney: I have to say, just like my first choice was actually a difficult one, because there are aspects of legal practice that I quite miss, and I miss, again, the human element of it, the human stories. So that gets to how I got to researching the judiciary. So there's a long story and there's a short story. I shall endeavor to tell you the short story. When I was still in practice, I had the privilege of working on an insanely interesting case involving a white-collar criminal defendant, who, as we had discovered had suffered a very serious form of brain injury from a medical incident. This brain injury from this medical incident had seriously impaired some of the emotional processing aspects of her brain function. So she was cognitively and intellectually intact, but emotionally, extremely disabled in a way that actually directly contributed to the behavior for which she been [inaudible 00:11:35] a very small part of a very, very large Ponzi scheme, exactly the kind of scheme that somebody [inaudible 00:11:45] Terry Maroney: So working on that case, I became absolutely fascinated by the interaction at the psychological and at the neurological level between emotion and reason. I became very puzzled about why law, unlike the fields I had been in before, for example, psychology and social work, why law had this very entrenched, very strange idea that emotions and rationality are separable and opposing forces and that law existed for the purpose of privileging one at the expense of the other. I thought that was weird. I thought, to use a technical term, it didn't match up with anything I knew about human behavior and human life and what creates a good and flourishing human life. The more I read about the science, I realized that I wasn't alone in that, and if anything was alone, it was law that held onto this very irrational idea about the role of emotion. Terry Maroney: So when I went into academia, that was the first thing I started writing about and it's like a minor hits of vein. I hit vein and I've literally just never left it, and as I've gotten deeper and deeper into it, just because it's such an incredibly rich vein to say, "What are all the implications for the legal system, for legal theory, for legal practice of us believing some version of a big lie about the way humans function? What are all the implications of that?" That's the work of many lifetimes for many people, I'm just doing my bit. As I continued on that vein, the bit that I found that has been the most personally satisfying has been judges that I realized that if there's a big lie going around about emotion and reason being separable and emotion being the enemy of reason, nowhere is that stronger than with judges and judging. They are what historically have been thought of as the paragons of should be emotionless, or what I've called 'the cultural script of judicial dispassion.' Terry Maroney: That's a very definition of a good judge is a judge who has eradicated all emotions in the course of his or her work, and that just can't be right. So there you go. That was the medium-size story, but again, I've hit that sub-vein probably about 10 years ago and, again, just never left it. It has led me into an incredibly satisfying research agenda, but even more importantly, into a very satisfying work with individual judges and with the judiciary, which has just really deepened my regard and affection for the profession and my commitment to trying to make them live happier, healthier lives. So, Bree, you'll appreciate this, but shortly after the presentation that you and I were both a part of at a circuit court conference recently, a judge came up to me and said, "You know what? I'm glad we're talking about this, because healthy judges make for healthy courts and healthy courts make for a healthy, fair society." I said, "That's it, in a nutshell. That's my life. There you go." Chris Newbold: There you go. Terry Maroney: Right? Really, I felt seen and heard. I said, "Exactly." Bree Buchanan: Oh, wow. Terry Maroney: Yeah. Bree Buchanan: Yeah, and it is really meaningful. Just, again, going back to my days as a litigator, there were so many times when I was in the courtroom where I saw the exact opposite going on of what you would expect or would want. You just really have to worry about the impact that it has on people, the litigants, who were there and saying, "This is what the civil justice or the criminal justice system is about." But I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Let's continue laying things out here, Terry. Talk to us some more about the research you've conducted of the judiciary. What has been your [crosstalk 00:15:58] Terry Maroney: Absolutely. [crosstalk 00:15:59] Yeah. So for a long time, I was just trying to set the theoretical foundation and just trying to bring into legal theory the idea that is so prominent in virtually every other discipline these days, which is that you can't understand human behavior without understanding emotion, and the end goal is not emotional eradication. That's actually not a sensible or possible or productive target to aim for. So this big lie or the cultural script of dispassion is not something that, of course we can't ever get there, but the trying to get there will do good things for us. The trying to get there actually does bad things for us. It does bad things for judges. It does bad things for the court. It does bad things for society because what I bring in my research and research of primarily from affective science and from the sociology of emotion shows is that the effort it takes for judges to try to divest themselves of a normal range of human emotion is itself, counterproductive. Terry Maroney: So I could have a much longer conversation with you about that, but the core message is the most important thing that judges can do is to notice, name, and understand their work-related emotions and not assume that they're a bad thing. Assume that they're a relevant and interesting thing that should be interrogated so you can decide what to do with them. Some you're going to want to try to set aside some, you're going to follow, some you're going to try to morph in some way, again, much longer conversations, but that's the core message. So what I have done in addition to just bringing in research, again, primarily from affective psychology and sociology and showing how it sheds light on judges and judging about how we should encourage judges to notice, name, and understand their emotions. Terry Maroney: In the more recent years, I've moved on from that theoretical foundation and started doing empirical research of my own, and that has two, well, I guess at this point, I should say three main prongs. So the largest prong is that for a number of years now, I have been conducting a national purposive sample qualitative interview study with federal judges, both districts, judges, and judges in the courts of appeal, where I go and I talk to a diversity of judges from all over the country with different geographies, different types of dockets, different number of years on the bench, a diversity in terms of gender, race, political party of the appointed president, et cetera, and just invite them to educate me about their work-related emotions; what they are, why they think they have them, what impact they think they have, but in a very biologic way, trying to get past the party line or generalities and get very, very specific like, "Let's talk through an instance in which you are unhappy with how you handled a particular situation, for example." Terry Maroney: So these are very deep, and I dare say, intimate conversations and I feel extremely privileged to have had so many of them. So that is prong number one, which is a serious qualitative deep dive, just into the mental maps that judges have of the kinds of emotional experiences they have at work, what they think they're about, how they try to manage them and why, and what impact they have on them and their families. So that's prong one. Prong two is more squarely about wellness, and I see these things as quite intertwined. In fact, I came to the wellness game a little late. I was very much about emotion and emotion regulation in judges. I found that I kept going to judicial conferences and being put in the wellness programming section of the conference. I'd be like, "No, no, no, I don't do wellness work. I do high-level theoretical work about the interplay of cognition emotion." Terry Maroney: Then after a few years of that, I was like, "Oh no, wait. I am doing all this work," and that's a good thing. So I'll just give you one snippet about why I think this is such an important connection is I've focused for a long time on the ways in which judges try to regulate their emotions at work, which means why are they motivated to do so? How are they trying to do it? Are they using regulation strategies that have been shown to be productive to decision making or that cause undue cognitive load or are counterproductive, et cetera. It turns out that one of the biggest predictors of burnout, for example, in workers, and I think of judges as a species of worker, is basically how well or how poorly they do with their emotion regulation. So I'm drawing on work on the concept of emotional labor, for example. I started to see that all these things are intertwined. Terry Maroney: So if judges can notice, name, and understand their work related emotions and treat them with a curiosity and a value-neutral perspective that enables to figure out again, what are they about? Are they appropriate? What should I do with them? Why? If they can do that, not only is there judging better because it's a factor that if unacknowledged could have impact that you're not conscious of, right? It gives judges more tools with which to choose what they do and do not incorporate into their behavior and decision making. It allows emotion to enrich that decision making in some instances and it allows them to space and time to set them aside in others, if they can do that, in my view, then they're at far lesser risk of some of the well-being impacts that we worry about such as burnout, compassion fatigue, right? People who are more granular with their emotions are better at emotion regulation. People who are more granular with their emotions have better health outcomes. These things are interconnected. They drink less when they're upset. So again, I've stopped resisting the wellness pull. Bree Buchanan: Good. Good. Terry Maroney: Okay. I've forgotten, I lost track now. I'm in prong number two or three? It doesn't really matter. Here's the wellness prong. So what I've started doing most recently is literally to study the judicial wellness movement. I have had a small army of really wonderful research assistants and some great colleagues in the qualitative research core at Vanderbilt. We have been, basically, trying to figure out what is this quote/unquote movement? Why now? Why are we focusing on not just lawyer wellness, but specifically now judicial wellness? What do we think the problem is? Why do we think that and what are we trying to do about it and why? So we've literally just been scrubbing the internet for any and all evidence of pamphlets, conferences, articles, YouTube videos, judicial education seminars about judicial wellness and also interviewing judicial wellness leaders and are trying to figure out what is this movement? What's it trying to do and why? And mapping that data onto wellness research to see if there are obvious gaps or areas of growth. So that's been a lot of fun. Bree Buchanan: Wow. That's fascinating. Awesome. Listen, I wanted to ask you, Terry, just a little bit digging down in the specific area around compassion fatigue, which is also known as secondary PTSD [crosstalk 00:24:43]. Terry Maroney: Mm-hmm (affirmative), or secondary trauma. Yeah. Bree Buchanan: Yeah, in my work with a judiciary in education, et cetera, that seems to be a really big topic. Can you unpack that a little bit about a little bit what it is and what you are seeing within the judiciary these days? Terry Maroney: Yeah. Absolutely. I don't want to make any grand claims about where the judiciary, in general, is with compassion fatigue, but I definitely believe it to be a problem for many, and a severe problem for some. So the way I think about it is very similar to what you just said, Bree. It's a secondary form of trauma, it like a contact trauma and those sorts of things that I hear judges talk to me about that are relevant to this, I think are, for example, a lot of them talk about being exposed to really traumatic evidence. Think about the role of a judge. Let's think for a moment about trial judges in cases at might involve traumatic evidence, which could be in a civil case, like with a gruesome injury, or it could be in a criminal case. For example, a lot of judges are exposed to direct evidence of extreme child sexual abuse and child pornography. Terry Maroney: So the role of a trial judge is to look at all that stuff and figure out what can and can't go to the jury, and part of that determination is how traumatic is this going to be for the jury? Is it going to be so, so overwhelming that they can't get whatever the intended informational value is out of it? Well, in order to make that determination, the judge has to look at it herself. Then she has to guess, based on her own level of shock and trauma, what the average juror's level of shock and trauma is going to be. That's just one example, but it's a job that literally requires you to become traumatized so that you can do your job. That's a really hard thing to put on normal human beings. So that's just one example, but a lot of judges say the hardest thing about what they do, and this goes for trial and appellate judges is just being exposed to how broken the world is. Terry Maroney: They often say things like "I see people at their worst. I never hear a good story. Federal judges love doing naturalization ceremonies, because it's such a happy day. State court judges love to do adoption, consent adoption because they finally get to do something good." It can be a real grind. I hear judges say, "I basically process evictions all day and I can't do anything about it." So it's that combination of requiring the judge to have emotionally difficult experiences. It's being exposed to a very disproportionately negative account of human reality because most reasons why people are in court are not good reasons. Somebody's usually very unhappy, and then the sense frustration that can be the nail in that coffin I think, and that, "I can't really do anything about it. I can't solve the problem of child pornography. I can just handle this one case. I can't really solve the housing crisis. All I do is inflict pain by processing evictions and I have no choice." Terry Maroney: So I think that's the danger zone for judges is that if they're getting those negative inputs without any opportunities to feel elevated or to feel a sense of agency, I think that's when you get into compassion fatigue and that can just make people shut down. One judge who was interviewed by some colleagues of mine in Australia at one point said, "You have a choice of remaining open to it all, which you can't do because then your emotions are essentially too raw at all times, or just growing a skin on you thick as a rhino," and this judge's words, in which case you can't be a good judge because he lost the feeling for humanity. So there's this feeling of a rock and hard place, and I'm interested in the third way, what's not the rock and what's not the hard place? How can you notice them even understand the things that are hard and process them and think about them and work through them in a way that allows you to be healthy and to do your job well, but also take care of yourself. Chris Newbold: All right. Let's take a quick break right here. Terry, I think you've done a wonderful job setting the table about all the different areas that you've been involved with. I'd love to continue to drill down in the second half about where do we go and what you've found and what you advise, as we think about the confidence in the legal system is so important in terms of the wellness of our judges is to the public's confidence and its effectiveness. I just love the work that you're doing. I got to imagine that there's not a lot of people doing what you do, which is, I think another really interesting part of- Terry Maroney: That is true. [crosstalk 00:30:15] Chris Newbold: ... who you are and [crosstalk 00:30:15]. Terry Maroney: I wish there were more. Maybe they'll hear this podcast. Chris Newbold: That's right. That's right. So let's take a quick break. — Advertisement: Meet VERA, your firm's Virtual Ethics Risk Assessment Guide developed by ALPS, VERA's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots from client intake to calendaring, to cybersecurity, and more. Vera: "I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you a summary of recommendations to provide course corrections if needed, and to keep your firm on the right path." Generous and discreet, VERA is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS to help firms like yours be their best. Visit VERA at alpsinsurance.com/vera. — Chris Newbold: All right. Welcome back. We are joined by Professor Terry Maroney from Vanderbilt University, and we are exploring law and emotion and the judiciary. Terry, I want to pick up a little bit about just how you see your own personal role. Obviously, you've done a lot of work as you've done, you're working to understand the forces that are affecting judicial effectiveness, and ultimately, confidence in the system. Do you see yourself as an insider or outsider to the wellness movement as you've observed? Do you see yourself as an advocate after you've conducted the research? Are you building the trail map to a better judicial outcome and a better way of going about the work from the bench? I just love the fact of what got you involved in this movement, that's to help people. I certainly can see that the way that you're going about it is a very interesting one, in which there can't be many others in your space who are actually doing what you're doing. Terry Maroney: Yes, that's true. Again, I wasn't joking when I said I hope some people join me after hearing this podcast, because we need more people in this strange, little world that I inhabit. But so to answer your question, though, Chris, can I just choose all of the above? There's not a thing you said that I don't identify with in some way. I am an insider to both the lawyer/judge Well-Being Movement, and I'm an insider, to some degree, within the judiciary because I think I've earned their trust and they've earned my respect. I work directly with courts and with judges on trying to strengthen capacity for judges to be able to notice, name, and understand their emotions and service of being better judges and more satisfied people. Terry Maroney: Sometimes, I'm a bit like an embedded anthropologist, but I think one benefit of being a scholar in addition to all those of other things, is I'm very, very committed to correct paths, which sounds perhaps a little opaque, so let me say what I mean. I do not want to be in a position of advocating well-being practices, for example, that are not productive in the way judges need them to be productive, or I'm not interested in forcing a particular account of how judges' emotions ought to infuse their work and their work product. I think it's very important to actually have that academic distance to follow the evidence and to follow the stories and try to see what's true. Terry Maroney: I think that's something that scholars can really bring to this field is saying, "Let's not assume, for example," I'll pick a random example," that conventional anger management sessions "work," or that they're going to work for judges with anger regulation problems in the way that will be most productive for them, and best for the courts, and best for public trust in the judiciary. Do we know that?" I don't think we know that, so I would like to know that. I'd like to know what works, and in order to know what works you have to know what you're aiming for, right? What do we see as the new model of the good judge if it's not the person who's divested of all emotion, but a person who is conscious of his or her emotions then uses them in certain ways and not in others? Terry Maroney: That's a more complicated view, and it's not completely obvious what it is. So I'm giving a long answer to a short-ish question, which is, "Who am I in these spaces?" I think I'm, I'm a fellow traveler. I think I'm an advocate for things that increase the public's face in the courts, because the courts deserve it. I'm not interested in artificial inflation of their brand, but I am absolutely in favor of helping the public, see what it is that they do and what they do well and help them do it better. But I'm also just an academic who wants to make sure that we're collectively not just following well worn paths, assuming that certain things are or are not true, certain things will or will not "help" in a certain way, just to bring that of discipline and some distance to it. So yes, all of the above. Chris Newbold: Yeah. But based upon your research, though, it certainly feels like you would be at the potential epicenter of also being helpful in writing the prescription. Is that fair to say? Terry Maroney: I hope that's true. Again, this is where it's an all of the above answer. I do you work specifically with courts to help them implement real changes and real things. I talk to real judges in groups about how, for example, to help their appellate court achieve a higher level of productive collegiality, which requires a lot of emotion regulation in a group, and avoiding toxic behavior patterns, et cetera. So not all academics make that journey into helping to write and implement the solution, but I do. Again, as long as I always can feel comfortable that I haven't talked myself into something without adequate basis or that I'm not pushing an agenda without real things behind it, as long as I'm not crossing that line, I think that's really, the best and highest use of that scholarly set of skills, the discipline and the distance. What are we all here on earth to do really, if not to try to help our fellow human beings do a better job for each other. Right? Chris Newbold: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Terry Maroney: So that is my somewhat grandiose hope for this research is that I have this little sticky note on my computer monitor that I scratched out a little while ago that said, "Strengthening democracy, one judge at a time." It's a little silly, but in some ways that that's how I like to think of myself. Bree Buchanan: That's wonderful. So when you're talking to judges around the country, and it sounds like you do talk to them about what to do for themselves individually to support their staff, maybe the lawyers that come in their courts, what do you talk to them about and how are those messages received? Terry Maroney: So I definitely want to make clear that I'm not a therapist. I'm not a judge whisperer, and that's not what I'm trying to do here, but I am somebody who sits at the center of a Venn diagram, that again, not that many people have, which is I really, really understand legal culture and I really, really understand courts and judging to some degree, and I understand affective science and sociology of emotion. So it's translational, I guess, what I do. What I try to do when I'm working specifically with judges or with groups of judges, which is, of course, more are common, is try to take lessons, for example, about productive and non-productive forms of emotion regulation. For example, the difference between learning to think about things differently, which leads one to feel differently about them. That's called cognitive appraisal. Terry Maroney: The difference between cognitive appraisal or reappraisal, which is a very high order, intellectually-challenging, but very productive emotion regulation. It tends to, again, buy a person a whole lot of perspective on what their emotion is about. It gives them room to work with. It helps them distinguish good reasons and bad reasons. It can elevate positive emotion, minimize negative emotion. It's an all-around really great emotion regulation tool. Contrast that with suppression and denial, which is actually what we encourage judges to do through our cultural narrative, which are disasters. They don't work very well. They don't actually minimize the emotions you want and minimize, and they backfire and they eat up all sorts of your cognitive glue. One of my good friends, James Gross, an affective psychologist at Stanford once quipped, "Suppression and denial make you temporarily stupider," and it's true. Terry Maroney: We don't want our judges to be the temporarily stupider, nor do they, right? They don't either. So I think what I try to do at my core is I try to take these lessons from the sciences, including the social sciences and I translate them into the context that judges understand, which is the context of their daily work. So we try to work towards identifying moments of work- related emotion that they're experiencing, identifying the kinds of emotion regulation tools that a person can throw at such a thing, educating them about what these different tools are, and giving them the data on, basically, what's going to work out well for them in the long run and why, and how can they practice those things? Hopefully that gives a sense of what I do. Chris Newbold: Terry, what are you seeing in terms of judicial involvement in terms of leaning into the Well-Being and Law Movement? Are you seeing barriers, and if so, how do you think that we can overcome some of those and are there generational elements to that? Terry Maroney: Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, it makes me realize it's connected to the last part of your last question, which I didn't quite answer, which is, how are these messages being received? So I think, in my experience, judges overwhelmingly have been very hungry for this kind of information and this kind of recognition. It's a weird thing to walk through a very, very important job as a human being and yet, be treated as if you're not really supposed to be a human being. I think it really stifles a lot of judges' ability to interact productively with peers, to reach past the isolation inherent in the job. We're not doing judges any favor by treating them as some like super beings that are supposed to pull off something that no ordinary human being can pull off. Terry Maroney: So judges, I have been very surprised, well, I'm not surprised anymore, when I started, I was very surprised just how excited they would get about it. It wasn't particularly breaking down along any demographics, like judges that I might have predicted would not be open to the message have been open to the message, because it reflects the reality. Who doesn't crave having their lived experience seen and recognized, and given the space to actually talk about it in a non-judgmental way and give tools to try to do a better job, be a better judge, be a happier person? So the reception has been great. That said, that's the sunny part. That said, there are very real barriers. So I would not be telling the truth if I didn't say that there's also a very significant element of pushback. Though, again, I don't personally experience a lot of it. Terry Maroney: The people who come to my workshops, for example, either choose to be there, so there are self-selected groups, or they're forced to be there and they just don't say anything about it, and they just walk out of the room and think, "Well, that was a lot of bunk, great?" So I'm often not exposed to the pushback personally, but judges tell me about it. So I'll give you a couple for examples. Once I was doing a very small workshop with a particular court. So I was, basically, at a court retreat and I was doing an emotional granularity session, basically, and presenting data on the kinds of work-related emotional experiences that judges, have giving a lot of examples and stories, and it could get pretty sad. It's like "Here are the things that are making people sad. Here's what disgusts them. Here's why they're angry. This is when they feel hopeless," et cetera. Terry Maroney: At one point in the granularity session, one of the judges, now keep in mind is this small group I think is fewer than 20 people, all of whom know each other very well, just shouts right in the middle of me saying something shouts, "What is the point of all of this?" Just yells it out. He just could not tolerate it for one single second. I took it in stride and I treated it as an interesting moment. I said, "You know what? That's a good question. What is the point of this, folks?" What happened then, was what I thought was one of the best discussions that we could possibly have had, because the other judges were so mortified that he had done that, that they were like, "Here's why this is important because we really need to notice what we're feeling," and they taught themselves what I was trying to teach them. So that was a very dramatic moment of pushback. Terry Maroney: More broadly, judges talk to me about, there are a lot of their judicial peers, well, I'll tell you, one said to me once, "I would talk to you," meaning me, this is in an interview, "I'll tell you all these things, but I'm never going to tell the judge down the hall. I just wouldn't do it. I don't want to be perceived as weak or as squishy or as flawed," or like, "I'll talk to you, but I won't talk to them." That's, I think, the deepest form of pushback is when you don't feel like you can have honest, supportive conversations with your peers who are the only other humans on the planet who know what your job is like, right? Bree Buchanan: Right. Terry Maroney: That's, I think, the deepest barrier that I'd like eventually to see completely dismantled. Chris Newbold: Yeah. Well, we certainly appreciate it. We just a couple minutes remaining, terry. Do you feel like the judiciary understands the impact and the role that they have had and can continue to have on this movement as a whole? Obviously, Bree was at the forefront of getting our report in front of The Conference of Chief Justices, which I think was- Terry Maroney: Right. Chris Newbold: A really big deal in terms of catapulting- Terry Maroney: It is. Chris Newbold: ... this movement. Terry Maroney: Yep. Chris Newbold: Do think that they, as a collective group, understand how important this is to the future of the profession.? Terry Maroney: Yes and no. One, it's hard to say anything about the judiciary as a whole, especially in a Federalist system like we have. We have so many different types of judges spread out and so many different types of judging. So I'm always slow to group together judges with wildly different jobs who work in wildly different places, and we're talking tens and tens and tens of thousands of people. So that's my huge caveat, as I would never say the judiciary block. That said, I have definitely seen change among both the state and the federal judiciary, that there is absolutely an increased awareness of, pardon me, the need for a wellness programming and the need for a broad range of wellness supports. I think that's because of not just the amazing work that y'all have done with building up awareness of lawyer well-being, but also just pioneers within the judiciary. Terry Maroney: So I would be remiss. For example, not to call out the Wellness Committee of the U.S. Court of Appeals For the Ninth Circuit, which in the federal system is really the pinnacle of a court that got it early and leaned in early and has continued to do just terrific work and people look at them as a model, and that's starting to proliferate. It hasn't proliferated completely through the federal judiciary, of course not, but you don't hear anybody making fun of it anymore, which you would have as recently as five, 10 years ago. On the state level, again, I have seen even more movement in this direction often as an outgrowth of what started as, say, a Lawyer Assistance Program, or a LAP, and is now a Judges and Lawyer's Assistant Program, or a JLAP, which is a really important move. Terry Maroney: Again, there have been some states that have really been leaders in this space, some that are still catching up, but absolutely. I think, especially as public attention just continues to be focused on the courts, more and more court proceedings are being recorded. It's so easy to find evidence of, for example, anger displayed by judges on YouTube. I wrote this article years ago called Angry Judges and had these research assistants who I basically said, "Go on the internet and find me salient examples of judges losing their temper." We couldn't even keep up with the volume of it, because our culture loves that stuff, and it's terrible for the image of the judiciary, that we love that stuff. So I feel like there is more attention now to the human beings in these positions and a recognition that when they're regulating their emotions poorly it has very negative impacts, not just on them, but also on justice and on the fairness of our court system. Terry Maroney: I think courts live in some fear of having such an incident within their system because, again, it's obviously bad for the litigants, but it's just bad, generally. I think there have also been quite a lot of cases, of course, have had to confront colleagues who are experiencing, say, severe cognitive decline, but aren't realizing it and really shouldn't be hearing cases anymore, but they are, it's a very delicate situation. So yes, the short answer is yes, judges and judicial leaders see this and they want to make sure that judges are being given every single opportunity and encouragement to live the longest, happiest, healthiest lives they possibly can because their individual flourishing is crucial to the court flourishing, which is crucial to our societal flourishing. These things cannot be separated. The one grows from the other. Chris Newbold: Excellent. Excellent. Well, we've been joined today by professor Terry Maroney. Terry, we, again, thank you so much for your insights and your research and the work that you're doing in the judicial environment. Obviously, when you go to work every day and your professional mission statement is, "Strengthening democracy one judge at a time," that's a pretty cool lifelong pursuit, for sure. So again, Terry, thanks for joining us. That wraps up a three-part series on the research and scholarship side of well-being, and I think Bree and I are talking about moving into the diversity, equity, and inclusion side of well-being as we head into the new year. So again, thanks everyone for joining us and thank you, Terry. Terry Maroney: Thank you so much for having me. Chris Newbold: All right. Thanks.  

In this week's Deep Dive with Dorian Warren, Melissa and Dorian take an in-depth look at sex work and how it's been criminalized in the United States, starting off with journalist and former sex worker Melissa Gira Grant, who discusses the history of criminalizing sex work in the U.S. Then Cecilia Gentili, principal consultant and founder of Trans Equity Consulting, and LaLa B. Holston-Zannell, trans justice campaign manager in the National Advocacy Department at the ACLU, explain the idea of sex work as work and why some advocates are calling for full decriminalization. Yasmin Vafa, executive director of Rights 4 Girls, discusses concerns that sex work increases opportunities for sex trafficking, particularly the trafficking of children.   RJ Thompson, managing director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, helps break down some of the stigma surrounding sex work as well as how and why male sex workers are often left out of conversations around sex work. And finally Elexus Jionde, author, content creator and founder of Intelexual Media, explores how technology, digital communication and the “realites” of the virtual world will continue to shape the future of sex work. Some of the music on this podcast was made by Touque (https://davidaaron4.bandcamp.com/album/soho-sessions), Hannis Brown (https://www.hannisbrown.com/), James Perry, and j. cowit (https://jcowit.bandcamp.com/).     

In this week's Deep Dive with Dorian Warren, Melissa and Dorian take an in-depth look at sex work and how it's been criminalized in the United States, starting off with journalist and former sex worker Melissa Gira Grant, who discusses the history of criminalizing sex work in the U.S. Then Cecilia Gentili, principal consultant and founder of Trans Equity Consulting, and LaLa B. Holston-Zannell, trans justice campaign manager in the National Advocacy Department at the ACLU, explain the idea of sex work as work and why some advocates are calling for full decriminalization. Yasmin Vafa, executive director of Rights 4 Girls, discusses concerns that sex work increases opportunities for sex trafficking, particularly the trafficking of children.   RJ Thompson, managing director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, helps break down some of the stigma surrounding sex work as well as how and why male sex workers are often left out of conversations around sex work. And finally Elexus Jionde, author, content creator and founder of Intelexual Media, explores how technology, digital communication and the “realites” of the virtual world will continue to shape the future of sex work. Some of the music on this podcast was made by Touque (https://davidaaron4.bandcamp.com/album/soho-sessions), Hannis Brown (https://www.hannisbrown.com/), James Perry, and j. cowit (https://jcowit.bandcamp.com/).     

October 21, 2021 - In September, Gov. Kathy Hochul ignited the hopes of advocates trying to decriminalize sex work in New York, when she expressed a willingness to engage on the issue. To understand the current landscape of sex work in New York and what it would mean to take this underground part of the economy out of the penal code, we turned to Andy Bowen, associate director, government affairs of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center.

Mohamed Attia, director of the Urban Justice Center's Street Vendor Project, discusses the recent crackdown on street vendors in the city, and how new rules are affecting the industry.

Sarah speaks with Mariah Grant, a human rights and migration specialist with a focus on migrant and sex workers' rights, freedom of movement, and labor exploitation. As the Research and Advocacy Director at the The Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center she oversees Sex Workers Project advocacy efforts and development of original research. Mariah and Sarah discuss the initiatives of SWP, labor exploitation, and society's need for real and honest conversations about the realities of sex and work in general. The way SWP likes to look at human trafficking is that for human trafficking to be properly addressed it's really about protecting and defending the rights of workers - a conversation that regardless of the kind of work we do applies to us all.  Resources: The Sex Workers Project is a national organization that defends the human rights of sex workers by destigmatizing and decriminalizing people in the sex trades through free legal services, education, research, and policy advocacy. https://swp.urbanjustice.org/ START ACT: https://startactny.org/ Instagram: @sexworkersproject DONATE: https://swp.urbanjustice.org/donate/ SEX[UAL] HEALING - https://swp.urbanjustice.org/sexual-healing/#about-debut

Join Reba as she learns about the types of education available to those pursuing a career in the business of sex.On The Business of Sex Podcast:@onthebusinessofsex Website: https://www.onthebusinessofsex.com/Goodreads book list: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/128635372-on-the-business-of-sex-podcast Studio & Producers:Switch and Board- @switchandboard http://switchandboard.com/ Host & Producer:Reba Corrine Thomas- CEO @sexpertconsultants, Pleasure Educator, Entertainer, and Cannabis Advocate @rebathediva https://sexpertconsultants.com/ Guests:Dr. Patti Britton- Clinical Sexologist and pioneer of sex coaching https://drpattibritton.com/ Dr. Laurie Mintz -Professor,Licensed Psychologist, and Author of “A Tired Woman's Guide to Passionate Sex” and “Becoming Clitorate: Why Orgasm Equlity Matters And How To Get It.” @drlauriemintz https://www.drlauriemintz.com/ Raqual Savage- Board Certified Sex Coach, Sex Educator and former Sex Worker @raquelsavage (instagram), @Raquel_Savage (Twitter), https://www.raquelsavage.com/ Stebe McGough- Director of R&D at Women and Couples Wellness, and an associate professor of Clinical Sexology, https://www.womenandcouples.com/ Cam Fraser- ex Coach as well as a Certified Sexologist, Counselor, Registered Yoga Teacher, Tantric Practitioner, and Workshop Facilitator @thecamfraser #mensexpleasure podcast. Founder of the @reverenceretreat https://www.cam-fraser.com/ Mia Davis- Founder and CEO of Tabu @talk.tabu https://www.talktabu.com/about/ https://www.miamdavis.com/tabu Erica Smith- Sex educator provideing public and private sexuality education, consulting, training, and speaking. @ericasmith.sex.ed https://www.ericasmitheac.com/Support Sex Workers:The Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center https://swp.urbanjustice.org/ 

Damon, Jordan & Tony are curious about the fact and fiction regarding sex work. This episode covers the shame attached to what many consider the oldest profession. Why does American society attach such stigma to the sex work industry? We discuss the motivation behind entering the field of sex work, new laws focused on the decriminalization of the craft, the value placed on the lives of sex workers, the positive impact of the industry, and the overall role the industry is playing in normalizing sex. For this episode, we welcome Zola Bruce, Communications Director for The Sex Workers Project of The Urban Justice Center, to our Surface Level Family. Zola offers the dual perspective of both advocate and member of the sex work community. They give an amazing lesson on the joy of the work as well as the political battles fought to protect the safety of participants. We cannot wait for you to hear their unique perspective as it adds major clarity to a topic many people only know through uninformed assumptions.

Sex! It's a short word, but a big topic. And one part of sex that's getting more and more attention these days are the people who provide sex-related services for others. This is “Babble On,” the podcast that asks “who's talking about sex workers and why?” Hosted by Vanessa Ontiveros. Throughout this series, we've been hearing about the ways that sex works have seized the means of narration to tell their own stories. Today, we'll be looking to see if that boon in representation has translated to an increase in political power. And we'll hear from advocates for sex workers rights about the recent history and hopeful future of the movement. --- Follow Babble On on Twitter or Instagram @babbleonpod --- Episode Guests: Ariela Moscowitz, director of communications for Decriminalize Sex Work Website: https://decriminalizesex.work/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/decrimsex Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/decrimsexwork/ Zola Bruce, director of communications for the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center Website: https://swp.urbanjustice.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/UrbanJustice Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urbanjusticecenter/ Maggie McNeill Blog: https://maggiemcneill.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Maggie_McNeill femi babylon Twitter: https://twitter.com/thotscholar Website: https://www.thotscholar.com/ --- Resources for allies Decriminalize Sex Work: https://decriminalizesex.work/advocacy/take-action/ Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center: https://swp.urbanjustice.org/get-involved/ --- This podcast was produced by Vanessa Ontiveros for her senior Honors Project at the University of Arizona. Special thanks to Ruxandra Guidi for advising this project. The Music is Iron by Crowander.

The safest way to return to full-capacity mass gatherings is to make sure attendees have been vaccinated. The right software could help, but there are some privacy and equity concerns. On Today's Show:New York recently launched a vaccine passport called the "Excelsior Pass." Brian Behlendorf, general manager of Blockchain Healthcare and Identity at the Linux Foundation of Public Health, talks about what it is, and how people in the open source community are advocating for systems like these to be linked, so people don't need multiple apps. Then, Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) at the Urban Justice Center, a New York–based civil rights and privacy group, and a fellow at the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy at NYU School of Law shares concerns about privacy and the digital divide.

New York recently launched a vaccine passport called the "Excelsior Pass." Brian Behlendorf, general manager of Blockchain Healthcare and Identity at the Linux Foundation of Public Health, talks about what it is, and how people in the open source community are advocating for systems like these to be linked, so people don't need multiple apps. Then, Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) at the Urban Justice Center, a New York–based civil rights and privacy group, and a fellow at the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy at NYU School of Law shares concerns about privacy and the digital divide.

Ze Royale (ze/they/them) is a writer, performance artist, sexual anarchist, social worker, and pleasure activist. Ze writes and performs in “post-pornographic” films for Aorta Films, performs chanting rituals in the musical duo Zoid^, and curates erotic events at venues like Ps 1 MoMA as a part of the production team for KinkOut. They studied psychology and sculpture at Sarah Lawrence, and Gender and Development at the School for International Training in Kingston, Jamaica before receiving their Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. Ze worked for 12 years in youth development and started the international nonprofit Unified for Global Healing, which develops grassroots community health and art initiatives in Haiti, Ghana, and India. They are currently Director of communications for the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center.

Mohamed Attia, director of the Urban Justice Center's Street Vendor Project, talks about their work on behalf of the many undocumented street vendors cut off from government assistance during the pandemic.

How do we use technology to create change? How do you empower a movement?   Aaron Freiwald, Managing Partner of Freiwald Law and host of the weekly podcast, Good Law | Bad Law, is joined by Law Professor Raymond Brescia, of Albany Law School, to discuss social movements, social change, and the impact of technology. The Hon. Harold R. Tyler Chair in Law and Technology at Albany, Ray is a student of today’s topic, having long been interested in the intersection between technology and community organizing.   In his most recent book, The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions, Ray identifies a series of “social innovation moments” in American history. Today, Aaron and Ray explore the notions of “The Future of Change” and how these ideas relate to today’s technology, social media platforms, and cultural movements. In both his book and today’s episode, Ray explains that, almost without fail, developments in how we communicate shape social movements, just as those movements change the very technologies themselves. Aaron and Ray discuss these ideas using historical parallels and examples, such as the effects of the advent of the steam printing press on the Abolitionist movement, as well as contemporary instances and examples like Twitter and the #MeToo movement. Ray illuminates the complicated, dangerous, innovative, and exciting relationship between these technologies and social change. Aaron and Ray delve into how social movements have embraced communications technologies, touching on the topics of grass roots organizing, the duality of technology, shared destiny, group thinking and combating confirmation bias, deep fake videos and “fake news,” creativity in problem solving and advocacy, messaging and promotion, Ray’s notion of “the matrix,” and more.   Professor Brescia combines his experience as a public interest attorney in New York City with his scholarly interests to address economic and social inequality, the legal and policy implications of financial crises, how innovative legal and regulatory approaches can improve economic and community development efforts, and the need to expand access to justice for people of low and moderate income. Before his time at Albany, Professor Brescia was the Associate Director of the Urban Justice Center in New York, N.Y., where he coordinated legal representation for community-based institutions in areas such as housing, economic justice, workers’ rights, civil rights, and environmental justice. Prior to his work at the Urban Justice Center, Professor Brescia was a staff attorney at New Haven Legal Assistance and the Legal Aid Society of New York, where he was a recipient of a Skadden Fellowship after graduation from law school.   Professor Brescia also served as a Law Clerk to the pathbreaking Civil Rights attorney-turned-federal judge, the Honorable Constance Baker Motley, Senior U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York. While a student at Yale Law School, Professor Brescia was co-recipient of the Charles Albom Prize for Appellate Advocacy; was a student director of several clinics, including the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Homelessness Clinic; and was a Visiting Lecturer in Yale College.   Listen in to learn more!   To learn more about Professor Brescia, please visit his bio page here. Here you will also find a comprehensive list of Professor Brescia’s publications, other books and forthcoming works. To check out, The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (Cornell University Press 2020), please click here. To check out Professor Brescia’s blog, The Future of Change, please click here. Professor Brescia is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. To view a collection of these works, please click here.     Host: Aaron Freiwald Guest: Raymond H. Brescia     Follow Good Law | Bad Law: YouTube: Good Law | Bad Law Facebook: @GOODLAWBADLAW Instagram: @GoodLawBadLaw Website: https://www.law-podcast.com

Last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, which extends the eviction moratorium that's been in place since March. Caroline Spivack, who covers housing for Curbed, and Marika Dias, tenant attorney and director of the Safety Net Project at the Urban Justice Center, explain what tenants should know about the new law, and why many are still pushing for rent during the pandemic to be cancelled altogether. Plus, we take call from listeners.   This segment is guest-hosted by Matt Katz.

This episode we speak with Ray Brescia, author of the new book The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions - https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748110/the-future-of-change/ Ray Brescia is the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Chair in Law & Technology and a Professor of Law at Albany Law School. Before, he was a lawyer and community organizer in New York City, working in Harlem, Washington Heights, the South Bronx, and Chinatown to promote housing rights, worker rights, and economic development. He has held positions at the Urban Justice Center, the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, and the Legal Aid Society of New York, where he was a Skadden Fellow, and as a law clerk to the Hon. Constance Baker Motley, United States District Court Judge. Follow him on Twitter: @rbrescia We spoke to Ray about how new means of communication have sparked social movements, the many “social innovation moments” found throughout history, and how social change activism can become more effective by learning from the social movement failures and successes in the past.

This week we talk to actor, singer and host of It’s the Day of the Show, Y’all! on Broadwayworld, Spencer Glass! Spencer opens up about the realities of senior showcase and life as a New York actor, creating and hosting his own series, and being a human first. Our organization of the week is Urban Justice Center. Join us in supporting them at https://www.urbanjustice.org/donate/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Renessa and Jonah catch up about work and the NYC Marathon a couple of weeks ago (which means we can finally stop talking about it until next year). We kept this week’s Queer News & Culture brief, and talked a little bit about 45’s deplorable efforts to let faith-based groups exclude LGBTQ parents, and the promising upsurge in queer characters on network TV shows.We then dive right into our interview with the smart, inquisitive, and handsome Hugh Ryan! Hugh is a writer, curator, and speaker in New York City. His work is about queer politics, culture, and history, and his new book, When Brooklyn Was Queer which is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBTQ history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. We learn about how the inquiry into this research was inspired and carried out to write this book, some of the groups and specific people who were featured in it, and applying for grants. Hugh also shares a bit about his background and his other areas of work, which include teaching and working with the Urban Justice Center in NY (and maybe being a voice actor in the future?!) INTERVIEW STARTS AT 24:09Intro links:A new Trump administration rule could hurt LGBTQ youth in foster careStudy shows LGBTQ characters are at a record high on network TVLGBTQ Representation On TV Is Up Again, A GLAAD Report SaysAtypical Star opens up about being queerInterview links:Hugh Ryan’s WebsiteWhen Brooklyn Was Queer - Order the book!!!Follow Hugh on TwitterHugh’s PatreonLesbian Herstory ArchivesWeeksville Heritage CenterSong: “Freestyle” by Young M.A. (from “M.A. The Mixtape”)----------------Follow The Queer CreativeInstagram: @thequeercreativepodcastTwitter: @creativequeerYouTube: The Queer Creativewww.thequeercreative.com

In this episode of Third Rail we focus on those in Central Brooklyn who are on the front line of gentrification: tenants and renters.  This past June, Governor Cuomo signed into law a sweeping new collection of rent regulations which re-set the bar for tenant protections and curtailed the power of landlords to dictate rates on rent stabilized units.  This will no doubt have a profound impact on the ways in which landlords are able to set the pace of housing displacement.  Today, we’re joined by two members/allies of the Brooklyn Movement Center family who in their own ways have been enforcing the rights of tenants and fighting against harassment from landlords.   Rae Gomes is a pioneering member-leader of the Brooklyn Movement Center and the emerging Central Brooklyn Food Coop. She most recently co-founded a tenants association in her building and has since become a crusader for renter rights in Black Brooklyn.    Accompanying her is Addrana Montgomery, a staff attorney at TakeRoot Justice, formerly known as the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center. Addrana has been leading the effort to establish a monthly pop-up tenants’ rights legal clinic here at the Brooklyn Movement Center.   Host Mark Winston Griffith uses the top of the show to facilitate a discussion on the experiences of tenants, specifically those in small unit buildings in Central Brooklyn.  Next, we get into the brave new housing regulatory world in New York and how it will effect Central Brooklynites.   And then of course, we close with that on-going call to anger, "Tell em why you’re mad." Engineer & Editor-Siad "Gypsy" Reid Intro and Outro theme Music: “City Survival” by MC K-Swift featuring TreZure Empire.                   Episode Music: "Fallout",  Yung Kartz

Activists from across the spectrum of Universal Basic Income in New York to talk about the upcoming Basic Income March, www.BasicIncomeMarch.com Diane Pagen of Basic Income Action https://twitter.com/diane_pagen Basic Income Action is an organization with chapters across the United States. Our mission is to win a basic income for all by educating and organizing people to take action. We envision a world where basic economic security is guaranteed, and everyone has enough money to live with dignity. We envision a society that is truly committed to the American ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — with a government that provides everyone with the basic income we need to ensure these rights. We aim to extend and advance the successful efforts of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, USBIG, which was founded in December 1999. We also work closely with the Basic Income Earth Network, BIEN. David Andersson https://twitter.com/davidandersson From the NY Office of Pressenza Pressenza is a space open to the expression of the social base. We endorse a universalist humanist perspective and actively promote cooperation agreements and partnerships with other agencies, as well as reciprocal links with portals, platforms, news and communications media of specific communities and cultures. Pressenza is part of an extensive network of new media that achieves global reach for local proposals while they are supplied information with the material provided by the agency. Pressenza consists of volunteers with extensive experience in communication, social activism, cultural and academic fields. The agency is independent from any economic interest, the basic condition for its autonomy. We are columnists, reporters, photographers, graphic designers, videographers and translators on five continents who contribute our professional work without financial compensation. Maria Teresa of Urban Justice Center's https://twitter.com/safetynetujc The Safety Net Project advocates for safe and secure housing and fundamental resources like food and cash assistance for underserved and marginalized communities in New York City. We combine legal services, policy advocacy, new media campaigns, and community organizing to advance the movement for economic justice.

In this conversation we hear from tireless advocate and indefatigable lawyer, Coco Culhane. Culhane talks about leaving her dream job in journalism to pursue a career in law, filling the gaps in need in the veteran space, and about channeling rage to achieve social justice. Coco Culhane is the founder and director of the Veteran Advocacy Project at the Urban Justice Center. She is an adjunct professor of clinical law at Brooklyn Law School, where she teaches the Veterans’ Rights Clinic. She has presented on veterans’ legal issues and conducted trainings for attorneys, social workers, and students across the country.

Hosts Nik & Anna discuss privatization and mass incarceration - we will be airing interviews with Bianca Tylek from the Corrections Accountability Project at the Urban Justice Center in NYC and Nico Amador at ACLU-Vermont. We cover Vermonters move to a CoreCivic privately owned prison in Mississippi that happened early October, prison slave labor, the criminalization of the poor, and divestment.

Matt Shapiro was in law school when he read about a Midtown street vendor's cart being wrongfully confiscated by the police. He was immediately moved by the issue and began to work with the Street Vendors Project, an arm of the non-profit organization Urban Justice Center, that advocates for and provides legal representation to all types of street vendors in NYC - from food trucks to grocery carts to craft & clothing vendors. Join us as we wade through the issues of immigration and race, permitting and regulations, politics and public attitude surrounding many of our familiar neighborhood vendors. Why Food? is powered by Simplecast

$pread magazine was an award winning publication produced by and for sex workers from 2005-2011. In 2015, The Feminist Press at CUNY published an anthology of some of its best material. In this week's episode, we'll hear from two of its editors, Eliyanna Kaiser and Rachel Aimee, as they discuss the history of the magazine, the evolving depiction of sex workers in mass media, and what the future may hold for the sex workers' rights movement. Advocacy and organizing groups for sex workers and their allies: Sex Workers Project, part of the Urban Justice Center – sexworkersproject.org Red Umbrella Project – redumbrellaproject.org SWOP – Sex Workers Outreach Project, A national network with links to regional chapters – www.new.swopusa.org Music: “All Will See,” “Traces,” and “Whispers” by Hyson. “Great is the Contessa” by Blue Dot Sessions. Produced by Interference Archive.

$pread magazine was an award winning publication produced by and for sex workers from 2005-2011. In 2015, The Feminist Press at CUNY published an anthology of some of its best material. In this week’s episode, we’ll hear from two of its editors, Eliyanna Kaiser and Rachel Aimee, as they discuss the history of the magazine, the evolving depiction of sex workers in mass media, and what the future may hold for the sex workers’ rights movement. Advocacy and organizing groups for sex workers and their allies: Sex Workers Project, part of the Urban Justice Center - http://sexworkersproject.org Red Umbrella Project - http://redumbrellaproject.org SWOP - Sex Workers Outreach Project, A national network with links to regional chapters - http://www.new.swopusa.org Music: “All Will See,” “Traces,” and “Whispers” by Hyson. “Great is the Contessa” by Blue Dot Sessions. Produced by Interference Archive.

Johnny Perez is interviewed by Carmen Lopez at the Urban Justice Center on November 10th, 2016.

Sean Basinski, Director of the Urban Justice Center's Street Vendor Project talks letter grades for food carts.

MF 47 – Contemplating torture in solitary confinement with Johnny Perez Johnny Perez is a non-attorney advocate at the Urban Justice Center Mental Health Project (MHP), a civil legal services firm that provides legal and social work services to people with serious mental illness. At the Urban Justice Center, he is assigned to MHP's Safe […] The post MF 47 – Questioning solitary confinement and the Prison Industrial Complex with Johnny Perez appeared first on Meditation Freedom.

ASPIRE member, Fiona. Photo by Robynn Takayama   Last Thursday in San Francisco, undocumented immigrants and their supporters sat down in front of a deportation bus.  It was part of an action to shut down Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.  They managed to delay the bus for several hours, and 26 people were arrested.  Apex Contributor Marie Choi talks with May Liang, an organizer with Asian Students Promoting Immigrant Rights Through Education (ASPIRE). WBAI's Asia Pacific Forum covered the exciting and historic community-led victories against Stop & Frisk and other racial profiling and oppressive practices by the New York PD. You'll hear the voices of Andrea Ritchie of Streetwise & Safe, Jennifer Ching of Queens Legal Services and Lynly Egyes of the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center – all based in New York.   Apex Contributor Ellen Choy brought the story to Apex.  It was produced by Asia Pacific Forum's Michelle Chen. Finally, should residents be able to call the shots about how their tax dollars are spent?  In Oakland, the Community Democracy Project is collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would do just that.  Modeled on the democratic budgeting practices of Puerto Allegre, Brazil and Medellin, Colombia. We talk with Jiwon Chung and Alexa Chua to learn more about how democratic budgeting would work. Karl Jagbandhansingh hosts.   The post APEX Express – October 24, 2013 appeared first on KPFA.

Robert Gangi directs PROB - the Police Reform Organizing Project - a new project of the Urban Justice League. Mr. Gangi and host Ronnie Eldridge discuss what many consider the mis-use and abuse of "stop and frisk" practices.

Vivian Lehrer Stadlin is a founding director of Eden Village Camp in Putnam Valley, New York. She grew up in Jewish and outdoor camps and believes in camps’ power for good. She graduated from Columbia University and Columbia Law School, carried out a two-year legal fellowship at the Urban Justice Center, served as adjunct professor at Boricua College, and led Jewish service-learning trips for teens in Israel and New Orleans. Her interest in wellness led her to attend the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, and she brings a holistic perspective to Eden Village. She is thrilled to help create an experience for campers and teens that is fun, dynamic, and, just maybe, life-changing. Today’s episode has been brought to you by HeritageRadioNetwork.org. “One of the tenets of Judaism is that all people are created equally…and if we take that seriously, we think, ‘Wow, we really need to do something about this climate crisis.'” “One thing that we often say here is that we’re using Jewish means for universal ends.” — Vivian Lehrer Stadlin on Greenhorn Radio

As we transition from March to April, this episode focuses on two topics related to internationally observed days in March; International Women’s Day and The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Women’s Rights often rely on a conventional definition of gender. As women’s herstory months draws to an end this week, Pauline Park joins us to discuss gender binaries and expanding the discussion of women’s rights and human rights to include Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people. Pauline is a transgendered woman of Asian birth who has had extensive involvement with the LGBT community in New York and nationally. She is the co-founded of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, (NYAGRA) which is the first statewide transgender advocacy organization in New York. She has written widely on LGBT issues and has conducted transgender sensitivity training sessions for a wide range of social service providers and community-based organization. March 21st is annually observed as The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The Sharpeville massacre occurred on this day in 1960, when police opened fire and killed 69 people at a peaceful demonstration against apartheid “pass laws” in Sharpeville, South Africa. The United Nations General Assembly proclaiming the day in 1966 and called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination. This year from April 20-24, the international community will gather in Geneva to assess the progress towards eliminating racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerances. Ejim Dike (DEEKAY), Director of the Human Rights Project at The Urban Justice Center, speaks with Ajamu about the upcoming conference. Ejim has worked on social policy issues for over ten years and in the domestic human rights arena for the past seven years. Her human rights work focuses on addressing poverty and discrimination using a human rights framework.

Ronnie welcomes Doug Lasdon, founder and Executive Director of the Urban Justice Center. The Center seeks to offer legal outreach services to New York City's most vulnerable residents through a combination of direct legal service and community education.

Human Rights scholar Catherine Powell talks about the importance of the new administration to make a commitment to addressing human rights abuses at home. The document "Human Rights at Home: A Domestic Policy Blueprint for the New Administration," a document to be submitted to the administration, is the result of a collaboration of many activists and scholars dedicated to holding the US accountable. In this episode you will also hear select audio from the USHRN National Human Rights Conference that took place in April 2008. Ejem Deekay, Director of the human rights program at Urban Justice Center in New York City, talks about how applying the framework has impacted their city as well as its potential.