Day 1: February 5th, 2021
Professor Ashley Rubin, speaker
Ashley Rubin is an assistant professor of Sociology at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She holds a PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. Rubin’s research examines the dynamics of penal change throughout US history. In particular, she uses organizational theory, law and society, punishment and society, and prison sociology to understand prisoner behavior, administrative behavior, and penal trends more broadly. Her research has been published in Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, Punishment & Society, Theoretical Criminology, British Journal of Criminology, and Annual Review of Law and Social Science, among other venues, and her TEDx talk on the how sending people to prison became normal is available on YouTube. Rubin is the author of The Deviant Prison (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Rocking Qualitative Social Science (Stanford University Press, 2021), and she is currently writing a book on the history of American prisons. Rubin holds or has held leadership positions in the Law and Society Association and the American Sociological Association and is on the editorial boards of Law & Social Inquiry, Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, and Incarceration; she is also the book review editor (for North and South America) for the international journal Punishment & Society.
The Current State of Medical Access in Prisons and Jails: Panel Discussion
Jacque Wilson, moderator
A senior trial lawyer at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, he serves as the growth and development training director, working with new attorneys, running the intern program, managing the Pretrial Release Unit, coordinating office trainings, and handling post-conviction cases. Jacque is an adjunct professor at USF Law and UC Hastings law schools and serves on San Francisco’s first Innocence Commission.
As a trial attorney, Jacque helped reform California’s felony murder rule though the passage of SB 1437. SB 1437 significantly narrowed the felony murder rule and has helped many unjustly sentenced individuals gain their freedom. He also mentors hundreds of high school, college and law students through the San Francisco Public Defender’s Court Watch program, and is co-founder of Advocates For Justice, a non-profit organization that fights for social, economic and criminal justice.
Professor Sharon Dolovich, panelist
Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, and Director of the UCLA Prison Law & Policy Program. Dolovich also directs the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project, which she launched early in the pandemic to track the impact of COVID-19 in prisons, jails and detention centers nationwide. Among other things, the Data Project publishes facility-level data on infection rates and COVID deaths in all state and federal prisons and many jails, tracks jail and prison releases in response to the pandemic, and has partnered with Columbia Law School, Bronx Defenders, and others to develop a comprehensive, searchable database of all court opinions addressing the claims of incarcerated people during COVID. Since the start of the pandemic, Dolovich has emerged as a leading national voice on the issue of COVID in custody. (Click here and here for op-eds on the topic). In June 2020, she and co-authors (Saloner, Parish, Ward and DiLaura) published in JAMA the first findings reporting marked disparities in infection rates and COVID deaths in American prisons.
Daisy Ramirez, panelist
Daisy Ramirez is the Orange County Jails Conditions and Policy Coordinator at the ACLU of Southern California. Her work includes examining conditions of confinement in county jails and advocating on behalf of people in custody and their loved ones. Daisy is part of the case teams in Campbell v. Barnes and Ahlman v. Barnes. The suits seek to force Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes and the county to take urgent steps to remedy conditions in the jails during the pandemic and protect medically vulnerable people from COVID-19.
Daisy’s community engagement, public education, and advocacy work centers the idea that we need transformative justice instead of punishment and aims to promote divestment from jails and investment in people and community. In 2017, she co-wrote Orange County Jails, a two-year investigative report by the ACLU SoCal Jails Project, revealing violent, abusive, and unhealthy conditions in OC’s jails system. Daisy also helped launch a voter education and registration program working to increase access to voting for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in Orange County. Prior to joining the ACLU, Daisy received a Master of Social Work degree with a concentration in Community Organization, Planning and Administration from the University of Southern California. She received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago.
Michael Bien, panelist
Michael W. Bien is a founding partner of Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, where he concentrates his practice on constitutional and civil rights law, complex commercial litigation in trial and appellate courts, employment, antitrust and intellectual property. Mr. Bien has successfully litigated a series of major civil rights actions against various private and public entities on behalf of incarcerated persons in prisons and jails concerning medical, dental and mental health care, disability rights, sexual assault, use of force, solitary confinement, and parole. He is co-lead counsel of the legal team that prevailed in the California prison overcrowding case, Plata v. Brown, in the United States Supreme Court in 2011. Mr. Bien led a team that secured a nationwide injunction in September 2020, based on the First Amendment, against President Trump’s Executive Order banning the Chinese super-app, WeChat, on behalf of Chinese-American WeChat users. The Daily Journal recognized him this month as one of California’s Top Lawyers of the Decade. Mr. Bien received his B.A. from Brandeis University in 1977 and his J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 1980.
Sheriff Dean Growdon, panelist
Dean Growdon is a 27-year veteran of the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office, and a life-long resident of California. He was born in Redding, and raised in the small mountain town of Westwood in Lassen County. He began his law enforcement career with Lassen County in 1994 and held a wide range of assignments in both Custody and Operations Divisions before he was elected Lassen County Sheriff-Coroner in 2010. When away from work, Sheriff Growdon coaches high school basketball, participates in a number of service organizations, and spends time recreating in the outdoors with his family. Sheriff Growdon is an officer with the California State Sheriff’s Association, and he holds a Masters Degree in Criminal Justice Management from the University of Nevada Reno.James King, panelist
James King is the State Campaigner for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Prior to joining the organization, James worked to build recognition of the value of people who are being held in carceral spaces.San Quentin and COVID-19: Panel Discussion
Professor Hadar Aviram, moderator
Hadar Aviram, the Thomas E. Miller ’73 Professor at UC Hastings Law, specializes in criminal justice, civil rights, law and politics, and social movements. Her first book Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment (UC Press, 2015, winner of the CHOICE Award for Academic Titles) analyzes the impact of the financial crisis on the American correctional landscape. Her third and most recent book Yesterday’s Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole (UC Press, 2020) examines the California parole process through 50 years of parole transcripts in the Manson Family cases.
Adnan Khan is the Co-Founder and serves as Executive Director of Re:Store Justice, an organization he co-founded while incarcerated. Adnan also created FIRSTWATCH, a media filmmaking project produced entirely by currently incarcerated people.
Incarcerated at the age of 18, Adnan was sentenced to 25 years to life under the Felony/Murder rule. While incarcerated, he inspired, launched and worked on the Felony/Murder rule legislation (Senate Bill 1437) with his organization, Re:Store Justice. The bill passed and after serving 16 years, in January 2019, Adnan was the first person re-sentenced under the bill he helped create. Today, he is Executive Director of Re:Store Justice and is continuing his advocacy work nationally as well as internationally.
Richard Braucher, panelist
Richard Braucher has been a staff attorney at the First District Appellate Project (FDAP) in Oakland since 1998, representing adults and youth on appeal and training panel attorneys new to appellate practice. He is a member of the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center’s governing board and has been a member of its Amicus Committee since its inception in 2006. Richard and FDAP colleague J. Bradley O’Connell represent the petitioner in In re Von Staich (2020) 56 Cal.App.5th 53 (rev. granted, transferred S265173; now pending in the First Appellate District, Div. 2, A160122), which found prison officials deliberately indifferent to the health and safety of prisoners at San Quentin State Prison during the COVID-19 pandemic. In re Von Staich ordered officials to remedy the constitutional violation by designing a plan to reduce the population of the prison to 50 percent of its June 2020 population, through either additional releases from custody or transfers to other institutions.
Among Richard’s other notable prison litigation cases: In re Tijue McGhee (2019) 34 Cal.App.5th 902 (voiding the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Proposition 57 regulations that created a screening and referral process excluding from parole consideration more than a third of otherwise eligible inmates based on their in-prison conduct, finding it unconstitutional); In re Gomez (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 1082 (reversing disciplinary ruling, finding prisoner protesting state prisons’ solitary confinement practices by refusing meals was not unlawful in violation of prison regulations); In re Martinez (2013) 216 Cal.App.4th 1141 (concluding prison confiscation of the novel The Silver Crown was unlawful, determining the book was literature and not “obscene”).
Jason Fagone, panelist
Jason Fagone is the narrative writer at the San Francisco Chronicle and a member of the newspaper’s investigative team. His stories have also appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, and Grantland. His most recent book, “The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies,” was named one of NPR’s best books of 2017 and became a PBS documentary. In 2014-15, he was a Knight-Wallace Fellow in journalism at the University of Michigan.
Keynote
Justice Anthony Kline, keynote speaker
Justice Kline graduated from Johns Hopkins with honors. He attended graduate school at Cornell as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. At Yale Law School he received the Gherini and Sutherland Cup prizes.
After graduation from law school, Justice Kline served as law clerk to Justice Raymond E. Peters of the California Supreme Court. Thereafter he was for four years an attorney in New York with the Wall Street firm of Davis Polk and Wardwell. In 1971, after returning to California, he served as a Legal Services Lawyer and was one of the founders of Public Advocates, Inc., the first non-profit public interest law firm in the west. He was Managing Attorney of Public Advocates when, in January 1975, he was appointed Legal Affairs Secretary to Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr.
As Legal Affairs Secretary, Justice Kline served on the Governor’s cabinet for six years, until he was appointed to the San Francisco Superior Court in September 1980. He was appointed Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal in December 1982.
At the present time Justice Kline is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Conservation Corps and a member of the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association and the American Jewish Congress (Northern California Division). He has served on the Board of Directors of Youth Service America, the San Francisco Lawyers Committee for Urban Affairs, the San Francisco Private Industry Council, and was President of the Youth Guidance Center Improvement Committee. He is also a member of the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee of the California Judicial Council, California Judges Association, the Institute of Judicial Administration, the World Affairs Council, and the National Association of Youth and Conservation Corps.
Day 2: February 12th, 2021
Transgender Healthcare in Prisons: Panel Discussion
Ava Agree, moderator
Ava Agree is a 3L student at UC Hastings and current Lawyers for America Fellow at the Solano County Public Defender’s office, where she will be practicing following her graduation. Ava is passionate about representing clients in and outside of CDCR from an abolitionist perspective. While at UC Hastings, Ava has served as an advocate for incarcerated trans people through the Prisoner Advocacy Network. She has also served as President of the college’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and is current Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment.
Before law school, Ava served as the Director of International Admissions at her alma mater, Hampshire College, and more recently worked at the University of San Francisco, where her work focused on promoting equity within the enrollment processes. When not working, Ava is an avid triathlete and competes regularly in addition to advocating for trans athletes like herself.
Jen Orthwein, speaker
Jen is a founding partner of Medina Orthwein LLP, a small queer-owned civil rights law firm specializing in plaintiff-side employment, prisoner rights, conditions of confinement and other civil rights claims. They currently represent about a dozen transgender and nonbinary people in litigation against employees of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Jen also served as pro bono Senior Counsel for the Detention Project at Transgender Law Centerwhere they assisted in the representation of two California prisoners whose cases were the impetus for access to gender affirming surgery and gender expression for transgender people in California prisons. In 2018, Jen was the recipient of San Francisco Pride’s Heritage of Pride Freedom Award in recognition for their contributions to advancing civil rights for LGBTQ people.
Jen received a J.D. from Golden Gate University School of Law and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Palo Alto University. They previously maintained a psychological consulting practice that provided expert witness services to attorneys representing transgender people involved in civil and criminal cases. They have conducted research and co-authored publications on the impact of discrimination on transgender people’s physical and mental health, practitioner liability in cases of suicide, and gender bias in the criminal justice system.
Omar Garcia, speaker
Omar is a bay area raised Queer Mexipina whose roots in prison abolition work led them to Portland, Oregon to broaden their studies in political science while organizing QTPOC students access to higher education and also helping to form the Portland chapter of Critical Resistance. Through their time at the Associated Students of Portland Community College Student Government, volunteering with No More Deaths•No Mas Muertes Desert Aid Program, and as a member of Decolonize PDX they’ve sharpened their skills in community organizing and direct humanitarian aid. Having returned to the bay area to be closer to their family and expand their education in legal studies through the paralegal program at SF City College, they are excited about their work at Transgender Law Center as Legal Assistant.
Film Screening: Belly of the Beast
Erika Cohn, speaker
Erika Cohn is a Peabody, Emmy and DGA Award-winning filmmaker who Variety recognized as one of 2017’s top documentary filmmakers to watch and was featured in DOC NYC’s 2019 “40 Under 40.” Most recently, Erika completed THE JUDGE, a Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated film about the first woman judge appointed to the Middle East’s Shari’a courts, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS’ 2018 Independent Lens series. She co-directed/produced, IN FOOTBALL WE TRUST, an Emmy award-winning, feature documentary about young Pacific Islander men pursuing their dreams of playing professional football, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS’ 2016 Independent Lens series.
Erika grew up attending the Sundance Film Festival as a native Utahn, where she first began her career. She studied at Chapman University (California) and Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and has degrees in Film Production, Middle East Studies, and Acting Performance. In 2013, Erika founded Idle Wild Films, Inc., which has released three feature documentaries and produced numerous branded content and commercial spots, including Gatorade’s “Win from Within” series, for which she received a 2016 Webby award nomination. BELLY OF THE BEAST is her third feature-length documentary. Erika is represented by APA.
Day 3: February 19th, 2021
Immigration Detention and COVID-19: Panel Discussion
Blaine Bookey, moderator
Blaine Bookey is Legal Director at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies where she works to advance protections for survivors of gender-based violence and other forms of persecution. She also adjunct teaches courses in human rights at UC Hastings and chairs Board of Directors for the global women’s rights organization, MADRE. The American Constitution Society recognized Blaine for her work on behalf of marginalized communities with the 2016 David Carliner Public Interest Award and the Daily Journal including here in a 2020 list of Top Women Lawyers in California.
Grisel Ruiz, panelist
At the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), Grisel is a Supervising Attorney focusing on the intersection between immigration law and criminal law. This includes advising attorneys and advocates on the immigration consequences of criminal offenses, training on removal defense, and supporting local and statewide campaigns to push back on immigration enforcement. In addition to technical assistance, training, and campaign support in these areas, Grisel also helps lead the ILRC’s state legislative work. Grisel is currently the Board Chair for Freedom for Immigrants (formerly CIVIC), a nonprofit that advocates for detained immigrants.
Prior to working with the ILRC, Grisel was a litigation associate at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and a Stimson Fellow housed at the UC Davis Law School Immigration Clinic and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. As a legal fellow, she co-founded “Know Your Rights” programs at local immigration detention centers, for which she received an award from Cosmo for Latinas.
Grisel is an immigrant herself and earned her law degree from the University of Chicago where she received the Tony Patiño Fellowship. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame, where she dual majored in Political Science and Spanish Literature. Grisel is admitted to the bar in California is fluent in Spanish.
Lisa Knox, panelist
Lisa Knox is the Legal Director for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, which uses coordination, advocacy, and legal services to fight for the liberation of immigrants in detention. Previously, Lisa was a Managing Attorney at Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland, CA, where she oversaw legal services and representation for immigrants in detention. Lisa was also one of the first attorneys to provide representation to individuals forced to await their asylum hearing in Mexico under Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program, and has continued to organize regular workshops and remote pro se assistance for asylum seekers in Tijuana and Juarez. Lisa is currently a board member of the National Lawyers Guild SF Bay Area. Through the Guild, Lisa has helped develop Know Your Rights trainings and trained community advocates through the Immigration Court Observation Program.
As a person of Black and Latinx descent, Lisa’s own lived experience has taught her that immigration is a racial justice issue. She is passionate about moving beyond a traditional service provision model, to work in partnership with detained people towards their individual and collective liberation.
Monika Langarica, panelist
Monika Y. Langarica is the immigrants’ right staff attorney at the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, where she engages in impact litigation, policy work, and other legal advocacy to defend and advance the rights of migrants & immigrants in our border region. Prior to joining the ACLU in 2018, Monika was a senior staff attorney with the ABA Immigration Justice Project of San Diego, where she led a team that primarily represented detained immigrants with mental health and capacity issues in deportation proceedings. She has also served as an Equal Justice Works fellow and has post-graduate experience at the San Diego County Public Defender’s Office. A native of southeast San Diego and daughter of immigrants, Monika believes in fighting for a society in which all people are free to move and have access to resources they need to thrive. Monika sits on the board of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association Scholarship Fund and is a co-founder of the Borderlands Get Free Bond Fund. She graduated from the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley School of Law and is licensed to practice law in California.
Joe Mejia, panelist
My name is Joe Mejia I was born in Mexico and migrated here with my family when I was about 4 years old. I have been here in the U.S. since then, I grew up here all my family and friends are here all I know is this, in my heart, this is my home. My parents worked hard to provide my sister and me with a better future we didn’t grow up rich but we were happy nonetheless. As I grew up and became a teen I began to rebel like any other American boy, I made some bad choices and got involved with gangs and drugs. Through those very dark moments in my life, I ended up going to prison, while in prison I then again found light and a new sense of love for life. I pushed myself in the direction of higher education, self-reform, and rehabilitation. Unfortunately, my crimes carried the consequences of being deported, as soon as I was released from prison immigration agents were there to pick me up and take me into ICE custody. I ended up in detention for 34 months fighting my case, the whole thing was a roller coaster ride I won my case and the BIA vacated the judge’s decision and now I’m fighting in appeals court. I have recently regained my freedom through a court order demanding the release of most detainees in an attempt to stop the spread of the covid virus. Although I am on an ankle monitor I’m very grateful to have been given my freedom again, although I am still fighting my own deportation I continue to advocate for all those who remain in confinement and oppressed by discrimination. I will continue to voice for all those who are voiceless by this broken immigration system. I am currently attending Hartnell college in pursuit of a certificate for drug treatment counselor to better help my community, I have also been blessed with a wonderful job as an instructor for CET, teaching the maintenance class and helping others that are struggling to believe in themselves by showing them that if I can make a change in my life anyone can. I wanna take this time to thank everyone in my life that has been a positive influence for whether it is through positive support or by telling me I would never do anything with my life cause either way your words propelled me to push past all my life obstacles, THANK YOU ALL.
Currently released after almost 10 years of confinement I have continued to advocate for better conditions in prisons and in ICE detention facilities. I was recently featured on Democracy Now! touching on the topic of the dangers of COVID-19 while in confinement. The segment was aired on August 4th “It’s basically a death sentence” https://youtu.be/1xpWTWuYlpQ.
August 14th I was interviewed by Chris Nelson at a Chico radio station KZFR 90.1 “people-powered radio” I spoke about the horrible conditions in Yuba county ICE detention and the current state of our country with this administration. http://kzfr.org/broadcasts/22467.
On August 24th I spoke at an Immigration Justice solidarity vigil, which was live-streamed on Facebook I spoke on the current hunger strike and the hunger strike I organized back in July of this year right before I was released. I also spoke on the need for support from our community members for all those in ICE detention and those incarcerated throughout our nation. https://www.facebook.com/loppca/videos/1452742578254593
While I was in confinement I found a form of escape and true expression through writing. I mostly wrote about my experiences and thoughts throughout my journey in both prison and ICE detention, towards the end of my journey in a cage some of my writing found its way to be published. Some of my writing can be seen in DetentionDigest.com to avoid retaliation I wrote under the alias JMR or Joe M.R https://medium.com/@detentiondigestycj
https://imm-print.com/my-unfortunate-reality-with-ice-in-yuba-county-jail/
https://imm-print.com/detention-pandemic/
https://imm-print.com/toolbox-full-of-band-aids/
https://imm-print.com/strong-arm-deportation/
Poetry
Matthew Cuban, poet
Matthew ‘Cuban’ Hernandez is a poet, emcee, speaker, and performance coach from Jacksonville, Florida. He has toured as far as Abu Dhabi and nearly every major city in the United States and Europe, performing, teaching and coaching poetry. A teaching artist for nearly ten years, Matthew has spent the last six years working in youth detention centers across Los Angeles County, currently serving as the Director of Camp Programming for Street Poets, Inc. In addition, he is a current Lead Teacher and Co-Founder of Spoken Literature Art Movement. Cuban has opened for artists such as Wu-Tang, performed for platforms such as BuzzFeed and NPR and even appeared on the award-winning television show, Better Things. Matthew is also a three time Southern Fried poetry slam champion and an award-winning poetry coach. Cuban’s favorite activity is making people feel great; sometimes he does this through hip hop and poetry.
Vaccination and Incarcerated Populations: Panel Discussion
Professor Sarah Hooper, moderator
Sarah Hooper, JD is the Executive Director of the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy and Lecturer in Law at UC Hastings College of the Law. She is also Policy Director of the Medical-Legal Partnership for Seniors and a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity in the Fitz Mullan Health Workforce Institute at George Washington University. Since first joining the Consortium in 2009 as a Senior Legal Research Fellow, Professor Hooper has dedicated her career to developing innovative medical-legal collaborations that can advance equity in health care. She has a special interest in complex care populations, and in particular how health and legal systems can respond to the aging of this population. Her work encompasses clinical interventions such as the Medical-Legal Partnership for Seniors Clinic, research collaborations such as the Care Ecosystem trial, and educational initiatives for providers and the public such as the Optimizing Aging Collaborative and PREPARE. Her scholarship has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, and Health Affairs Blog.
Professor Hooper teaches a number of courses in the health law program at UC Hastings and is the Faculty Advisor for the JD Concentration in Health Law & Policy.
Professor Dorit Rubenstein Reiss, panelist
Dorit Rubinstein Reiss is a professor of law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Increasingly, her research and activities are focused on legal issues related to vaccines, including exemption laws and tort liability related to non-vaccination. She published law review and peer reviewed articles and many blog posts on legal issues related to vaccines.
She received an undergraduate degree in Law and Political Science (1999, Magna cum Laude) from the Faculty of Law in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her Ph.D. from the Jurisprudence and Social Policy program in UC Berkeley.
She is a member of the Parents Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines and the the Vaccine Working Group on Ethics and Policy, and active in vaccine advocacy in other ways.
Sam Lewis, Panelist
Sam Lewis is the Executive Director of the Anti Recidivism Coalition (ARC). Previously, Sam served as the Director of Inside Programs. A former life prisoner himself, Sam understands the various obstacles, challenges, and difficulties the prison and reentry populations face. In 2017, Sam created the Hope And Redemption Team (HART), a first-of-its kind initiative he built from scratch. The Hope & Redemption Team (HART) is a group of nine former California life prisoners who go back into California state prisons to provide hope, demonstrate that redemption is achievable, and to prepare participants for successful reentry into our communities. His work directing the Hope and Redemption Team exemplifies what’s best about ARC: our desire to reach and walk with those who have been most marginalized by society.
Most Saturday nights, Sam leads the Hope and Redemption mentors who support youth currently housed at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall. These youth are facing potentially long prison sentences. The unique mentors are trained in Transformative Mentoring and use a peer-to-peer Credible Messenger model to encourage incarcerated youth to believe in themselves and pursue their education while incarcerated.
Sam previously worked with Friends Outside Los Angeles County (FOLA) as Job Specialist, Case Manager, Employment Programs Supervisor, and Project Director, roles that reinforced his commitment to creating opportunities for formerly incarcerated men and women as they transition back into society. In 2018, Sam was the recipient of a Bank of America Neighborhood Builders Award, Uncommon Law’s Uncommon Heroes award, and 2019 Danger Man Award.
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, panelist
Peter Chin-Hong, MD is Associate Dean for Regional Campuses and Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California San Francisco. He is currently involved in the clinical care of COVID-19 patients. He completed undergraduate and medical school at Brown University. He trained in Internal medicine and completed an infectious disease fellowship at UCSF.
During COVID-19, he has been one of the leaders of institutional and community education around the disease. He has been part of numerous University initiatives including outreach to the Asian American community, and the Association of Black Cardiologists national webinars on the impact of COVID-19 on minority populations. He helped create and disseminate a petition validating protest as a response to structural racism in COVID times. For the impact of tear gas, he has worked on a declaration with the public defenders in the city of Portland advocating for limiting its use on the public. He worked on the declaration in the Von Staich case which was upheld by the California Court of Appeals who agreed that the indifference at CDCR met the standard of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. He has also worked with attorneys from Disability Rights California highlighting the unsafe practices at Patton State Hospital for the mentally ill, resulting in the immediate and rapid vaccinations against COVID in that facility.
Margot Mendelson, panelist
Margot joined the Prison Law Office in 2016. Her work focuses on challenging the conditions of confinement in county jails, including with respect to the provision of mental health and medical care, compliance with federal and state disability law, and solitary confinement and use of force practices. She also works on Armstrong v. Newsom, a statewide class action brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She is part of the team investigating and litigating conditions of confinement
in immigration detention centers. Before joining the PLO, Margot worked at Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld, where she practiced complex civil litigation in state and federal courts at the trial and appellate level, with a focus on civil rights matters, and she worked on Coleman v. Brown, a statewide class action on behalf of California prisoners with psychiatric disabilities. Margot was an Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellow, where she advocated for immigrants detained in Southern Arizona. She clerked for Judge Diana G. Motz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Judge Catherine Blake of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. Margot received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2009 and her B.A. from Harvard College. Margot was admitted to the California State Bar in January 2010.