Racial Justice Lawyers

On this episode of the “Bear With Me” podcast, Jami Floyd ’98 talks with lawyers in Sacramento, Oakland, and Los Angeles about 60 years of racial justice lawyering. 

Guests:

John Burris graduated in 1973 and worked at Jenner & Block in Chicago before he moved back to California. He’s worked on the highest profile police brutality/excessive force cases in California, including LA (Rodney King), Fruitvale (Oscar Grant), San Francisco (Mario Woods), and Oakland (Celeste Guap; Oakland Riders).

Karin Wang ’95 worked to secure and defend public benefits and labor rights in Los Angeles and the Southwest, including in the civil rights office of the Dept. Health & Human Services and as the Vice President at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-LA. Now, she runs the public interest program at UCLA Law.

Jackie Gonzalez ’09 defends families targeted by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, first in San Francisco. She has led networks of organizations serving low-income immigrants before becoming the policy director of a group focused on abolishing immigration detention facilities in California (Recent Publication in English; Publicación reciente en español).

Jami Floyd worked at the White House, ABC News, MSNBC and is the Senior Editor for Race & Justice at New York Public Radio.