Building a Left Legal Movement Panel
Speakers
Christine Cimini
Christine Cimini (she/her) is a Professor at the University of Washington School of Law. She currently directs the law school’s Mediation Clinic and teaches Restorative Justice. Before joining UW, Professor Cimini served as a Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Research and Faculty Development at Vermont Law School from 2011-2016. Prior to joining Vermont Law School, she was an Associate Professor and Director of Clinical Programs at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law (DU) and was named the Ronald V. Yegge Clinic director in 2010. She spent a year as a visiting faculty member at Cornell University Law School from 2002-2003. From 1993-1996, Professor Cimini was a Robert M. Cover Fellow in Clinical Teaching at Yale Law School. Professor Cimini’s current research explores lawyers’ impact on social change efforts. Her articles have been published in a variety of journals including the Stanford Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Maryland Law Review, Rutgers Law Review and Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy. Her most recent article, applying the frameworks of “elite capture” and “deference politics” to the access-to-justice crisis, is available here.
Kica Matos
Kica Matos (she/her) is the president of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the Immigrant Justice Fund (IJF). She is also a Distinguished Practitioner at Yale University’s Brady Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. Prior to this, Kica was vice president of initiatives at the Vera Institute of Justice. She also served as the director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change. She has extensive experience as an advocate, community organizer, and lawyer. previously served as deputy mayor of New Haven, overseeing community programs and launching new initiatives, including prisoner re-entry and youth and immigrant integration. Earlier in her career, Kica worked as the executive director of JUNTA, New Haven’s oldest Latino advocacy organization, and as an assistant federal defender for death-sentenced inmates. She has a B.A. from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, an M.A. from the New School, and a J.D. from Cornell Law School. She was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Albertus Magnus College in 2017 and the University of New Haven in 2019. She is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, and was inducted into the CT Women’s Hall of Fame in 2021.
Sejal Singh
Sejal Singh (she/her) is a labor lawyer at James and Hoffman, where she represents labor unions and workers; the Board Chair of People’s Parity Project Action; and a co-founder of the People’s Parity Project. As an attorney and as an organizer, Sejal works to challenge the the billionaire class by building the labor movement and progressive legal power. Prior to her current role, Sejal was an attorney in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor, where her worked focused on wage-and-hour enforcement and leveraging federal dollars to raise wages and build worker power. Earlier in her career, worked as Justice Catalyst Fellow at Public Citizen Litigation Group; led labor policy at the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center; and advised progressive campaigns on economic and civil rights policy. Sejal clerked for Judge Diane P. Wood on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Her writing about unrigging the legal system has been widely published, including in New York Magazine, Slate, and the Nation.
Dana Greene (moderator)
Dana Greene is a Research Scholar in Law and the Director of Membership & Social Practice at The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, where she fosters a justice-focused scholarly community, supports individual members in their work, and develops socially engaged initiatives and programming. Dana came to the study of criminal justice by way of street activism and has over twenty-five years of research, education, organizing, and justice policy experience. Dana holds a doctorate in Criminal Justice from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. As an Associate Professor in the Criminal Justice Department at New Mexico State University, Greene’s work encompassed a project to study and dismantle disproportionate minority contact (DMC) in the New Mexico juvenile justice system, organizing environmental justice teach-ins in unincorporated townships (colonias) on the U.S.-Mexico border, photo-documenting every adult prison in the state, serving as an expert criminal justice consultant for the mayor and city council of Las Cruces, and helping establish a plant conservation program in the Penitentiary of New Mexico.