Furonda brasfield biography of mahatma

Staff 

Laura Porter, Executive Director
Laura Porter joins the 8th Amendment Project after serving as Director of Campaigns for the Fair Punishment Project and nearly a decade as Director of Campaigns and Strategy with Equal Justice USA.

(EJUSA). She believes that there is not much difference between the past and the present.

When asked about mobilizing faith leaders in the campaign, Davis described mobilizing evangelicals as “difficult.” “Some people hold very fast to ‘an eye for an eye,’” she said.

Bria Nelson saw herself as “someone who was just upset with the system” and who “felt powerless and wanted to reclaim that power.”

She reclaims that power as a legal fellow at the ACLU of Kansas where they assist with litigation on the constitutionality of Kansas’ death penalty.

Every fact, figure, and statistic points to that reality,” Furonda Brasfield, director of leadership development at 8th amendment and project director for the Noose to Needle Project, said in her opening remarks.

“The death penalty is also a direct descendent of slavery and racial terror lynchings that has been perpetrated against African Americans since our arrival in the United States of America.

Currently, she serves as the lead advisor to the Responsible Business Initiative engaging trade and business voices in criminal justice reform advocacy.

Sara and her family immigrated to the United States when she was a child, settling in Chicago. A frequent legal contributor for CBSNews, Professor Hoag regularly provides on-air and in print analysis for CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, and other media outlets.

Prior to Brooklyn Law, Professor Hoag served as the inaugural practitioner-in-residence at the Eric H.

Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil & Political Rights at Columbia University, and as a lecturer at Columbia Law School. Over the last 10 years Laura was a chief strategist in the death penalty repeal campaigns in Connecticut, Maryland, and Nebraska and gave strategic advise to policy advocates across the country. Even rural lawyers acknowledge the job is a tough sell.

“Nobody wants to do it,” Brasfield said.

‘Modest Success’

In 2012, the American Bar Association called on federal, state and local governments to curb the decline of rural lawyers, and South Dakota responded.

She specialized in building relationships with victims, law enforcement, and conservatives and led the groundbreaking national project Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

She formerly served as the Executive Director of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (ACADP) during the 2017 #8in10 killing spree where Arkansas officials hatched a plan to execute eight men in ten days. Hill has served as an adjunct assistant professor and lecturer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Duke Schools of Law.

Hill is a graduate of Harvard Law School. The attorneys also tend to be closer to retirement age.

“The trend of rural communities losing lawyers is clearly continuing,” said Amy Dunn Johnson, executive director of the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission.

Limited-scope legal services, which Arkansas began offering in 2017, help make attorney services more affordable.

Sometimes, there’s an expectation the lawyers will offer free legal advice. The group put the death penalty on trial in Kansas, challenged its constitutionality, traced its history to the state’s inception and linked it to racialized violence.

During a question-and-answer time with the audience, Ndulue offered a commission.

Consequently, Brown believes in “the gospel of abolition” and is no longer interested in police reform.

She then shared the historical origins of policing beginning in Europe, arguing that policing was not developed for the everyday individual but to protect the property of the rich and for the quelling of uprising.

She also served as the Communications Director for the Fair Punishment Project. Hill now serves on the Board of Directors of CDPL, which has grown into a staff of more than 20.

Hill serves on the Board of Directors of Supportive Housing Communities in Charlotte and on the Advisory Board of Common Justice in Brooklyn, New York.

Previously, Hill served as the Executive Director of Federal Defenders of Western North Carolina, where he led a team of 35 attorneys and staff in providing first-rate legal representation for indigent defendants to ensure that justice was administered on a fair and equal basis. In 2011, Atlanta Magazine named Sara as one of “Five of the Future” and in 2016, one of ten “New Guard” leaders of Atlanta.

Today, Xavier is an Ambassador of the Represent Justice campaign and is a MacArthur Foundation SJC Advisory Council Member. In 2021, Professor Hoag was elected as a new member of the American Law Institute.