Is This Your America

“Is This Your America?” Fall 2006 Conference Speakers/Workshop Leaders

Conference Speakers (expected):

Nadine Strossen:

Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law at New YorkLawSchool, has written, lectured, and practiced extensively in the areas of constitutional law, civil liberties, and international human rights. Since 1991, she has served as president of the American Civil Liberties Union, the first woman to head the nation's largest and oldest civil liberties organization.

The National Law Journal has twice named Professor Strossen one of "The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America." In 1996, Working Woman Magazine listed her among the "350 Women Who Changed the World 1976-1996." In 1997, Upside Magazine included her in the "Elite 100: 100 Executives Leading The Digital Revolution." In 1998, Vanity Fair Magazine included Professor Strossen in "America's 200 Most Influential Women." In 1999, Ladies' Home Journal included her in "America's 100 Most Important Women."

Since becoming ACLU President, Professor Strossen has made more than 200 public presentations per year before diverse audiences, including on more than 600 campuses and in many foreign countries. She comments frequently on legal issues in the national media, having appeared on virtually every national news program. She has been a monthly columnist for two Web-zines and a weekly commentator on the Talk America Radio Network. In October 2001, Professor Strossen made her professional theater debut as the guest star in Eve Ensler's award-winning play, The Vagina Monologues, during a week-long run at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Professor Strossen's writings have been published in many scholarly and general interest publications (almost 300 published works). Her book, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights (Scribner, 1995), was named by The New York Times as a "Notable Book" of 1995 and was republished in October 2000 by NYU Press, with a new introduction by the author. Her coauthored book, Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties (NYU Press, 1995), was named an "outstanding book" by the GustavusMyersCenter for the Study of Human Rights in North America.

In 1986, Professor Strossen became one of the first three women to receive the U.S. Jaycees' "Ten Outstanding Young Americans" Award; she was also the first American woman to win the Jaycees International's "The Outstanding Young Persons Of the World" Award. Professor Strossen has received honorary Doctor of Law degrees from the University of Rhode Island, the University of Vermont, San Joaquin College of Law, RockyMountainCollege, the Massachusetts School of Law, and MountHolyokeCollege. Other awards include: the "Women of Distinction" award from the Women's League for Conservative Judaism, the Media Institute's "Freedom of Speech Award," the Free Speech Coalition's "Freedom Isn't Free Award," and the National Council of Jewish Women's "Women Who Dared Award." Professor Strossen is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Professor Strossen graduated Phi Beta Kappa from HarvardCollege (1972) and magna cum laude from HarvardLawSchool (1975), where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Before becoming a law professor, she practiced law for nine years in Minneapolis (her hometown) and New York City.

Professor Strossen is married to Eli M. Noam, professor at ColumbiaUniversity's Graduate School of Business and founding director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. They have residences in Manhattan and KentLakes, New York.

Carol Rose:

Carol Rose is the Executive Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, a non-profit organization with more than 22,000 members in Massachusetts (and more than 500,000 nationwide), dedicated to defending liberty and realizing the protections set forth in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. A lawyer and journalist, Rose worked for United Press International, the Des Moines Register, and the New York Times. She covered politics in the United States and has reported extensively from Pakistan, Nepal, Japan, Sri Lanka, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Northern Ireland, and Vietnam. As an attorney at the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow, Carol specialized in First Amendment, Internet and media law, intellectual property rights, and civil rights cases, before assuming the helm at the ACLU of Massachusetts in 2003.

Roger Vann:

Roger Vann is the current Executive Director of the Connecticut ACLU. In several volunteer and professional capacities, Roger C. Vann has worked on a variety of civil rights and civil liberties issues over the past 15 years. Prior to joining the ACLU of Connecticut in March of 2005, Vann served as Senior Director of Operations for the New Haven-based Amistad America, whose replica of an historic schooner made a dozen port stops under Vann's direction. From 2000 - 2003, Vann worked as National Membership Director and later Chief Development Officer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Baltimore, Maryland.

He has also directed an elected officials network for Northeast Action in Hartford, and has been a talk show host and assistant program director for WELI Radio, news and public affairs director for WNHC Radio, community relations counselor for Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven and director of a pioneering manhood mentoring program for Planned Parenthood of Connecticut.

Vann is past president of both the Greater New Haven Branch of the NAACP and the Connecticut State Conference of NAACP Branches. He currently serves on the boards of the AIDS Interfaith Network, the Ulysses S. Grant Foundation and the Friends of the New Haven Public Library, among others. Vann has also served as a volunteer in several state roles, including the Governor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Affordable Housing, the State Treasurer's Task Force on Individual Development Accounts and the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities.

A graduate of BrownUniversity, Vann lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife Rae and three children - Chad, Troy and Rachelle.

Workshop Leaders:

Marlene Fried: Women’s Rights: Where Do We Go From Here? Workshop

Marlene Fried is the director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program at HampshireCollege, as well as a professor of philosophy. She has received the Choice USA Outstanding Mentor Award. She founded the National Network of Abortion Funds, is a co-founder and board member of the Abortion Access Project, and serves on the international board of the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights. She is co-author of the book Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice.

Brian Corr:How to Get Mobilized Workshop

Brian Corr is the Field Education Organizer for the ACLU of Massachusetts. He works with student groups to network, as well as provide resources for working on action campaigns. Corr is the local point person for student groups who want to mobilize.

King Downing:Defending Racial Justice Workshop

King Downing is the National Coordinator of the ACLU's Campaign Against Racial Profiling. Downing, a lawyer, filed a suit along with the ACLU to challenge racial profiling in Boston’s LoganInternationalAirport.

Arline Isaacson: Securing GLBTQ Rights in the U.S. Workshop

Arline Isaacson is Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Gay & Lesbian Political Caucus, the state's oldest and largest glbt political organization. As a lobbyist, political consultant and public relations liaison, she has worked on numerous political campaigns in Massachusetts.
Since the 1980s, Isaacson has been the lobbyist and legislative strategist for the Gay & Lesbian Civil Rights Law, HIV Testing and Confidentiality legislation, Hate Crimes bills and Domestic Partner legislation. She worked to defeat anti-gay foster care and adoption bills and to advance legislation helping GLBT seniors as well as the GLBT Youth Commission.
Currently, Isaacson is the lead lobbyist and legislative strategist fighting anti-gay marriage legislation and constitutional amendments in Massachusetts.
Isaacson is a lobbyist for the Massachusetts Teachers Association. She previously served as Director of Governmental Relations for the City of Boston. She is a founder and former president of TEAM (Tax Equity Alliance of Massachusetts), a coalition of labor, human service and progressive organizations dedicated to advancing a progressive tax agenda in Massachusetts.

Gabriel Camacho: Taking Action on Immigrants’ Rights Workshop

Gabriel Camacho is the Project Voice Regional Organizer for the New England Region. Project Voice is an initiative sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. Its purpose is to strengthen the voices of immigrant-led organizations in setting the national agenda for immigration policy and immigrants’ rights, in order to foster a fuller integration of immigrants and refugees in their new communities. Project Voice combines local and national organizing, education, and outreach campaigns to achieve a strategic impact on key immigration and refugee issues, including legalization, abuse of authority, community relations, workers’ rights, and other human rights issues.

Nancy Murray: Our Constitution in a Time of Crisis Workshop

Nancy Murray is Director of Education at the ACLU of Massachusetts. Holding a BA from HarvardUniversity, and a B.Phil. and Ph.D. in Modern History from OxfordUniversity, she has considerable experience as a teacher, scholar and social activist in Great Britain and Kenya as well as the United States. After teaching for seven years in the University of Nairobi, she then directed a nation-wide program to combat racism in the media at London's Institute of Race Relations. She remains a member of the editorial committee of the Institute's journal Race & Class. As founder (in 1987) and director of the ACLU of Massachusetts¹ Bill of Rights Education Project, she has encouraged teachers, students and the general public to think critically about the difficult issues being debated in society and the courts, and to work for a future in which civil liberties and civil rights will be safeguarded and enlarged. She co-founded and directed Project HIP-HOP (Highways into the Past: History, Organizing and Power), and over an eight-year period took students South and to South Africa to explore the history of the civil rights movement and struggle against apartheid, and the role young people have played in movements for racial justice. Since 9/11 she has worked through the ACLU of Massachusetts' Civil Liberties Task Force to build a new movement for civil liberties and civil rights across the Commonwealth. Her publications include "Sharing the Story of the Movement: The Project HIP-HOP Experience," in Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching (Teaching for Change, 2004), "Profiled: Arabs, Muslims, and the Post-9/11 Hunt for the 'Enemy Within'" in the award-winning book edited by Elaine Hagopian, Civil Rights in Peril: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims (Haymarket Books, Pluto Press 2004), and "The State of Our Civil Liberties: a Post 9/11 Health Check," New Politics, Summer 2004. In 2006 she launched an innovative curriculum for schools entitled "Rights Matter: the Story of the Bill of Rights".