Advocacy and Action: The Local Landscape

Erika Almiron is Executive Director of Juntos, a Latino immigrant-led community organization working for human rights. Almiron was born in South Philadelphia to immigrant parents from Paraguay and has spent almost two decades working in the Latino community. In her youth she served as president of various Latino leadership organizations in her high school in Norristown and at Penn State University. She went on to work with Latino communities in Philadelphia and surrounding counties on issues ranging from women’s health, gentrification, prison reform, and poverty. Several years ago she helped start the Media Mobilizing Project while working at the American Friends Service Committee with the Mexico/US border program on the issue of living and working conditions for maquiladora workers. Prior to joining Juntos as Executive Director, Almiron was the assistant director of the Philadelphia Student Union working with young people on leadership development and education reform. In her spare time she is a freelance photographer and her pictures have been published and exhibited over the last several years in Philadelphia and beyond. She has documented prison conditions in South America, mountain top removal in West Virginia, homelessness in Harlem, and most recently she received the prestigious Leeway Foundation Award to document agricultural reform and land distribution in Brazil and Paraguay.

Peter Gonzales is President & CEO of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians. An immigration attorney by training, he has a distinguished record of civic and business leadership and advocacy, and a longtime interest in and commitment to community economic development. Prior to joining the Welcoming Center, he was a founding partner of the Gonzales Tiagha law firm.

He is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and a past Pennsylvania State Chair of the International Municipal Lawyers Association. In 2008, he was appointed by Mayor Michael A. Nutter to serve on the Zoning Board of Adjustment in Philadelphia, where he served until 2012.

Previously, Gonzalez also worked in the Solicitor’s Office for the City of Philadelphia, with the nonprofit Project HOME, and with the US Agency for International Development.

Mia-Lia Kiernan is a co-founder and organizer for One Love Movement. One Love Movement formed in the Fall of 2010 in response to the rise in detention and deportation of Cambodian-Americans on the basis of prior criminal convictions in Philadelphia, and nationwide. The Obama Administration officially announced a new policy prescription in August 2011 that targets and prioritizes “criminal aliens,” or anyone with criminal histories, for removal from the United States. These policies neglect to consider the severe flaws in the immigration system, including the presence of retroactive punishment, denial of individualized review, the broad range of crimes deemed deportable, and the value of rehabilitation. The experience of Cambodian families who have been broken apart by deportation has led One Love Movement to stand up to keep their families together and create more awareness of the deeper story behind what the government labels “criminal deportations.” Kiernan's work addresses the multi-faceted issues of deportation in the Cambodian community ~ including issues of foreign relations, refugee resettlement, behavioral health and PTSD, education, the links between the criminal justice and immigration systems, and the current political landscape around immigration policy.

Bruce Shapiro is Executive Director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism encouraging innovative reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy worldwide. An award-winning reporter on human rights, criminal justice and politics, Shapiro is a contributing editor at The Nation and U.S. correspondent for Late Night Live on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National. He is Adjunct Professor and Senior Advisor for Academic Affairs at Columbia, where he teaches journalism ethics. His books include Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America and Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future. Shapiro is recipient of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Public Advocacy Award for "outstanding and fundamental contributions to the social understanding of trauma." He is a founding board member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network.