7:00-8:00 Wellbeing Offering: Community Member-led Session (e.g. Yoga, Mediation, Capoeira)

9:00-9:30: Welcome and Grounding

9:30-10:45: Opening Plenary: Power and Promise of Legal Empowerment to Rebuild Democracy from the Grassroots

The opening plenary will introduce the framework, history, and key methods of legal empowerment–drawing from lived experience and expertise in the US and around the world. Facilitators will invite participants into a learning journey, underlining the power and promise of legal empowerment to resist autocracy and rebuild democracy from the grassroots. 

Vivek Maru, CEO and Founder, Namati
Jhody Polk, Founder and Director, Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative
Sukti Dhital, Executive Director, Bernstein Institute for Human Rights

11:00-12:00: Plenary Skill Session: Accompaniment

The skill session will highlight how accompaniment is essential to legal empowerment as a way to bear witness, build solidarity, and transform power within courts and other legal settings. Facilitators will draw from their grassroots experience supporting communities navigating housing and immigration injustice in the US and cross-border. 

Leni Alvarez, Co-Director, Otros Dreams in Accion (ODA)
Rev. Charles Unique, Legal Empowerment Organizer, Tenants Transforming St. Louis

1:00-2:00: Plenary Skill Session: Legal Education as Empowerment 

This skill session explores how legal education can move beyond information-sharing to empowerment. We’ve all done “Know Your Rights” – but what comes next? This session dives into legal empowerment education, where communities move from receiving information to taking action. Facilitators will share creative approaches that extend far beyond traditional legal settings—from health clinics and schools to youth programs and social service organizations—demonstrating how legal education can be a powerful tool for community-driven change. 

Diana Imbert, Co-Executive Director Defying Legal Gravity
Craig Shephard, Co-Executive Director Defying Legal Gravity
Kate Richardson, Co-Executive Director, Legal Link

2:05-3:05: Plenary Session: Addressing Trauma as a Pathway to Healing and True Empowerment

This raw, heart-led plenary will use the powerful lived experiences of each panelist to guide attendees beyond “survival mode” and into true empowerment. They will guide participants through the deliberate steps necessary to dismantle emotional armor, embrace vulnerability as strength, and cultivate the self-love and choice required to break debilitating generational cycles.

Maria Elena Greeman-Lynde, Homegirlz de Corazon
Cynthia Murillo, Homegirlz de Corazon
Adrian Caceras, Homegirlz de Corazon

3:20-4:20: Concurrent Sessions: Trauma, Wellbeing and Healing Justice

These three sessions center the critical need for a trauma-informed and wellbeing approach to legal empowerment. Facilitators will share insights, reflections and strategies on how to embody an ethics of care as a pathway towards justice.  

BeKura Mainoo, Founder and President, Injustice Reform Network
Chiinyere Okafor, Participatory Action Researcher; Director of Feminist Circles, Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative
Grace Bronson, RISE Collective
Hannah Rose Groedel, RISE Collective
Nziki Wiltz, RISE Collective
Dierdre Thomas, RISE Collective

4:20-5:30: Working Groups 

A space to debrief and exchange with a smaller cohort of participants. Working groups will also offer time for participants to apply learnings from the Convening to a legal empowerment challenge or growth opportunity within their respective organizations. 

7:00-8:00 Wellbeing Offering: Community Member-led Session (e.g. Yoga, Mediation, Capoeira)

9:00-9:30 Welcome and Grounding

9:30-10:45: Opening Plenary: The Power of Collaboration In Advancing Grassroots Justice and Building Solidarity 

The opening plenary will highlight the power of partnering across identities and professional “walls” to advance grassroots justice and build solidarity. Drawing on their lived and professional experience as organizers, lawyers, and directly impacted community members, facilitators will discuss their approach to participatory litigation and collaborative decision-making processes as key to ensuring a community-driven approach to justice.
Bindhu Vijayan, Executive Director, Beyond Legal Aid
Saul Padilla, Community Empowerment Supervisor, Beyond Legal Aid
Antonio Gutierrez, Co-Founder, Organized Communities Against Deportation
Tyler Walton, Deputy Director, Bernstein Institute for Human Rights

11:00-12:00: Plenary Skill Session: Community Data Collection 

The skill session will uplift the power of community-led data collection. Global and US facilitators will offer strategies for communities to collect, analyze, and use their own data–from workers rights to community-led development efforts- as a way to strengthen legal advocacy efforts and drive meaningful change. 

Tom Weerachat, Deputy Director, International Accountability Project
Rafaela Rodriguez, Director of Partnerships, Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network
Oscar Londoño, Co-Executive Director, WeCount!

1:00-2:00: 3 Concurrent Sessions: Legal Empowerment Models in Action – US Case Studies

Concurrent case studies situated in the US illustrate what’s possible when communities have the tools to know, use, shape and transform the systems that impact their lives. Through interactive sessions covering youth-led organizing, workers rights, and environmental justice, participants will gain concrete strategies and tactics to design and deploy legal empowerment projects within their communities.  

Youth panel
Taylor Sartor, Founder Attorney, Foster Power
Dina Santos, Training and Outreach Specialist, Foster Power

Workers Rights
Lorraine Sands, Legal Organizer, GLOW
Tapiwa Gorejena, Law Programme Officer, WIEGO

Environmental Justice
Namati

2:05-3:05:  3 Concurrent Sessions: Legal Empowerment Models in Action – US Case Studies

Concurrent case studies situated in the US illustrate what’s possible when communities have the tools to know, use, shape and transform the systems that impact their lives. Through interactive sessions with jailhouse lawyers, inside organizers, and formerly incarcerated community members returning home, participants will gain concrete strategies and tactics to design and deploy legal empowerment projects within their communities.  

Legal Empowerment & Gender Justice in Prisons
Aminah Elster, Co-founder & Executive Director, Unapologetically Hers; California Coalition of Women Prisoners
Pam Fadem, California Coalition of Women Prisoners

Returning Home
Richard Midkiff, Founder, RSM Consulting
Devon Simmons, Co-Founder and Associate Director, Paralegal Pathways Initiative

Social Services & Beyond
Naomi Campbell, Director of Legal Empowerment Programs, Right Question Institute
Keila Perez, Program Associate of Legal Empowerment Program, Rights Question Institute

3:20-4:30: Working Groups

A space to debrief and exchange with a smaller cohort of participants. Working groups will also offer time for participants to apply learnings from the Convening to a legal empowerment challenge or growth opportunity within their respective organizations. 

4:30-5:30 Office Hours and Resource Fair

Opportunity for participants to set up 1:1 with US LE Network Members and meet other legal empowerment practitioners at a Resource Fair. 

7:00-8:30 Jailhouse Lawyer’s Initiative Flashlights Event

An immersive art experience co-organized by Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative and Zealous where participants can explore Flashlights–a digital archive that introduces the world to jailhouse lawyers through a powerful collection of letters, poems art created by JLI’s jailhouse lawyer members. The event will also explore the history and impact of jailhouse lawyering through panel discussion, visual art installations, audio and video recording stations, and more. 

9:00-9:30: Welcome and Grounding

9:30-10:45: Opening Plenary: The Power of Community Organizing and Social Movements to Shape and Transform Laws and Systems

The opening plenary will explore how community organizing and movement building are central to shaping and transforming laws and systems–especially in times of rising autocracy. Told through experiences of resisting militatory dictatorship in Phillipines to immigrant-led legal organizing in Southern California today–facilitators will highlight strategies for building collective power and developing effective grassroots campaigns to address systemic injustices and rebuild democracy from the grassroots. 

Gaby Hernandez, Executive Director, ORALE
Marlon Manuel, Senior Advisor, Grassroots Justice Network
Walter Flores, Research Professor, Accountability Research Center, American University,
Research Associate, Centro de Estudios para Equidad y Gobernanza en los Sistemas de Salud, Guatemala
Al Brooks, Unlock the Bar, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, BYP100, Garifuna Nation

11:00-12:00: 3 Concurrent Sessions: How Legal Empowerment Transforms the Legal Ecosystem – Case Studies

Concurrent case studies that highlight the power of legal empowerment to shape and transform our legal ecosystems by inclusion of community members as essential legal actors. Sessions will cover community justice advocates, accredited representatives and the establishment of public county funds dedicated to supporting legal empowerment practitioners. 

Community Justice Advocates
Stacy Jane, Director, Innovation for Justice
Cayley Balser, Professor of Practice, Service Impact Area Lead, Innovation for Justice

Jailhouse Lawyers
Darren Breeden, Director of Community Engagement, Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative
Maria Ana Del Valle, Director, CEA Justicia Escuela

Accredited Reps
Laura Vasquez, Director of Immigration Integration, UnidosUS
Robyn Lieberman, Associate Director, The Mother Cabrini Institute on Immigration
Rocío Pulido, Director of Capacity Building, The Resurrection Project

1:00-2:00: 3 Concurrent Sessions: How Legal Empowerment Shapes New Policies and Laws – Case Studies

Concurrent case studies that highlight the power of legal empowerment to shape and transform new laws, policies and protections. Sessions include successful efforts to create binding worker-created standards with companies outside the traditional legal system, and community-led legal empowerment campaigns to secure new rights and protections in the US (prisons) and globally (environmental justice). 

Worker-Social Driven Responsibility
Abel Luna, Education and Outreach Coordinator, Migrant Justice
Rachel Elliot, Communications and Development Coordinator, Migrant Justice

Legislative wins from the inside out
Gale Muhammad, Founder, Women Who Never Give Up (WWNGUp)
Antonne Henshaw, Partner, Women Who Never Give Up (WWNGUp)
Luis Del Orbe, Board, Women Who Never Give Up (WWNGUp)
Rashida Smith, Board, Women Who Never Give Up (WWNGUp)

Winning Public Funds for Legal Empowerment
Josh De Leon, Campaign Director, LAANE
Romeo Hebron, Executive Director, Filipino Migrant Center
Fernando Acevedo, Community Lawyer, ORALE
Carlos Perea, Executive Director, Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice
gabriela piñeros medina, Program Manager, Bernstein Institute for Human Rights

2:05-3:15: Working Groups 

A space to debrief and exchange with a smaller cohort of participants. Working groups will also offer time for participants to apply learnings from the Convening to a legal empowerment challenge or growth opportunity within their respective organizations. 

3:20-4:00: Closing Plenary: Looking Forward as We Redefine Justice Together

This closing gathering will reflect on the Convening, rejoice and look ahead to collective actions pursued by the US Legal Empowerment Network.