Nearly 40 speakers and over 300 attendees turned out on Aug. 20 for the first symposium, an exchange of ideas on combatting systemic racism. Here's just a sampling of the voices and featured speakers heard that day.
“Civil society requires the input of lawyers in determining how to go forward. It’s fair to say that from before the founding of this republic…there was a commitment to justice as a paramount foundational value. But it’s been in constant tension with the terrible way in which the United States has wrestled with the question of race as to all people of color, and particularly as to those who were brought here as chattel slaves and their descendants. And that struggle requires our input at this very moment.”
Raymond M. Brown
Scarinci Hollenbeck
“Through education, we can have inspiration.”
Kimberly A. Yonta
President, New Jersey State Bar Association
“In my judgment, the very best way to make progress long-term toward racial justice is to start with children and to organize our public school system in a way that allows students of all races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds to go to school together and learn from each other and interact and play sports and participate in extracurricular activities.”
Justice Gary S. Stein (Ret.)
Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, PC
“The bottom line is there is individual responsibility but there is also systemic responsibility…. We have to embrace what we don’t know and we have to understand that change is the law of life…The challenge on a day-to-day basis from a systemic level is making sure that the stakeholders inside the system understand that change is coming and to embrace it.”
Hon. Hany Mawla, JAD
“No one drop of rain blames itself for the flood. The racial reckoning that we are dealing with right now, we as the courts, we as the justice system, have to take responsibility for what we’re seeing. Everyone’s talking about the police, but Black folks see the courts as just another stop on the train of injustice.”
Hon. Victoria Pratt
Former Chief Judge, Newark Municipal Court
“If people aren’t picking up the phone and calling 9-1-1 because they’re not going to trust the officer coming to the door, we’ve got to fix that. There’s no magic wand, it is a daily conversation that we’ve got to continue to have if we’re really, really going to instill trust in a meaningful way.”
Colonel Patrick J. Callahan
Superintendent, New Jersey State Police
“You should be able to respectfully voice your opinion and if the company or firm you’re working for doesn’t accept that, you don’t want to work at that place. Know your worth; know your value. Discrimination of any form in our profession is not ok.”
Melinda Colón Cox
Parker Ibrahim & Berg
“It’s a movement for dignity. That’s really what Black Lives Matter is about.”
Clifford D. Dawkins Jr.
Sills Cummis & Gross, PC
“I think that law firms are among the last bastions of progress. The concept of who’s running law firms and what that looks like from a race, age and gender perspective—I think we’re going to look to attrition to change that, just by virtue of demographics in our society.”
Lora L. Fong
Assistant Attorney General & Chief Diversity Officer, Office of the Attorney General
“(I’ve seen prosecutors)…use language that divorces humanity from the people that we’re dealing with. If we don’t start addressing that culture as lawyers, as members of the bar, as human beings, then we’re going to have lot more of the same. There is a professionalism problem and we need to hold people accountable for it.”
Dara Govan
Assistant U.S. Attorney,United States Attorney’s Office
“What I see as a primary problem in policing is complete secrecy and lack of accountability…. The police are treated as an entity unto themselves who can hold themselves accountable, investigate themselves, and we the people are not allowed to see the records or know anything about it.”
CJ Griffin
Director, Justice Gary S. Stein Public Interest Center, Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, P.C.
“The most important thing we must do is stay in the streets…the unfortunate lynching of George Floyd probably brought more people into the streets of the United States than any other protests in recent times…millions of people…. I think that that is the engine that is actually pushing things forward.”
Larry Hamm
Founder and Chairman, People’s Organization for Progress
“If we’re not willing to go back, especially in the white community, to have honest conversations about the 400 years of where this came from, and the role that white people play in it, then we’ll never win.”
Angela J. Hattery
Co-Author, “Policing Black Bodies”
“Words like post-racial…drive me crazy because they give this impression as if there’s something negative about the fact that we have differences. Like now you have to lose who you are to be accepted…that’s the furthest thing from the truth.”
Julien X. Neals
County Counsel, County of Bergen
“The people who are in our court system are people who are most marginalized, whether financially or racially…. Our courts are the ovens that are baking all of these inequities into our reality.”
Karen Thompson
Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU-NJ
“I’m going to ask the people who are listening throughout the legal community…to do something that I took a chance to do myself…To use my leverage as a lawyer to the benefit of my community.”
Kenyatta Stewart
Corporation Counsel, City of Newark
“Don’t be a bystander. If you see something that’s going on out there, speak out…. I do think it’s an obligation. It’s my personal obligation. You have to be a little fearless.”
Maria P. Vallejo
Co-Chair, NJSBA Diversity Committee, Chasan Lamparello Mallon & Cappuzzo, PC
“(There is a) need for the power in the street to come together with the power in the suite…the suite being city hall and other levels of government…. I think it’s going to be a matter of both. There has to be a relationship.”
Junius Williams
Historian, City of Newark