PROGRAM

In recent months, the enduring issues of race and law enforcement have weighed on the city and nation with gathering force. They range across the spectrum of criminal justice, from stop and frisk encounters to harsh solitary confinement and from Ferguson to Baltimore. These programs aim to fulfill Roosevelt House’s mission to foster discussion, debate and understanding.

Can Cops and Community Get Together?

Speakers:

Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele, Community for Police Reform; Senior Organizer, NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Susan Herman, Deputy Commissioner, Collaborative Policing, New York Police Department
Michael Lewis (Moderator), Associate Professor of Social Work, Hunter College

Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele is the Senior Community Organizer at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. He is also a leader in Communities United for Police Reform, an unprecedented campaign to end discriminatory and abusive policing in New York. Mr. Akinwole-Bandele co-founded the Black August Hip Hop Project and has served as a counselor and lecturer at Medgar Evers College (CUNY). He is now an adjunct lecturer who teaches Community Organizing at Lehman College (CUNY).

Susan Herman, Deputy Commissioner, Collaborative Policing, NYPD, has devoted her career to criminal justice issues, as a lawyer, teacher and advocate. Prior to returning to the NYPD in 2014, she served as a professor at Pace University, Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, and Special Counsel to three Police Commissioners. She is the author of Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime, the path-breaking 2010 book redefining justice for victims of crime.

Michael A. Lewis, Associate Professor of Social Work at Hunter, is a social worker, quantitative sociologist, and former community organizer on the faculty of the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. He’s the co-author of Economics for Social Workers (Columbia Press) and co-editor of The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee (Ashgate Press). His work has appeared in academic journals in the social sciences and physics.

Also in this series:

Correcting Corrections (Thursday, July 16, 2015 at 6:00 pm)

With Speakers:

Michael Jacobson, former NYC Corrections Commissioner; Director of the CUNY Public Policy Institute
Norman Seabrook, President, Correction Officers Benevolent Association
Ann-Marie Louison, Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services
Daniel Selling, former Executive Director of Mental Health for NYC corrections
Shyama Venkateswar (Moderator), Director of the Public Policy Program, Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College