Separate and Unequal—Hurricane Katrina and Race in America

Judith Browne-Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, has an extensive background as a civil rights attorney in the areas of voting rights, fair housing, and public advocacy. Browne-Dianis's work on the disparities that youth of color experience under zero-tolerance school policies has received national recognition and media coverage.

Juan Cartagena serves as General Counsel at the Community Service Society. He directs the legal department in public interest litigation on behalf of the poor in the areas of voting rights, education, housing, health, and environmental issues. Prior to joining CSS, Cartagena was the legal director in the New York Office of the Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the U.S., Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and an attorney at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund. He also served as a municipal court judge in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Mindy Fullilove, MD, has focused on how communities have been torn apart by disease, violence, urban renewal. She is particularly interested as a physician—or as she calls herself, an urban psychiatrist—how health declines after the collapse of communities. Her research on AIDS and other problems in inner-city neighborhoods is featured in Jacob Levenson’s The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS in Black America. More recently she has published Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It and has made a documentary about Newark, N.J., called Urban Renewal Is People Removal, which won first prize in short documentary category at the Trenton Film Festival.

Ronald Sullivan is a founding member and Senior Fellow of the Jamestown Project, and a Professor at Yale Law School. His areas of interest include criminal law, criminal procedure, and legal ethics. Sullivan established the first criminal defense clinical offering at the Yale Law School, the Samuel and Anna Jacobs Criminal Justice Clinic. Sullivan spent most of his career as a public defender serving as a staff attorney, General Counsel, and Director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS). He has provided legal commentary for CNN, Fox News, and PBS on topics ranging from the impeachment of President Clinton to the Kobe Bryant criminal proceedings.