Canceled: Rights Night: Our Rights, Our Issues

Robin Steinberg In conversation with Kathryn Eidmann, staff attorney, Public Counsel
Saturday, Mar 21, 2020 | 6:30pm Mark Taper Auditorium-Central Library

ALL ALOUD programs are canceled through April 30.

 

Every day thousands of Americans are jailed because they don’t have enough money to pay bail. Directly impacting low-income and minority communities the most, people who are unable to post bail can lose their jobs, their homes, and their lives are torn apart. The Eighth Amendment was established to prohibit the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments, but is it protecting our citizens enough? Join us for a revolutionary look at the criminal justice system, bail reform, and the radical act of bringing people home from jail with Robin Steinberg. A lawyer and social justice advocate, Steinberg is also the CEO of the Bail Project—a national revolving bail fund to combat mass incarceration that focuses on reuniting families. Steinberg will discuss her visionary work with the Public Counsel’s Robins Kaplan Supervising Senior Attorney Kathryn Eidmann, a civil rights and economic justice lawyer who has fought to expand opportunities for disenfranchised communities. 

Robin Steinberg

Robin Steinberg is the founder and CEO of The Bail Project, an unprecedented national effort to combat mass incarceration by transforming the pretrial system in the US.

Over a 35-year career as a public defender, Robin represented thousands of low-income people in over-policed neighborhoods and founded three high-impact organizations: The Bronx Defenders, The Bronx Freedom Fund, and Still She Rises. Robin is a frequent commentator on criminal justice issues and has contributed opinion pieces to The New York Times, The Marshall Project, and USA Today. Her publications have appeared in leading law and policy journals, including NYU Review of Law & Social Change, Yale Law & Policy Review, and Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy, and she has contributed book chapters to How Can You Represent Those People? (Palgrave 2013) and Decarcerating America (The New Press 2018). Robin is a Gilbert Foundation Senior Fellow of the Criminal Justice Program at UCLA School of Law.

Kathryn Eidmann

Kathryn Eidmann is a staff attorney with Public Counsel, the nation’s largest pro bono law firm. As part of the Opportunity Under Law project, she brings impact litigation to advance economic justice and civil rights. Her education equity class action cases on behalf of low-income children have included challenges to the denial of the right to literacy under the U.S. constitution on behalf of Detroit students, a school district’s failure to accommodate students who are impacted by exposure to trauma, and lost learning time in high-poverty schools in California.

Prior to joining Public Counsel, Kathryn worked for the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. Kathryn previously served on the Commission for Community and Family Services advising the City of Los Angeles on issues of poverty and the needs of children, youth, and their families.

Illustration courtesy of Shepard Fairey/Obeygiant.com

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