Dialogues on Justice: Boundaries, Borders, and Immigration

Pratt’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design in collaboration with the Humanities and Media Studies Department is proud to present:

Dialogues on Justice: Boundaries, Borders, and Immigration – a Conversation with NSC Community Legal Defense.

Organized by Peter Macapia and Arlene Keizer, Dialogues on Justice welcomes the Pratt community and the general public to hear from NSC Community Legal Defense to discuss law, immigration, and the city. Dialogues connects Pratt’s emerging practices and research in art, design, and the humanities to the important and innovative work by advocates and practitioners of human rights and social justice.

NSC Community Legal Defense is a community-embedded deportation and detention defense team that works with communities and intervenes at the Federal Court level to protect immigrants’ and children’s rights, protecting and strengthening individuals and communities against racist and inhumane treatment and unlawful detention and deportation. In 2018, attorneys Gillman and Copeland successfully petitioned a writ of habeas corpus in Lopez v. Sessions, arguing that the defendant, a juvenile, had been unlawfully held for more than nine months in violation of the laws and Constitution of the U.S. The Federal Court found that the government had acted unlawfully citing to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson that “[O]urs is a government of laws, not of men,” and that personal liberty is guaranteed by the great writ of habeas corpus, which “secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.” [Lopez v. Sessions, 18 Civ. 4189 (RWS), at *2-3 (S.D.N.Y. Jun. 12, 2018).] Ravi Ragbir, Managing Director of NCS Community Legal Defense, is an internationally recognized figure whose work as a community advocate fighting for immigrants’ rights, freedom of speech, and sanctuary space, is redefining the relationship between legal practice, communities, and justice.

As we engage this Dialogue with NSC and consider escalating debates on immigration and the contradictions and abuses of policy and law, we ask the community to bring to these practitioners and advocates questions that will open and connect our work to conflicts in justice and human rights experienced by communities within the space of the city and across national borders. We hope you will join us for what will be an exciting evening discussing these issues and the boundaries of law with NSC’s Ravi Ragbir, Sarah Gillman, and Gregory Copeland.

This event is sponsored by the Academic Senate and generously supported by the program in Graduate Architecture and Urban Design and the Humanities and Media Studies Department. Arlene Keizer, Chairperson of Humanities and Media Studies, and Peter Macapia, Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture, would like to thank the staff and services at Pratt Library for making this space possible.

Free and open to the public. Food and beverages will be served. This event is wheelchair accessible.