Brandon Garrett to Moderate Sanford’s Stand for Justice Event

Wilson Center Director Brandon Garrett on Monday will moderate a criminal justice event hosted by the Sanford School of Public Policy, titled Stand for Justice.

The panelists at the event are Kassandra Frederique of Drug Policy Alliance, Bianca Tylek of Worth Rises, and Alec Karakatsanis of Civil Rights Corps. The talk, about criminal justice reform, is co-sponsored by the Wilson Center and Duke Sanford Hart Leadership Program. It will begin at 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21 and participants can register ahead of time online.

Frederique is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national nonprofit that works to end the war on drugs—which has disproportionately harmed Black, Latinx, Indigenous, immigrant, and LGBTQ communities – and build alternatives grounded in science, compassion, health, and human rights.

Tylek is the Founder & Executive Director of Worth Rises, where she combines her direct experience with the criminal legal system and expertise in financial and legal services to challenge the prison industrial complex.

Before founding Civil Rights Corps, Karakatsanis was a civil rights lawyer and public defender with the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia; a federal public defender in Alabama, representing impoverished people accused of federal crimes; and author of the book, “Usual Cruelty.” He is interested in ending human caging, surveillance, the death penalty, immigration laws, war and inequality.

This fall, the Sanford School is organizing a signature virtual speaker series to explore important policy conversations around issues of democracy, justice, equity, community, strategy and human rights in honor of founder, Terry Sanford, who said to students, "if you get into politics, you ought to get in with the frame of mind that winning is not everything. And if standing for something defeats you, so be it. Stand for something."