June 2012, Exact date TBD
For more information or to RSVP contact Valerie
--Free and open to the public--
SF Office
Marissa Alexander, Development and Legal Assistant
Ingrid Brostrom, Staff Attorney
Arminda Montoya, Chief Financial Officer
Brent J. Newell, General Counsel
Lauren Richter, Development Director
Sofia Parino, Senior Attorney
Delano Office
Gustavo Aguirre, Director of Organizing
Laura Baker, Staff Attorney
Caroline Farrell, Executive Director
Juan Flores, Community Organizer
Valerie Gorospe, Programs Assistant
Refugio Valencia Gutierrez, Community Organizer
Lupe Martinez, Assistant Executive Director
Camille Pannu, Staff Attorney
Bates, Human Resources Specialist
StaffFounders Luke Cole (1962 – 2009)
He represented low-income communities and workers throughout California who are fighting environmental hazards, stressing the need for community-based, community-led organizing and litigation. Through the Center, he also provided legal and technical assistance to attorneys and community groups involved in environmental justice struggles nationwide. Cole worked with dozens of community groups in local struggles across the United States. He represented Kettleman City residents in their successful efforts to stop Chemical Waste Management from building California’s first toxic waste incinerator in their community. His current cases include representing residents of the Inupiaq Village of Kivalina in northwest Alaska in a suit against the world’s largest zinc and lead mine, which has polluted the village’s water supply for years. Other recent cases included representing South Camden Citizens in Action of Camden, NJ, in a historic civil rights suit against the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection; the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe of Death Valley in its efforts to halt open-pit cyanide heap leach gold mining in sacred ancestral lands; Desert Citizens Against Pollution in the group’s successful challenge to tire burning in several cement kilns; and Communities for a Better Environment in a civil rights challenge to California pollution-trading regulations. Cole was appointed by EPA Administrator Carol Browner to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC), where he served from 1996 through 2000 (including chairing NEJAC’s Enforcement Subcommittee from 1998 through 2000). He also served as a member of EPA’s Title VI Implementation Committee. In 1997, the American Lawyer magazine named Cole to the Public Sector 45, one of “forty-five young lawyers outside the private sector whose vision and commitment are changing lives.” Berkeley’s Ecology Law Quarterly awarded Cole its 1997 Environmental Leadership Award for “outstanding contributions to the development of environmental law and policy,” and the American Bar Association’s Barrister magazine named Cole one of “20 young lawyers making a difference” for his pioneering legal work. Community organizations have also honored Cole for his contributions to the environmental justice movement. Cole was the co-founder and editor emeritus of the journal Race, Poverty & the Environment. He recently published, with Professor Sheila Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement (NYU Press, 2001). His legal publications include “Empowerment as they Key to Environmental Protection: the Need for Environmental Poverty Law,” in the Ecology Law Quarterly, as well as pieces in the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, the Journal of Environmental Law & Litigation, the Fordham Urban Law Journal, and the Michigan Law Review, among others. He has taught as a visiting professor at UC-Hastings School of Law, and also taught seminars on environmental justice at Stanford Law School, UC-Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, and Hastings. Cole graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and with honors from Stanford University. Memorial Website
Ralph Abascal Ralph Abascal was attorney and general counsel to California Rural Legal Assistance; the founding director of the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment; and the director of litigation at the San Francisco Legal Assistance Foundation. He represented the poor for more than 29 years in more than 200 major cases. Working on behalf of thousands of clients, including farm workers, people of color, the disabled, immigrants, students, and welfare recipients, Abascal left his mark on every major facet of civil rights advocacy and became a legend within the legal services community. His is also credited with starting the environmental justice. The American Bar Association acknowledged Abascal's contributions by honoring him with the 1995 Thurgood Marshall Award, recognizing his long-term achievements in civil rights, civil justice, civil liberties, human rights, and legal services. He also received the Rudy Frank Advocacy Award from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund and the Kutak-Dodds Price Award from the National Legal Aid and Defender Associates for his advocacy on behalf of the underprivileged. Ralph Abascal served on the Hastings board of directors for twelve years. As a Hastings professor, he taught one of the first environmental justice seminars in the country. In fact, he is credited with starting the environmental justice movement winning cases that forced the end of the agricultural use of DDT and other pesticides. He serviced the Thurgood Marshall Prize in 1995 as well as the Rudy Frank Advocacy Award from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund and the Kutak-Dodds Price Award from the National Legal Aid and Defender Associates.
Staff EmeritusEphraim Camacho, Organizer (1992-2002) |
