Alice B. Jennings is a partner in the law firm of Edwards & Jennings, P.C. Ms. Jennings was a founding member of the Black Women’s Lawyers Association. She is a member of the National Bar Association, the Wolverine Bar Association, the Michigan Trial Lawyers Association, the American Trial Lawyers Association and Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. In the early 1990’s, when the Mayor of the City of Detroit attempted to privatize city services, threatening the loss of thousands of jobs for City of Detroit workers, their families and residents, Ms. Jennings and her law partner Mr. Edwards were requested by elected officials, officials from labor organizations, religious leaders and community activists to give leadership to the movement that resulted in the creation of the Coalition to Stop Privatization and Save Our City. This movement led to the creation of a new City of Detroit Charter, which specifically prohibited privatization of City of Detroit government services, unless certain criteria were met. In 1995-1996, Ms. Jennings, then a founding member of Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, was lead counsel, pro bono, with attorneys from the Sugar Law Center, regarding an incinerator in Flint, negotiated and acquired a first of its kind, thirty year consent judgment involving environmental justice issues, which prevented tons of toxic air particles and gases per year from entering our atmosphere. Most recently, in July 2014, in the face of thousands of water shutoffs, in residential homes, by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, Alice Jennings became lead attorney of a national legal team, filing a constitutional challenge to the irreparable harm occurring to citizens of the cities of Detroit and Highland Park because of this humanitarian crisis created by the massive shutoffs in residential homes and apartment buildings.. Importantly, the United Nations (UN) declared these water shutoffs by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department a violation of the United Nations Charter on Human Rights.

Patricia Jones is senior program lead for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s Human Right to Water. She has worked on projects for the United Nations, UNESCO, governments, and with international human rights institutions.

Monique Lin-Luse is Assistant Counsel of NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. Monique has over ten years of advocacy, organizing, and educator experience in youth development, education access, social justice, and civil rights. She has focused her work on removing barriers to educational success for all students and ending the criminalization of youth of color. Monique is a proponent of community led interventions that utilizes multiple forms of advocacy to eliminate racial, gender and other disparities in education, housing, and economic opportunities.<br /> Prior to joining LDF, Monique was the ninth Sol and Helen Zubrow Fellow in Children’s Law at the Juvenile Law Center of Philadelphia, where she worked on juvenile justice and child welfare system reform on the national level and in Pennsylvania. While at the Juvenile Law Center, she worked on ensuring constitutional protections for youth through impact litigation, direct representation, legislative advocacy and training child welfare and juvenile justice professionals.<br /> Monique received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a Public Interest Law Scholar and a recipient of the Juvenile Justice Clinic Award. Monique also has a Masters in Secondary Social Studies Education and taught middle and high school students in New York City as a New York City Teaching Fellow. She graduated with high honors from the University of Michigan Residential College with a B.A. in Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies.

Sylvia Orduño

Briana