Welcome to the upEND 2024 Convening! This episode was recorded live in Houston, TX on October 10, 2024. 

Our liberation movements are intertwined. What are our strengths and opportunities in working together to achieve our collective goals? Guest host Corey Best moderates a conversation with activists working against prisons, immigrant detention, family policing, and more.

Episode Guests:  

Corey B. Best is a Black father, community organizer, activist, and leader. Originally from Washington, DC, Corey now resides in Florida. Corey has attached himself to “justice doing” — a movement and never-ending journey of being guided by the principled struggle to advance racial justice within this nation’s child welfare and human service delivery systems.  This work puts Corey in front of more than 10,000 professionals annually and has afforded him with the fundamental knowledge about the importance of connecting to something bigger than himself–allowing perspective, pain, truth, joy, and vulnerability to surface in search of meaningful, collective impact.  In all his endeavors, Corey brings a deepened historical and contemporary analysis of the invention of race, racism, systems of oppression and how those systems interconnect to produce white advantage gaps.

Tanisha Long (she/her) is the Allegheny County community organizer for ALC. She holds a BA in English writing and a minor in legal studies from the University of Pittsburgh. Before her work with ALC, Tanisha organized the Black Lives Matter Pittsburgh and Southwest PA organization working to fight systemic racial injustice. Since 2008, Tanisha has organized rallies and direct actions centered around climate change, voting rights, and mass incarceration. She is also the founder of RE Visions, a nonprofit committed to creating a more equitable learning environment for students of color. Tanisha believes there is a power at the intersection of art & activism; she hopes to use her passion for storytelling to both center and better the lives of those impacted by our inequitable justice systems.

Tarek Ismail is Associate Professor at CUNY Law School, where co-directs the Family Law Practice Clinic and Family Defense Practicum, and is counsel to CUNY Law’s Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project.

Jennefer Canales-Pelaez joined the ILRC in 2022. Jennefer has advocated for immigrant rights from the age of 11 when she advocated for her father’s immigration status to the President at the time, George W. Bush. Although her father was ultimately deported, Jennefer dedicated her life and career to ensuring that no one else experiences the trauma she felt at the age of 11. She graduated from Occidental College with a B.A. in Sociology in 2012 and earned her Juris Doctor from Southwestern Law School in 2016. Jennefer is a member of the State Bar of Texas and California. She is also admitted in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Jennefer has been involved with ICE out of LA, Southwestern Immigration Law Clinic, National Immigration Law Center (NILC), Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, Immigrant Defenders Law Center (IMMDEF), Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and worked with the Los Angeles Immigration Court. Jennefer is a former board member and co-president of the National Lawyers Guild-LA Chapter, and former Apen Ideas Scholar. After moving back to her hometown, Houston, Texas in 2019, she represented survivors of gender-based violence at Tahirih Justice Center prior to joining the ILRC. Jennefer was nominated as one of Houston’s Unsung Heros in 2020. 

Episode Notes: