20th Annual CUNY Public Interest Law Association
Awards Ceremony and Gala
Friday, April 12, 2013
Church of St. Ignatius Loyola
980 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10028
Tickets include dinner with open bar
(Meat, Vegetarian, and Vegan options available)
Help us raise money to enable CUNY students to devote their summers to public interest legal work!
2013 Honorees
Daniel O’Donnell, the first openly gay man elected to the New York State Assembly and CUNY Law Class of 87’, has been a progressive voice advocating fair and sensible legislation since he was elected to represent the 69th District in 2002. After seven years as a public defender in the Brooklyn office of the Legal Aid Society, he opened his own public interest law firm on the Upper West Side. His community practice helped clients with tenant representation and civil rights litigation ranging from employee discrimination to First Amendment rights. During his tenure in the Assembly he has been the prime sponsor of several trailblazing bills, most notably the Marriage Equality Act, a bill O’Donnell has led to passage in the Assembly five times since 2007, and which was finally signed into law in June 2011, and the Dignity for All Students Act, which requires public schools in New York to combat bias-based bullying and harassment.
Honorable Bryanne Hamill, retired New York City Family Court Judge and CUNY Law Class of 1990, began her career in nursing and worked as a registered psychiatric nurse in New Orleans, her home, and New York State until 1981. While living on the island of Bermuda, she volunteered at the Physical Abuse Center, where she became active, offering counseling and raising money to support that island’s first domestic violence shelter for women and children. Upon graduation from CUNY School of Law in 1990, she practiced as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx County DA’s office, primarily investigating and prosecuting sex crimes as well as cases of domestic violence and child abuse. Judge Hamill was appointed to the family court bench in 2001 where she presided over model child protective parts, including the first child emergency removal part, and related matters. In 2011, she returned to the court to implement and preside over a model permanency planning court for youth aging out of the foster care system. Judge Hamill is a frequent panelist and educator on issues effecting vulnerable youth and the family court.
Andrea Ritchie, police misconduct attorney and organizer, has engaged in extensive research, writing, litigation, organizing and advocacy on profiling, policing, and physical and sexual violence by law enforcement agents against women, girls and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people of color over the past two decades. She currently coordinates Streetwise & Safe (SAS), a leadership development initiative aimed at building knowledge, community and power among LGBT youth of color with experience of gender, race, sexuality and poverty-based policing and criminalization in the context of “quality of life” initiatives and the policing of sex work and trafficking. Ritchie is the coauthor of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Beacon Press).
John Cicero, CUNY Law Professor, worked at the National Labor Relations Board in Newark, New Jersey for over 12 years, the last two as Supervising Attorney. While at the NLRB, he litigated and supervised a wide variety of cases, including several federal actions that won job reinstatement and back pay for hundreds of workers. Since coming to CUNY, Professor Cicero has combined his love of labor law with his interest in innovative teaching by creating a classroom setting that simulates a factory, as described in his often-cited law review article, “The Classroom as Shop Floor,” which appeared in the Vermont Law Review. He twice received the CUNY Law School’s Distinguished Professor Award for Excellence in Teaching given by the graduating classes of 1994 and 1997.
Help support PILA and CUNY LAW students in their public-interest internships. Any and all contributions are appreciated.