Saru Jayaraman to Keynote 31st Anniversary Gala: The PATH FORWARD
- Impact Fund celebrates impact litigation as driver of social justice
- Honors North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services and Aaron Halegua, PLLC
Saru Jayaraman
Berkeley, 04.27.23 – The Impact Fund is delighted to announce that Saru Jayaraman will be the special guest and keynote speaker at its 31st Anniversary Gala on May 16.
Impact Fund Executive Director, Jocelyn Larkin, said: “We are excited to extend a warm welcome to our community for "The Path Forward" celebration, where we will pay tribute to trailblazers who have been at the forefront of advocating for justice.”
Keynoting the annual celebration is Saru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley. In 2002, she co-founded the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) with displaced World Trade Center workers. It has grown into a national movement of restaurant workers, employers and consumers. In 2013, she launched One Fair Wage as a national campaign to end all sub-minimum wages in the U.S. The story of Saru and her colleagues' work has been chronicled in the book, The Accidental American, and has been profiled in the documentary films, Waging Change, and The Great American Lie, by California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
Saru was profiled in the New York Times “Public Lives” section in 2005, named one of Crain’s “40 Under 40” in 2008, as well as 1010 Wins’ “Newsmaker of the Year” and New York Magazine’s “Influentials” of New York City. She was listed in CNN’s “Top10 Visionary Women” and recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014, a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2015, and the SF Chronicle ‘Visionary of the Year’ in 2019.
Saru cares deeply about the social justice challenges the Impact Fund addresses and says: “We are experiencing a historic moment of worker revolt, in which millions of low wage workers realized during the pandemic and with rising inflation that they were no longer able or willing to tolerate the low wages and abuse we see all too pervasive across the American economy. In this historic moment, the work of the Impact Fund and social justice lawyering is even more timely and critical - to support courageous workers across the economy finally standing up for themselves and changing the future of work in our country."
This year, the Gala—a highlight in the annual calendar of Bay Area legal community fundraisers—will take place on Tuesday, May 16, on the top floor of the Westin St. Francis, famed for its floor to ceiling panoramic vistas of San Francisco and the Bay.
Joining Saru Jayaraman will be two Impact Fund grantees, whom the Impact Fund is grateful to acknowledge for their recent successes in court.
The first to be honored is North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc. for its work in Thomas J. Stamps v. North Carolina Division of Adult Correction, a class action civil rights suit against the North Carolina Division of Adult Correction for its failure to provide adequate screening of and medical treatment for inmates with chronic Hepatitis C infections. In March 2021, the district court approved a landmark class-wide settlement that resolved this case. This settlement represents a significant victory for incarcerated people in North Carolina. Under the settlement, nearly all prisoners with chronic HCV are now eligible for treatment, which must be administered to the sickest prisoners first and prisoners with less advanced disease afterwards.
"We are thrilled to be recognized for our work with some of our community’s most marginalized individuals. We are so grateful to the Impact Fund for making this victory possible," said Elizabeth Hopkins Thomas, Executive Director, with North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc.
The second of the honorees is Aaron Halegua, PLLC for the firm’s work in Tianming Wang v. Gold Mantis, a human trafficking and forced labor case filed in the federal district court for Saipan—part of a U.S. Commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean. The firm represented a group of Chinese immigrant construction workers against the two Chinese construction firms, Gold Mantis and MCC, and the casino developer, Imperial Pacific International (IPI), who defrauded them into paying large recruitment fees and subjected them to abusive conditions, resulting in them each sustaining work-related injuries. The seven plaintiffs settled with the two Chinese construction companies and then obtained a $5.4 million default judgment against IPI. In total, the plaintiffs collected nearly $6.9 million based on their trafficking and forced labor claims.
Aaron Halegua, the founder of Aaron Halegua, PLLC and lead counsel on the case, stated: “I am truly honored and humbled to receive this award in the presence of such a decorated group of public interest lawyers. The outcome of our case has delivered a modicum of justice to our clients after years of suffering, as well as sent a powerful message that the perpetrators of forced labor will face serious consequences. I also want to recognize that this result would not have been possible without my clients’ tremendous courage, the brilliant work of my co-counsels, the financial support of the Impact Fund, and the contributions of countless others to this multi-year effort.”
Reflecting on our next steps as a community and where we go from here, the theme for this year’s Gala is “The Path Forward.” The path forward is not always clear, but it is a journey that we must all undertake to grow. It's about moving past obstacles, challenges, and setbacks, and charting a course towards a brighter future.
“Gathering together for a common cause is a powerful way to effect change, and when that cause is ending injustice, the potential impact is immeasurable.” continued Larkin, concluding: “With every small step we take, we can create a ripple effect that inspires others to join in the movement towards a better tomorrow.”
Tickets are available at: www.impactfund.org/gala/ifgala23. Sponsors of the event include Gibbs Law Group, Girard Sharp, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, Sanford Heisler Sharp, Audet & Partners, Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy, Lichten & Liss-Riordan, and Miller Shah. To sponsor the event, click here: www.impactfund.org/gala/ifgala23
ENDS
For more information and photography, contact:
Teddy Basham-Witherington 415.845.1206 / twitherington@impactfund.org
About The Impact Fund
The Impact Fund was founded in December 1992 to help advance economic, environmental, racial, and social justice through the courts. Originally envisioned as a purely grantmaking organization, the Impact Fund has made 757 grants totaling $8,934,546. Click here for Grant Criteria and information about Grant Deadlines.
Since its inception, the Impact Fund has grown to include both advocacy and education in its range of services. Today, the Impact Fund litigates a small number of cases directly, authors amicus briefs, provides a substantial amount of pro-bono consulting, and presents an annual conference for plaintiff-side class action practitioners, a training institute for budding public interest class action practitioners, and numerous seminars and webinars. Click here for the 2022 Annual Report.
About North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc.
North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services (NCPLS) is a non-profit law firm. Since 1979, they have been dedicated to ensuring access to the courts for people incarcerated in North Carolina state prisons. NCPLS attorneys work to correct unlawful criminal sentences and advocate for safe, humane, and constitutional prison conditions.
About Aaron Halegua, PLLC
Aaron Halegua, PLLC is a law firm based in New York City that practices in the areas of employment law and general litigation. The firm has a particular focus on matters involving China, Chinese entities, or Chinese individuals. Aaron Halegua is the founding member of the firm. He has litigated cases involving a wide range of issues, including forced labor and human trafficking, wage and hour violations, discrimination, retaliation, wrongful death, and terrorist financing.