Join the Capital Punishment Center in welcoming guest speaker Renaldo Hudson.
Renaldo Hudson is an educator and a community organizer, and has focused his work on ending perpetual punishment in Illinois. After being sentenced to death row, he worked for 37 years while incarcerated to change mindsets regarding prisoner rehabilitation. Join us to hear Renaldo speak on how to focus attention on true rehabilitation.
Join us to hear Chief Justice Rebeca Martinez, Chief Justice of the Fourth Court of Appeals for the State of Texas, and Dolores Atencio, former co-chair of the HNBA Latina Commission and creator of the Luminarias de la Ley Project, speak about their career journeys as Latinas in the legal profession.
During this conversation, they will explore their career journeys and discuss their experiences as Latinas in the legal profession, including the challenges of being “the first” or “the only.” Ms. Atencio will discuss her extensive research on Latina lawyers. Chief Justice Martinez will offer her perspectives as one among 3 of the highest-ranking Latina judges in Texas. The two will discuss their thoughts on diversifying the legal profession and how current lawyers can help future generations of attorneys.
On Thursday, October 6, the Strauss Center welcomes Dr. Tony Payan, the Françoise and Edward Djerejian Fellow for Mexico Studies and Director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, for a talk on “The Evolving Nature of Organized Crime in Mexico and Why We Should Care.” This talk is part of our Brumley Speaker Series.
In this conversation, Dr. Payan will discuss how Mexico’s struggle with elevated levels of violence and crime has diverted attention from understanding the drastic changes in the nature and character of Mexico’s criminal organizations, with detrimental consequences for not only Mexico, but the United States as well. Payan will argue that, although it is important to examine crime and violence in Mexico today from a quantitative standpoint, it is essential to also analyze how and why criminal organizations have changed in recent years from large, hierarchical organizations primarily dedicated to drug trafficking to networks of sophisticated, vicious groups creating chaos in Mexico’s society and endangering its institutions. According to Payan, the role that these organizations play within the United States in the fentanyl crisis, as well as immigration and human trafficking, shows that Washington, D.C. can not hesitate to address what is happening on the ground south of the border.
