REGISTER
Tristate Area. — Juan Cartagena, Esq., President and General Counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, will present at the 16th Annual Conference on Dominican Affairs (CODA), slated to take place on Sunday, February 28, 2016 from 8:30am to 4pm at Rutgers’ Robeson Campus Center in Newark, NJ 07102
“Due to the critical situation Puerto Rico faces at this moment, and the urgent need for outside assistance, we have invited Civil Rights Attorney Juan Cartagena and a group of leaders to both, outline for us the current situation; and brainstorm as to how help should be extended to Puerto Rico,” said Dr. Maria Teresa Montilla, President of the Institute for Latino Studies, and the Latino Leadership Alliance (LLANJ). “I would like to invite everybody interested in learning about the Puerto Rican crises to attend the conference this year and contribute to the discussion.”
At 10am, Cartagena will participate as a panelist in the panel entitled Puerto Rico: Today and Tomorrow. He will join a select group of panelists who will discuss the current socio-economic and political situation Puerto Rico endures; the impact of the brain drain and ongoing migration of thousands of Puerto Ricans to mainland USA, the Dominican Republic and other destinations; and what can be done now to turn Puerto Rico into a more prosperous state.
The list of panelists includes Puerto Rico Representative Claribel Martínez-Marmolejos, Lydia Valencia from the Puerto Rican Congress of NJ, community activist Dennis Gonzalez from the U.S. Department of Health, and NJ Senator Teresa Ruiz.
At 11:30am, Cartagena will also present on the panel entitled Latinos and the 2016 Presidential Race. Panelists include Julio Marenco, North Bergen Finance and Revenue Commissioner, Milly Silva, Executive Vice President 1199 SEIU, and Fernando Alonso, Chairman Bergen County Republican Hispanic Association.
Both panels will be moderated by Nestor Montilla, Sr., Director of Government Relations of Lehman College of The City University of New York (CUNY).
CODA 2016 is made possible thanks to generosity of UNIVISION and PSE&G and with the collaboration of the Dominican American National Roundtable (DANR), the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey (LLANJ), and the National Dominican American Council.
Free admission for high school and college students (RSVP required). To RSVP for free, students should send an email to [email protected], including their names and school and or college they attend.
Cartagena is a constitutional and civil rights attorney who has vast experience litigating cases on behalf of Latino and African American communities in the areas of voting rights, employment discrimination, language rights, access to public education for poor and language minority children, and housing.
He formerly served as General Counsel and Vice President for Advocacy at the Community Service Society of New York. At CSS he also directed the Mass Imprisonment & Reentry Initiative which focuses on the effects these policies have on poor and minority communities. In the 1990s he worked at the government of Puerto Rico’s Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the United States where he served as Legal Director. Previously, he was Associate Counsel at the Community Service Society and before that he worked as a Staff Attorney at the former Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund (now LatinoJustice PRLDEF).
Mr. Cartagena is a former Municipal Court Judge in Hoboken, NJ. From 2005 to 2011, Mr. Cartagena also served as General Counsel to the Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey.
A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Cartagena lectures on constitutional and civil rights issues at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. He has written numerous articles on constitutional, human and civil rights laws, and has been recognized for his work on the political representation of poor and marginalized communities – especially Puerto Rican and Latino communities. His current research interests include the effects of mass imprisonment on Latino, and particularly Puerto Rican, communities, unlawful trespass arrests as an element of the NYPD’s stop and frisk practices, and employment discrimination issues affecting persons with previous criminal histories.
His work on a national level with the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act led to invitations in 2005-2006 to testify before the U.S. House and Senate on the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act and its effects on Latino communities in New York and New Jersey.