Sunday, February 21
7:00-8:30pm ET / 6-7:30pm CT / 4:00-5:30pm PT
This month we will discuss what racial justice in immigration looks like, so that we can continue to seek justice and restore Shalom! We are honored to have Immigration Attorney Elket RodrÃguez of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Fellowship Southwest, and Dean Kevin R. Johnson, Professor of Public Interest Law and Professor of Chicana/o Studies at the UC Davis School of Law, serve as our panelists. This discussion will be moderated by our own Dr. Jung Bae, a very recent IV alum of the University of Washington and The Ohio State University. You can learn more about our speakers below. Go to page 5 of the In Search of Shalom Reading Lists for readings and videos for this session.
Special Icebreaker Activity!
Join us 3 minutes early (6:57 EST/5:57 CST/3:57 PST) for a special ice breaker activity. We live on land that once belonged to the First Nations peoples of North America and will honor our Native brothers and sisters as we pray for all native lands at the beginning of our discussion. To do that we need to know who was originally on the land where we currently live. As we seek justice for immigrants, we are called to fight against the injustice that was and continues to be done to those who first called this land home.
Please go to the link below to identify who originally occupied the land where you currently live and learn more about them. We will be asking for the name of the Native territory during the icebreaker activity and will call the name as we pray for God’s Shalom. We look forward to seeing you then!
Speaker Bios:
Kevin R. Johnson is Dean, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law, and Professor of Chicana/o Studies. He joined the UC Davis law faculty in 1989 was named Associate Dean in 1998, and the Dean in 2008. He has taught immigration law, civil procedure, complex litigation, Latinos and Latinas and the law, and Critical Race Theory.  Dean Johnson has published extensively on immigration law and civil rights. His books How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man’s Search for Identity (1999) and Immigration Law and the US-Mexico Border (2011) have been highly awarded. Dean Johnson blogs at ImmigrationProf, is a regular contributor on immigration on SCOTUSblog and is often quoted by national and international news outlets.  Dean Johnson is President of the board of directors of Legal Services of Northern California and from 2006-11, he served on the board of directors of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the leading Mexican-American civil rights organization in the United States. Before becoming a professor, he was a student at Harvard Law School where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, served as a clerk to Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked for law firm Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe. Of Mexican American ancestry, he is the first Latino to head a law school in the UC system.
Elket RodrÃguez was born and raised in Puerto Rico and is now based in West Texas. After earning an undergraduate degree in journalism and a law degree from the University of Puerto Rico, he pursued a master of divinity degree from the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute. In Texas, he has worked for a law firm, Child Protective Services, and First Baptist Church of Midland, where he was a family and senior-adult ministry assistant, taught citizenship classes and served as an English as a Second Language consultant, and also established a Spanish Sunday school class/ministry that continues to thrive. He now works as an immigrant and refugee specialist for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). There he coordinates CBF’s immigration advocacy efforts, helps coordinate and educate Fellowship Southwest immigrant-relief volunteers, and gathers stories of asylum seekers and immigration issues.
Dr. Jung Bae is a Korean American labor economist with research experience in the economics of immigration and the economics of science and innovation. After studying Economics and Mathematics at the University of Washington, Dr. Bae received his Masters in economics from The Ohio State University in 2014 and was awarded a Ph.D in Economics from The Ohio State University in 2020.