On July 14, we are bringing back the DC Jobs with Justice Workers’ Rights Board to discuss the need for Just Hours!

The Workers’ Rights Board is a board composed of community and religious leaders, prominent members of the community, and public officials who support struggles for economic justice through investigations, hearings, press conferences, meetings and other events.

This year’s board members are:

Reverend Dr. Kendrick E. Curry is the Senior Pastor of The Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church (PABC), a ministry that transforms lives for the common good of the church and community.

Dr. Curry actively participates in the faith community and the community at-large. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Baptist Convention of DC and Vicinity, where he serves as Treasurer, and the District of Columbia Baptist Convention (DCBC), where he is the Chair of the Mission, Stewardship, Support and Development Team and serves on the Council for Ordination. As a member of the Missionary Baptist Minister’s Conference of DC and Vicinity, Dr. Curry serves on the Civic and Social Action Committee. He has served as the Chair of Mayor’s Interfaith Council and as a mayoral appointee to the Project Labor Agreement Task Force for the Washington Nationals stadium. Dr. Curry is also a Director of the Stoddard Baptist Home Board and serves on the Board of Trustees of UDC. He is a strong advocate for education and academic excellence, and as such serves as the Vice Chair and Ambassador for the Washington DC Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (WDC STEM) Partnership.

Dr. Curry is happily married to the Reverend Karen Whitney Curry and is the proud father of two wonderful children: Keyona and Kendrick, II.

 

Elizabeth Davis is the President of the Washington Teachers’ Union, which represents more than 4,500 active and retired teachers in Washington, D.C. Davis, an award-winning educator, has taught in DC Public Schools for 41 years, most recently as an Information Technology teacher at Phelps High School. After being recruited to teach drafting at Jefferson Junior High School in 1972 by the superintendent who was impressed by a course she designed, the school’s principal tried to bar her from the job because she was female. Fighting for her right to teach – and her female students’ right to take classes – in a male dominated vocational education field set the tone for a life as an activist.

During decades when many DCPS facilities were literally falling down around students and staff, Davis became known as a teacher who was unafraid to stand up to unsafe conditions, from water contaminated with unsafe levels of lead to tar fumes that were sickening students and teachers forced to stay in a school with a collapsed roof.

Davis has been honored by DCPS as a highly effective teacher, and awards over her long career have included the MetLife Foundation Ambassador in Education Award and the Masonic Scottish Rites Excellence in Teaching Award. She is a graduate of DC’s Eastern High School and holds a BS in Technology Education from American University and a MA in Educational Administration.

 

Sally Greenberg joined the National Consumers League as Executive Director on October 1, 2007. The League’s focus is on five key priority areas: fraud, child labor, LifeSmarts, health care, especially the safe use of medications and medication adherence, and food safety and nutrition. Sally has testified numerous times before Congress on consumer protection issues, including on product safety, fraud, excessive fees on car rentals, consumer rip-offs in calling cards and in support of protections for farmworker children.

Sally came to NCL from Consumers Union, where she worked from 1997-2007 on product liability and food safety issues, along with auto and product safety. Previously, Sally worked at the U.S. Department of Justice Foreign Claims Settlement Commission and prior to that, she spent a decade serving as the Eastern States Civil Rights Counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, based in Boston.

 

Jermaine Hampton is the director of the AimHire Employment Program at Friendship Place. Before joining the Friendship Place team in Feb 2011, Jermaine worked as a government contractor for Montgomery County as a Case Manager specializing in employment services, education, and training. In addition to his workforce development background, Jermaine also has a great deal of experience in staffing, business management, marketing, advocacy, fundraising, and the nonprofit HR field.

Under Jermaine’s leadership, AimHire has received the Tyler Christian Rusch Help the Homeless Award from Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church and a Certificate of Appreciation from the DC Department of Employment Services “for being a valued partner through Mayor Gray’s One City One Hire Initiative.” Jermaine is a current member of the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals, and holds a Bachelor of Science from Virginia State University.

 

Ed Lazere has led the work of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute since its inception in 2001. Under his leadership, DCFPI has become the primary source of independent information on the DC budget and one of the most influential policy organizations focused on the District. Lazere is recognized as a leading expert on the District’s budget and tax system, and he is looked to as a resource on a number of policy issues such as affordable housing and welfare-to-work programs.

Ed served as the Chair of the Public Education Finance Reform Commission in 2011-2012 and a member of the DC Tax Revision Commission in 2012-13. Lazere also serves on the board of directors of a number of local non-profits, including the Children’s Law Center, the Consumer Health Foundation, the DC Primary Care Association, and Temple Micah.

Ed earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard College and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Maryland.

 

Joseph A. McCartin is the director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative on Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University and an expert on U.S. labor, social and political history. His research and writing focuses on the intersection of labor organization, politics, and public policy. He teaches courses in 20th Century U.S. Labor History, U.S. Since 1945, America Between the Wars, Modern U.S. State and Society, and 20th Century U.S. Social History.

 

Patty Mullahy Fugere has been involved in affordable housing and homelessness issues in the District of Columbia since 1980. She is one of the co-founders, and since 1991 has served as the executive director, of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. Patty shares the Legal Clinic’s vision of DC as a just and inclusive community, where housing is a human right and all residents have access to the resources they need to thrive.

In addition to her day-to-day Legal Clinic work, Patty is involved in a number of initiatives that promote justice for homeless and low-income community members. She serves on the DC Access to Justice Commission, as well as on the steering committee of the Fair Budget Coalition and the Advisory Board of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute. She also serves on the boards of directors of the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project; NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, and NETWORK Advocates for Catholic Social Justice. Patty also is an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University Law Center, where she co-teaches a course on “Homelessness, Poverty and Legal Advocacy.”

 

Ericka Taylor is the Executive Director of the DC Fair Budget Coalition. Prior to joining FBC, she served as the Development Director for The Other 98%, a netroots organization dedicated to ending the corporate control of the U.S. political system. She also has worked as a community organizer with DC ACORN, as a trainer for young people and youth organizers with YouthAction, and as a Program Officer at the Public Welfare Foundation where she helped fund organizations working on low-wage worker organizing, living wages, community benefits agreements, and other issues. She currently serves on the boards of the National Priorities Project and Western States Center and holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Cornell University and a Master of Fine Arts from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University.