ICYMI: Seeds of Justice Award Recordings Available Now
This year, 2022, marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Collaboration for Justice of Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers. To begin our 25th anniversary celebration, we hosted Seeds of Justice – our annual pro bono acknowledgement event – on Tuesday, June 21, which honored Sharone Mitchell, Jr., the Public Defender of Cook County, and featured a keynote presentation by Joe Ferguson, former Inspector General for the City of Chicago.
If you missed the event on June 21, you can find the recordings below and at CollaborationForJustice.org.
Seeds of Justice Award Acceptance Speech
SHARONE MITCHELL, JR.
Cook County Public Defender
Sharone Mitchell, Jr. is a passionate advocate for the rights of everyone represented by the Public Defender—one of the largest unified public defense offices in the nation. Before being sworn into office on April 1, 2021, Mr. Mitchell was the Director of the Illinois Justice Project (ILJP), where he worked to reduce inappropriate incarceration, improve community safety outcomes, and reduce recidivism since 2016. During his tenure at ILJP, Mr. Mitchell helped lead the Coalition to End Money Bond’s successful effort to outlaw wealth-based pretrial incarceration in Illinois; worked with the Building a Safe Chicago Coalition and others to convince state leaders to direct 25 percent of cannabis tax revenues towards treating the root causes of harm in objectively identified areas of the state; and fought against proposals to make sentencing in Illinois more barbaric and ineffective. Mr. Mitchell is a lifelong resident of Chicago, graduating from Morgan Park High School; he has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a law degree from DePaul University College of Law. Mr. Mitchell is on the board of Chicago Debates, St. Leonard’s Ministries, Live Free Chicago, and before becoming the Cook County Public Defender, served on the Board of Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts.
Keynote Presentation
JOE FERGUSON
Former Inspector General for the City of Chicago and Co-Founder & Co-Director of Loyola University Chicago Law School’s National Security and Civil Rights Program
Joe Ferguson recently concluded a 12-year tenure as the Inspector General for the City of Chicago. Under his stewardship, the OIG garnered national prominence for its government audits and inspections; creation of a public, user-friendly data visualization platform; and administrative and criminal investigations, including around CPD’s actions after the police murder of teenager Laquan McDonald. Prior to being the Inspector General, Mr. Ferguson spent 15 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois; was an associate at Sidley Austin handling anti-trust, commercial litigation, and pro bono death penalty cases; and taught at several law schools, colleges, and in various roles for the U.S. Justice Department. Joe Ferguson is the co-founder and co-director of Loyola University Chicago Law School’s National Security and Civil Rights program and is a 2022 Pritzker Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. He received his BA (and honorary Doctor of Laws) from Lake Forest College and JD from Northwestern University. His decades-long commitment to Chicago has yet to compromise his ardor for the professional sports teams from his native Boston.
We could not do this work without the generosity of our dedicated donors and pro bono volunteers. We hope you will take what Mr. Ferguson said to heart and contribute to our mission to interrupt cycles of poverty, mass incarceration, and racial injustice perpetrated by all aspects of the legal system:
“Our ultimate civic duty is to engage unsolvable problems…The Council and Appleseed and all of us who draw inspiration and a platform for engagement from it have a responsibility to acknowledge our uncertainty, engage the impossible, and check ourselves on the inevitable catalysts of our baser primal impulse…Our way through what is a true democracy moment will be found only in connection, community, communication and collaboration.”