Transitional Justice in the USA Speakers Series: Part III Panel 2

Panel 2: How can the U.S. build a transitional justice process that reckons with corporate complicity in and perpetuation of racial injustice and violence? As is true in other nations, efforts in the United States to push for racial reckoning rarely focus on the role of the private sector despite the role of companies in historical episodes of racial exploitation and atrocity, which left a legacy that continues to benefit corporations today. This panel explores this theme by discussing how private industry in the U.S. was built on the labor of enslaved Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, which today continues through mass incarceration and prison labor which often amounts to forced labor. The speakers will examine how this contemporary problem arises out of a failure to recognize and interrogate the role played by the private sector to perpetuate racial exploitation and atrocity dating back to the founding of the nation and its economic model. Speakers will offer comparative and recent international efforts to implement robust transitional justice mechanisms to include economic actors complicit in human rights violations to explore the role businesses must play in the U.S. process, including strategies to hold corporations accountable. Co-organizers: Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law | Boston, The Corporate Accountability Lab and the Tanner Humanities Center at The University of Utah. MODERATOR: Avery Kelly-Staff Attorney at Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) PANELISTS: Tatiana Devia-Staff Attorney at Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) where she leads CAL's Transitional Justice work Daniel Rosen-writer and justice reform advocate who was incarcerated in both Virginia and Washington, D.C. from 2015 to 2021. Prior to incarceration, Daniel spent almost twenty years in public service, in both the non-profit and governmental sectors. Anita Sinha-Associate Professor of Law and the Director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic (IHRLC) Lydia Wright-Associate Director of Civil Litigation at the Promise of Justice Initiative