Tuesday, March 4, 2025
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Joukowsky Forum (155) 111 Thayer St.
Please RSVP for in-person attendance on the Events@Brown event listing or register here for the Zoom webinar.
About the Event
Join us in conversation with Catarina Lorenzo, Director of the RI-based organization Alliance to Mobilize our Resistance (AMOR); Liz Sweet, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA); and Deborah Gonzalez, Law Professor and Director of the Immigration Clinic at Roger Williams University. This conversation will be moderated by Daniel Rodriguez, Associate Professor of History at Brown University.
The panel will address the effects of recent policies on local immigrant communities as well as how immigrant rights organizations are working to protect the rights of immigrant families.
In English with Spanish translation provided by headset.
Free and open to the public. For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact clacs@brown.edu or (401)-863-2645
About the Speakers
Catarina Lorenzo is the Director of the Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR). Catarina is a Q’anjob’al-Maya woman from a small village in the mountains of Guatemala. She was the first person in her family, and one of the first from her village, to graduate from university. In Guatemala, Catarina worked for a number of human rights, women’s rights, indigenous rights, and social justice organizations. Since moving to Rhode Island, she has worked as a community organizer, and in June 2017, she began work as the director of AMOR. Catarina is also actively engaged in the large transnational community of Guatemalan migrants from her home region, producing and hosting a weekly radio program called ‘Rights in Action,’ which airs online and via FM in Guatemala.
Liz Sweet (she/her) is the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA’s) Executive Director, taking the position in January 2022. Sweet brings to MIRA an 18-year record of advocating for immigrants and refugees. For the past six years, she served in senior leadership roles at HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), most recently as its Chief Operating Officer. A graduate of Northeastern University School of Law, Sweet set out to defend immigrants and asylum seekers in immigration detention during their deportation hearings. She later became the first full-time Director of the American Bar Association Immigration Justice Project in San Diego and then the Associate Director of the American Bar Commission on Immigration in Washington, DC. For the past six years, she has also served as the Chair of the Board of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.
Deborah Gonzalez is an attorney in Rhode Island and practices primarily in Immigration Law. She currently holds the position of Clinical Professor of Law at Roger Williams University School of Law and is the director of its Immigration Clinic. She is also one of the founding partners of Gonzalez Law Offices, Inc., in East Providence. She is a 2007 graduate of Roger Williams University School of Law. Debbie has dedicated her career to helping immigrants in Rhode Island obtain lawful status in the U.S. and/or to help fight against deportation.
About the Series
Responding to the recent rise in xenophobia and President Trump’s promises of mass deportation, this series looks at the history of U.S. immigration policy, its effects on migrant communities, and the work of local community organizations and advocates to protect immigrant families.