Still I Rise (2020) explores the relationship between racism and sex trafficking, following the lives of advocates Leah Albright-Byrd and Holly Joshi and their pioneering work in the Bay Area. Featuring vignettes with AAPF Executive Director Kimberlé Crenshaw, Gabrielle Union, Viola Davis, Alicia Keys, Angela Davis, and others, the powerful documentary underscores the crucial lesson that ignoring the relationship between racism and sex trafficking perpetuates the crime. On Friday, April 2nd, join us for a screening of Still I Rise, followed by a talkback with AAPF Executive Director Kimberlé Crenshaw, filmmaker Sheri Shuster, and documentary subjects Holly Joshi and Leah Albright-Byrd, discussing the lessons from their work that we should carry with us in our fight for all Black women.

Film Screening: 12:00 p.m. PDT (3:00 p.m. EDT)

Talkback: 2:00 p.m. PDT (5:00 p.m. EDT)

Sheri Shuster is a documentary film director and producer interested in advancing intersectional and moral conversations about race and power. An Iranian-American and L.A. native, her commitment to human rights drew her into the world of public policy and storytelling. For over fifteen years Sheri worked with nonprofits and elected officials as a communications and fund development director, including former U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos, and The Center for Women and Democracy. From 2008-2012 she served as Associate Director at Covenant House California (CHC) advocating for homeless and sex trafficked youth. The extraordinary resilient young people at CHC in Oakland inspired Still I Rise. The film has been supported by the Berkeley Film Foundation, Jamel Perkins, the Harnisch Foundation, Elizabeth Rosner, PricewaterhouseCoopers Charitable Foundation, and Emmy award winning producer Layda Negrete. Sheri is an alumnus of U.C.L.A. and the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University Of Washington. Sheri is thrilled to be in partnership with Holly Joshi on her newest venture, All In for Justice.

Holly Joshi has been a committed community servant for two decades and a leader in the anti-trafficking and gender-based violence movement for over a decade. She currently works as a senior research consultant with Bright Research Group and with communities across the country developing anti-trafficking prevention and intervention strategies as a national training consultant. She served as the Executive Director at MISSSEY (Motivating, Inspiring, Supporting, and Serving Sexually Exploited Youth), a youth serving non-profit dedicated to providing direct services and advocacy for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation. In addition, she spent 14 years working in the Oakland Police Department where she served as a child abuse and human trafficking investigator, undercover vice officer, and as the supervisor of the Child Exploitation and Trafficking Unit. In this capacity, she investigated hundreds of cases involving child abuse, intimate partner violence, and commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking, interviewed hundreds of survivors and perpetrators, and posed in an undercover capacity extensively during trafficking investigations. Holly is a court-qualified expert in commercial sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, pimping, and pandering.

Holly was an invited member of Vice President (then California Attorney) General Kamala Harris’ Task Force on Human Trafficking and Task Force on 21st Century Policing and served on the City of Oakland’s CSEC Task Force and Alameda County’s Trafficking Task Force. She has been an invited speaker at the University of California-Berkeley, Stanford University, Golden Gate School of Law, California State East Bay, and the University of San Francisco. Holly holds a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice from California State University East Bay, a master’s degree in Leadership for Social Justice from St. Mary’s College of California and is currently a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership at St. Mary’s College of California. Her work and advocacy have been featured in national media including Essence Magazine, MSNBC, and Anderson Cooper.

Leah-Albright Byrd is a compelling speaker, author, and social-entrepreneur. She is best known for her gift of storytelling and her ability to galvanize others to invoke community transformation. She is committed to leading from the heart with authenticity and is a champion for social justice. In 2011, she founded and directed an organization known as Bridget’s Dream, a nonprofit that provided an array of services to child and adult survivors of human trafficking. While leading that effort, Leah became a national and international advocate for the cause, promoted legislative change, and appeared on various media outlets to promote public awareness. She eventually received congressional honor for her activism and was featured in two documentaries: Still I Rise and California’s Forgotten Children.

Her experience as an activist fueled a desire for new ways to inspire and impact the world for the greater good so she broadened her focus to include authorship and a commitment to the support and development of executive leaders serving vulnerable communities. In 2016 she published her first book Determined to Dream and in 2020 she was appointed as the Executive Director of Health Movement, Inc., an organization that prepares senior leaders of charitable organizations for transformational impact. In Leah’s free time, she is a coffee connoisseur, plays the guitar, loves hot yoga, and sings on the praise team at her church. Though she is a California-native she considers herself a born-again Texan and resides in Dallas with her sweet dog Charlie Rose.

Moderator:

Kimberlé Crenshaw is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum, the host of the podcast Intersectionality Matters!, the moderator of the webinar series Under The Blacklight, and a Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School. She is popularly known for projects that she has named, such as “intersectionality,” “critical race theory,” and the #SayHerName Campaign, and is a leading authority on Civil Rights, Black feminist legal theory, race, racism, and the law. In early 2021, she received the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of American Law Schools.

**** Registration for this conversation is through Eventbrite. All interested attendees will receive a link to the live-stream on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded. ****

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Her Dream Deferred

Her Dream Deferred: A Week on the Status of Black Women is a week-long series of conversations and virtual events focused on elevating the crisis facing Black women and girls in our country. Black women, girls, and femmes have continually been on the front lines of progressive social movements, yet the challenges they face at the intersections of race and gender have consistently been relegated to the margins of dominant racial and gender justice discourses. Since its inception, the annual Her Dream Deferred week has countered that marginalization by amplifying the voices and narratives of Black women and girls and providing the tools to dismantle the structural barriers that plague them in their homes, schools, and communities.

To learn more, please visit: www.aapf.org/hdd

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please join AAPF for other events during #HerDreamDeferred 2021:

Monday, March 29th: When Misogynoir is a Pre-existing Condition

Tuesday, March 30th: Engendering the Politics. of Black Athletes

Wednesday, March 31st: Mini Film Festival (Day 1): Coded Bias

Thursday, April 1st: Mini Film Festival (Day 2): A Love Song for Latasha

Friday, April 2nd: Mini Film Festival (Day 3): Still I Rise

Tuesday, April 6th: A Space for Ritual Healing