Fighting for System-Impacted People

Dorsey Nunn, former executive director for Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and cofounder of All of Us or None, began advocating for the rights of California prisoners and their families while incarcerated. He has experienced and witnessed firsthand how completing a Pr*son sentence does not guarantee the end of restrictions to freedom, especially for people of color and low-wage workers. Nunn has manifested the weight of these injustices into decades of advocacy for people during and after incarceration, as well as their families. His new memoir, share his remarkable, meteoric story.

In this panel discusison, Nunn is joined by former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who now serves as executive director of UC Berkeley's Law & Justice Center, and Azadeh Zohrabi, executive director of UC Berkeley's Underground Scholars Program. Together, they'll discuss Nunn's journey as a leading organizer for prisoners' rights and consider the landscape of today's fight for the rights and equitable reentry of currently and formerly incarcerated people.

Nunn's book will be available for sale by Marcus Books at the event, with a book signing to follow the conversation and audience Q&A. The event will be hosted by the East Bay Community Law Center in their outdoor courtyard.

About the speakers:

Dorsey Nunn is the former executive director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), and in 2003 cofounded All of Us or None (AOUON), a grassroots movement of formerly incarcerated people working on their own behalf to secure their civil and human rights. AOUON is now the policy and advocacy arm of LSPC, which Nunn led as executive director since 2011 until his retirement in 2024. Collective victories include ending indefinite solitary confinement in California, expanding access to housing and employment for formerly incarcerated people, and restoring the vote to those on parole and probation. He is the author, with Lee Romney, of What Kind of Bird Can't Fly: A Memoir of Resilience and Resurrection, featuring a foreword from Michelle Alexander.

Chesa Boudin is the founding executive director of Berkeley’s Criminal Law & Justice Center. He served as San Francisco’s elected district attorney from 2020 until his recall in 2022. During that time, Boudin implemented bold reforms to ensure that the criminal legal system delivered safety and justice for all San Franciscans. His achievements include a significant expansion of the office’s victim services’ division; eliminating prosecutors’ use of money bail; prosecuting police for excessive force; suing the manufacturers of ghost guns; expanding diversion to address root causes of crime; and a historic reduction in incarceration. During his time in office both violent and non-violent crime fell by double digits. Prior to his election Boudin clerked for two federal judges and worked for years as a deputy public defender in San Francisco. He is a graduate of Yale college and Yale law school and attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. His biological parents spent a combined 62 years in Pr*son starting when he was a baby.

Azadeh Zohrabi is Executive Director of the Underground Scholars Program at UC Berkeley. In this role, she supports incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students with accessing higher education in the University of California system, supports other universities in developing programs to serve criminal justice impacted students, and leads the Underground Scholars Policy Fellowship teaching students to develop and advance innovative policy solutions in California based on their lived experiences. Azadeh also provides consulting services for organizations whose work is aligned with her values and coaching for emerging leaders.

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