MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

Isela Gutiérrez

In this episode Thomas Thurston spoke with Isela Gutiérrez, the Associate Research Director for Democracy North Carolina and a speaker on the Gilder Lehrman Center’s “Right to Vote” panel discussion, about her organization’s work to protect the citizens of North Carolina against legislative actions and court decisions designed to abridge the right to vote, and what those struggles portend regarding the struggle to protect voting rights nationally.

Isela got her start in social justice work as a student activist in 1997 and has been hooked ever since. She has over a decade of experience in advocacy-oriented nonprofits, beginning with her first job at the ACLU of Washington State in Seattle. Most recently before moving to North Carolina, Isela worked as an advocate for statewide juvenile justice policy reform at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition in Austin and to promote local drug policy reform at the Defender Association’s Racial Disparity Project in Seattle. She has a BA in History from Scripps College and a MSW from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Isela’s Recommended Resources:

  1. Brennan Center for Justice - https://www.brennancenter.org/
  2. Lawyers for Civil Rights Under Law - https://lawyerscommittee.org/
  3. Democracy North Carolina - http://nc-democracy.org/
  4. Southern Coalition for Social Justice - http://www.southerncoalition.org/

You can email comments and suggestions to gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu with subject line “podcast”

“Slavery and Its Legacies” is available on iTunes University and SoundCloud