Jean Phillips will visit us on Wednesday, May 29 to discuss her work with Project for Innocence (http://law.ku.edu/project-innocence). Jean is the director of the Paul E. Wilson Project for Innocence at the University of Kansas Law School as well as a Clinical Professor of Law.

 

The Project for Innocence was founded at KU in 1965 to "help prisoners who otherwise might not receive legal representation. Students represent state and federal prisoners in appellate and post-conviction litigation in state and federal courts. Since 2009, students in the Project have won at least 28 conviction reversals. The project gets more than 200 letters a year from inmates seeking assistance."

 

Studies estimate that between 2% and 7% of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent and that 1 in 25 death row inmates is innocent. For context, if just 1% of all prisoners are innocent, that would mean that more than 20,000 innocent people are in prison. Some of the goals of The Innocence Project are to exonerate the innocent through DNA testing and to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.

 

More information about the Midwest Innocence Project: https://themip.org/

Steve Hale, Partnership Specialist with the U.S. Census Bureau, will join us to discuss how to get involved with the Census.

Steve's role with the Kansas 2020 Census is to plan and coordinate partnership agreements in addition to addressing questions and concerns. He also establishes partnership agreements between federal, state, and local governments as well as between local businesses and community groups in order to increase accuracy and support of the Census. 

 

The CSA for this season (22 weeks long) starts this week. If you join, you get a variety of vegetables once per week. Pick up of vegetables every week is at one of the four locations/times (see attached flyer) that works best for you. Each week's delivery is big enough for 4-5 people and includes staples like root veggies and greens but then has some unique vegetables (with recipes) that are native to the refugees home countries too. The total cost for the season is $462. You can read a bit more about the CSA and sign up here: https://newrootsforrefugees.org/csa/

Deadline to RSVP is Friday, June 14