 Angel F. Gonzalez Irizarry
Vice Chair for Commission of Latino Affairs, State of Iowa
Angel González Irizarry was appointed to the Iowa Commission for Latino Affairs by Governor Tom Vilsack and is now serving his second term after re-appointment by Governor Chet Culver. He was elected Vice-chair by his fellow commissioners in September of 2007.
Angel earned a B.S. in Labor Studies and Industrial Relations from the Pennsylvania State University, and a JD from the University of Puerto Rico.
He currently works as a Labor Educator at the University of Iowa Labor Center where he is a member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 716.
Before coming to Iowa, Angel worked as an International Representative with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union participating in many public and private sector organizing campaigns in the mainland United States and Puerto Rico. He assisted in a successful AFL-CIO effort to obtain public sector collective bargaining rights for Puerto Rican public employees in 1998, helping thousands of workers to join the ranks of organized labor.
Angel served honorably in the U.S. Army Reserve and the U.S. Navy from 1985 through 1993.
 Dr. Juan Andrade Jr.
President of US Hispanic Leadership Institute
Present:
He is a Presidential Medal recipient, honored for “the performance of exemplary deeds of service for the nation”. The Medal was presented by President Bill Clinton for extraordinary accomplishments in promoting civic participation and leadership development.
He has earned five college degrees: a B.A. from Howard Payne University, a M.Ed. from Antioch College, an Ed.S. and Doctorate from Northern Illinois University, and a post-doctorate M.A. from Loyola University Chicago. He has been recognized for distinction by Howard Payne University, Northern Illinois University, and Loyola University. He has also received four honorary degrees.
He is President of the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute: The Institute has trained over 200,000 present & future leaders, registered over two million new voters, published 425 studies on Hispanic demographics since 1982. USHLI sponsors the largest Latino leadership conference in the nation.
He is presently on a Leave of Absence as a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, the only national leader writing a regular weekly column in a major publication.
Past:
He was a political commentator on ABC-7 television for six years in Chicago, and WGN radio; the only Latino commentator in the nation appearing on English language radio or television;
He has worked and participated in the democratization of Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and Haiti;
He has been recognized three times as one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in America;
He was inducted into the “Society of Life Models” by OMNI Youth Services for the impact of his work in promoting education and leadership development for high school and college students;
Originally from Brownwood, Texas, he has received numerous awards for distinguished service and lifetime achievement.
 Dr. Benjamin Chavis
Co-Chairman, Hip-Hop Summit Action Network
When Russell Simmons established the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN)to empower the Hip-Hop community to utilize their commanding cultural influence for freedom, justice and equality, he needed someone with a strong mind and commitment to youth, national civil rights experience, political skills, vast spiritual knowledge and an adept human touch to head up the organization. That man was Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, also known as Minister Benjamin Muhammad, who had already proved his mettle by organizing the historic New York Hip-Hop Summit in 2001. That two-day event--“an unprecedented meeting,” according to the Los Angeles Times—found Chavis and Simmons guiding industry hip-hop leaders, artists, and civil rights and political organizations towards an agreement on a series of initiatives and commitments that will affect the artistic and social landscape of American society and the global community, as a whole. One month later, the HSAN was born and Dr. Chavis was named President and CEO.
Chavis comes to the HSAN with a professional history of solid principles, demonstrated courage and immense diversity. A native of Oxford, North Carolina, he holds a number of prestigious degrees: He received a Bachelorof Arts in Chemistry from University of North Carolina; a Master of Divinity, M.Div., magna cum laude, from Duke University; a Doctor of Ministry, D.Min., from Howard University; and completed course requirements for a Doctor of Philosophy, PhD, from Union Theological Seminary.
Dr Benjamin Chavis began his career in 1965, as a statewide youth coordinator in NC for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1969, Chavis was appointed Southern Regional Program Director of the 1.7million member United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice(UCC-CRJ) and by 1985 was named the Executive Director and CEO of the UCC-CRJ. In 1988, Dr. Chavis was elected Vice President of the National Council of Churches of the USA. Then in 1993, Dr. Chavis achieved what no other before him had achieved. He became the youngest person ever to be the Executive Director and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
In 1995, as National Director of the Million Man March, Dr. Chavis looked straight in the face of the skeptics, and despite tremendous controversy, pulled off arguably one of the largest, most vocal, most effective gatherings of our time. To accomplish that coup, Chavis drew on many years of experience. No stranger to the civil rights struggle, Benjamin Chavis and nine others in 1978 were officially classified “American political prisoners” by Amnesty International as members of the Wilmington, NC Ten. Although Chavis and his teenage codefendants were unjustly imprisoned in NC for most of the 1970’s because of their challenge to racial segregation in the Wilmington public school system, the Wilmington Ten emerged victorious after nearly a ten year international political and legal battle when the 4th Circuit US Court of Appeals overturned their convictions and cleared their names. While in prison, Dr Chavis authored two books: An American Political Prisoner Appeals for Human Rights and Psalms from Prison.
Because of Dr. Chavis’ scientific background, in 1981, he was the first person to coin the term environmental racism: “Racial discrimination in the deliberated targeting of ethnic and minority communities for exposure to toxic and hazardous waste sites and facilities, coupled with the systematic exclusion of minorities in environmental policy making, enforcement, and remediation.” To prove the validity of his definition, Chavis in 1986 conducted and published the landmark national study: Toxic Waste and Race in the United States of America, that statistically revealed the direct correlation between race and the location of toxic waste throughout the United States. Benjamin Chavis is considered by many environmental grassroots activists to be the “father of the post-modern environmental justice movement” that has steadily grown throughout the nation and world since the early 1980’s.
Along the way, Dr. Chavis evolved into a serious journalist and commentator through his nationally syndicated newspaper column and radio program, “Civil Rights Journal” from 1985 to 1993.
On the career track, Chavis became Executive Director and CEO of the National African American Leadership Summit (NAALS) from 1995 to 1997, and was then appointed East Coast Regional Minister of the Nation of Islam and Minister of the historic Mosque Number Seven in Harlem, New York. Subsequently, he was also named as Special Assistant to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, a position he still maintains today.
The journey into the Hip-Hop culture actually had its roots for Chavis dating back to 1969 when he was the proprietor and regular “DJ” and “MC” for The Soul Kitchen Disco in his hometown of Oxford, NC. In the 1970’s, Chavis envisioned that there was a direct connection between the urban underground music and the post-civil rights era. During the1980’s, Chavis witnessed the growing popularity of hip-hop with disenfranchised youth entrapped into urban poverty. While serving as a mentor to Sister Souljah, Kevin Powell, Little Rob, Ras Baraka and other hip-hop activists, Chavis met Russell Simmons and Lyor Cohen in 1986 at Def Jam Records. As head of the NAACP in 1993, he worked with Run DMC to mobilize youth voters. Thus, it made perfect sense when hip-hop’s premier video director, Hype Williams, cast Chavis in the pivotal role as the “Minister” in the 1998 movie “BELLY,” which starred superstar hip-hop artists Nas ,Method Man and DMX.
When Dr. Chavis organized both the Million Man and Million Family Marches in 1995 and2000 respectively, Russell Simmons worked with him to mobilize hip-hop leaders to support the marches. Ultimately, the two men realized they had a similar vision for this generation of hip-hop youth, and to that end, they created the first national Hip-Hop Summit in New York City, from which grew the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN).
One-and-a-half years later, the HSAN is the largest and broadest national coalition of hip-hop artists, recording industry executives, youth activists and civil rights leaders. With the support of the major hip-hop labels, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and others, the HSAN has sponsored successful Hip-Hop Summits in New York, Kansas City, Oakland, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Miami, Seattle and Dallas.
But HSAN does not stop there: meetings with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), vocal stands before the U.S. Congress on the unconstitutionality of censoring rap lyrics, the development of literacy programs, Youth Councils, voter registration drives in conjunction with Rap The Vote, the voice for the poor, and the fight for children’s public education, fill Chavis’ days(and nights). Just last June, he and the HSAN joined the United Federation of Teachers and the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE)to organize the largest public demonstration since New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office. The Washington Post reported, “Hip-hop's brightest stars, from P. Diddy to Jay-Z to Alicia Keys, lent a little star power today to a demonstration by roughly 100,000 students, teachers and rap fans who crammed eight blocks outside City Hall to protest drastic school budget cuts proposed by the new mayor.” Recently, Chavis joined “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon, actor Bruce Willis and Russell Simmons to demand adequate funding for education across the state of New York.
Dr Chavis is married and the father of eight children.
The Hip-Hop Summit Action Network has benefited greatly from the leadership of Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. And the feeling is mutual: “The hip-hop generation is the most talented and socially conscious generation of youth that has ever emerged on the world stage to demand respect and justice for all,” he said.
 Dr. Adrien Wing
Professor of Law, University of Iowa
Professor Wing is the Bessie Dutton Murray Professor at the University of Iowa College of Law. Additionally, she is the Associate Dean for Faculty Development as well as the Director of the Summer abroad program in Arcachon, France.
After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton with high honors in 1978, Professor Wing earned her Master of Arts degree in African studies from UCLA in 1979. She obtained her Doctorate of Jurisprudence degree in 1982 from Stanford Law School, and was awarded the Stanford African Student Association Prize. While in law school, she served as an editor of the Stanford Journal of International Law, as an intern with the United Nations Council on Namibia, and as Southern Africa Task Force Director of the National Black Law Students Association.
Prior to joining the College of Law faculty in 1987, Professor Wing spent five years in practice in New York City with Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle and with Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, specializing in international law issues regarding Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. She also served as a representative to the United Nations for the National Conference of Black Lawyers.
Professor Wing presently teaches International Human Rights, and Law in the Muslim World. She has taught US Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory, Comparative Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, Race, Racism & American Law, Law in Radically Different Cultures, and the International and Domestic Legal Aspects of AIDS. She is, in addition, a member of The University of Iowa's interdisciplinary African Studies faculty. During fall 2002, she was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
Author of more than 90 publications, Wing is the editor of Critical Race Feminism -- A Reader (New York University Press, 2d edition 2003) and Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader (New York University Press 2000). Her US-oriented scholarship has focused on race and gender discrimination, including topics such as the impact of Hurricane Katrina, gangs, mothering, affirmative action, the war on terrorism, and polygamy in Black America. Her international scholarship has emphasized two regions: Africa, especially South Africa; and the Middle East, in particular the Palestinian legal system. Constitutionalism, women’s rights, rape in Bosnia, Muslim headscarves in France, and Turkish secularism are among the topics of recent articles.
Professor Wing has advised the founding fathers and mothers of three constitutions: South Africa, Palestine, and Rwanda. She organized an election-observer delegation to South Africa, and taught at the University of Western Cape for six summers. She also advised the Eritrean Ministry of Justice on human rights treaties.
An accomplished public speaker, Wing has lectured all over the world, including most recently New Zealand and Australia. Having studied French, Portuguese, and Swahili, she served on delegations to many nations including Angola, Cuba, Egypt, Grenada, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Palestine, Panama, Sudan, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. She has conducted additional research in China, France, Hong Kong, Brazil and London.
Further, Wing has received numerous honors, and held leadership positions in various organizations including the American Society of International Law. Additionally, she has served as Chair of the International Section of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, as a member of the TransAfrica Forum Scholars Council, and on the Board of Directors of the Iowa Peace Institute and the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, as well as the Stanford Law School Board of Visitors. Iowa Governor Vilsack appointed Professor Wing to the Commission on the African American Prison Population in 1999. She was the Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Minority Section in 2002. She currently serves on the Board of the U.S. Association of Constitutional Law and is on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of Comparative Law as well.
She is a life member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations and a law school inspector for the American Bar Association. Professor Wing is a member of the New York Bar.
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