Geri Palast

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Geri Palast is the Managing Director of the Israel Action Network (IAN). IAN is the joint initiative of The Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs to counter the assault on Israel's legitimacy, change the conversation about Israel and work towards the two state solution. She has extensive experience organizing and leading broad-based national grassroots political, legislative and issue campaigns. She has taught at universities, and she is an attorney.

She is the sister of investigative journalist Greg Palast.[1]

Early life, education, and family

Palast is a graduate of Stanford University with honors, and graduated as a Root Tilden scholar from NYU Law School. She is a member of the California and Washington DC Bars. She received a certificate in Non-Proft Management from Georgetown University.

Career

Prior to her role with the Israel Action Network (IAN), Palast was the executive director for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE), and a Root-Tilden Public Service Law Scholar from NYU School of Law.[2] She co-chaired the nine-year national campaign to enact the Family Medical Leave Act. She led the campaign to enact landmark legislation to implement constitutional litigation on school finance reform in New York state to ensure that all public school students receive adequate resources for a sound basic education, CFE v. State. From 1993-2000,she served as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs during the Clinton Administration. Previously, she served as the national Legislative and Political Director of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Executive Director of both the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) and the Justice at Stake Campaign, and established and ran the Washington office of the National Employment Law Project(NELP). She has consulted with and served on numerous boards of NGOs,currently the National Institute on Money in State Politics and CFE.

Campaign for Fiscal Equity

The CFE is a not-for-profit advocacy organization seeking to protect and promote the constitutional right to a sound basic education for all public school students in the State of New York. During her tenure, CFE won the landmark lawsuit that challenged New York's school finance system. The organization now oversees implementation of the laws and reforms that resulted from the case, ensuring the right to a sound basic public education for children in New York State. In 1995 the Court of Appeals held that the State Constitution requires the state to provide all necessary resources to achieve these results.

See also

References

  1. ↑ San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, December 7, 2007: '(Greg)Palast says his desire to expose class-warfare stories is rooted in his upbringing in the "ass-end of Los Angeles," a neighborhood wedged between a power plant and a dump. Kids in the neighborhood had two choices, he said: go to Vietnam or work in the auto plant. "We were the losers," he said. He was saved from the war by a favorable draft number. "A lot of people didn't make it out. Because I made it out, and my sister (Geri, a former Clinton administration assistant secretary of labor) made it out, I feel I have this obligation to tell these stories on behalf of all of those people who didn't make it out."
  2. ↑ Geri Palast Archived June 29, 2007 at the Wayback Machine


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