Supreme Court Theatre and Calling Up Justice
A Theatrical Reading and Community Conversation on Japanese Internment to ICE detention to deportation
April 19, 2025 | Equal Justice Theater on GatherTown + Livestreamed on YouTube
Calling Up Justice, in partnership with Supreme Court Theater, presented a moving and timely theatrical reading and panel conversation that traced a powerful throughline from Korematsu v. United States to Trump v. Hawaii, to the present-day cases of Mahmoud Khalil, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and others. Performed in a custom-built digital space—the Equal Justice Theater on GatherTown—and livestreamed to YouTube, this event was a hybrid masterpiece that blended technology, documentary theater, and civil rights education.
The Creative Direction & Performance
Under the creative direction of Claudia Alick and Becca Wolff, the piece was a reimagining and expansion of their earlier SCOTUS Theater script that had included work from Lisa Stern. Edited down with clarity and poetic rhythm for seven voices, the script was delivered by actors—many of whom were using this digital platform for the first time. With only three hours of rehearsal, the performances were astonishingly nuanced, capturing the emotional gravity and complexity of multiple characters and overlapping legal narratives. This docutheater blending legal language with poetic adaptation is a hallmark of Claudia Alick’s Poetry of the State work.
We are so grateful for the talent of the cast Vivis Columbetti, Raisa Donato, Grant Miller, Robert Parsons, Claudia Alick, Darryl V. Jones, Skyler Cooper. We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions: ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION, AMERICAN GUILD OF MUSICAL ARTISTS, AMERICAN GUILD OF VARIETY ARTISTS, SAG-AFTRA, through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the Artists to appear in this program.
The digital staging in GatherTown was immersive and interactive, offering a visual and spatial storytelling experience that mirrored the themes of historical precedent and repeated sin of the past. Meanwhile, Digital Producer Maiamama elevated the livestream broadcast with dynamic camera work and subtle sound design that enhanced the emotional impact. Keyanna Alexander was magnificiant at stage managing in multiple virtual spaces. A big thank-you to our moderators who held down the chat in both spaces, ensuring accessibility, safety, and community connection throughout the event.
Deeply Moving and Informative Panel
Following the reading, a panel of expert voices brought further depth to the discussion:
- Farida Chehata (Human Rights First) spoke to the legal landscape for asylum seekers.
- Suzette Malveaux (W&L Law) contextualized the civil rights implications across decades.
- Jeremiah Augustus Chin (W&L Law) offered powerful analysis through a Critical Race Theory lens.
- Mia F. Yamamoto brought lived experience as a civil rights activist and trial lawyer, making crucial connections between past internments and present-day state violence.
These conversations were as engaging and emotional as the play itself. Yamamoto is a transgender woman of Japanese American descent, born in the Poston War Relocation Center during World War II. Chehata gave us clarity about immigrant struggles today. Both Chin and Malveaux brought ideas about the legal fight for racial justice for indigenous and Black people. The audience had evocative questions that the panel responded to with clarity. Their responses were a multi-layered exploration of intersectionality, legal strategy, and resistance.
Watch the Panel here! https://ko-fi.com/s/e15ba6d543
Community Response
Audience members were visibly moved:
“Wow! That was an incredible performance! I love the way the different cases intertwined, overlapped, and came full circle.”
“My eyes are full of tears.”
“So many of us are on edge. But we gotta keep fighting. It’s our country too. Stronger together.”
Right Place, Right Time
This event could not have arrived at a more poignant moment. On the very day of the reading, thousands were protesting in the streets for immigrant rights, echoing the very themes explored on our virtual stage. This was documentary theater at its most urgent.
Support the Movement
This production was produced in partnership with named and anonymous supporters. Thank you to Golden Thread Productions, Great Leap, Crowded Fire, Z-Space, The History and Civics Project.
This performance was also a fundraiser for Calling Up Justice and a call to action to support individuals currently facing ICE detention and forced deportation, including:
Team Bios
Farida Chehata, Managing Attorney (Los Angeles)
Farida Chehata is the managing attorney of the Los Angeles office of Human Rights First where she oversees the pro bono legal representation of indigent asylum seekers. She provides support and guidance to volunteer attorneys in law firms located in Los Angeles, California, who represent asylum seekers at all levels of the immigration system.
Before joining Human Rights First, Farida was the Director of the Immigration Practice Group at Inland Counties Legal Services (ICLS), where she oversaw direct legal representation of survivors of domestic violence and other serious crimes. Prior to that, Farida founded the Immigrants’ Rights Center at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Greater Los Angeles Area (CAIR-LA) office. As Managing Attorney, she positioned CAIR-LA as a legal resource on immigration matters through varied publications, speaking events, and media interviews on issues impacting AMEMSA immigrants.
Farida has a dual degree in political science and economics from the University of California, Irvine. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and is admitted to practice law in California. She is fluent in Arabic.
Suzette Malveaux joined W&L Law in 2024 as the Roger D. Groot Professor of Law. She comes to W&L from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she was the Moses Lasky Professor of Law and Director of the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law. She has taught Civil Procedure, Complex Litigation, Employment Discrimination, Civil Rights and Constitutional Law for over two decades. Her scholarship explores the intersection of civil rights and civil procedure, as well as access to justice issues.
Professor Malveaux is a member of the American Law Institute and former Chair of the American Association of Law School’s Civil Procedure Section. Professor Malveaux’s recent honors include the 2025 Clyde Ferguson, Jr. Award from the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Minority Groups, the 2024 American Bar Foundation Outstanding Service Award, and the 2024 National Civil Justice Institute Scholarship award. She is co-editor of A GUIDE TO CIVIL PROCEDURE: INTEGRATING CRITICAL LEGAL PERSPECTIVES and co-author of CLASS ACTIONS AND OTHER MULTI-PARTY LITIGATION: CASES AND MATERIALS (2008, 2012). Her scholarship has been published in the Harvard Law Review Forum, George Washington Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Kansas Law Review, Boston College Law Review, and the Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law.
Professor Malveaux was a civil rights attorney and class action specialist prior to joining the academy. For six years, she served as pro bono counsel for victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in the lawsuit filed in the U.S. federal courts and international courts. She also represented the victims before the U.S. House of Representatives. Professor Malveaux represented over 1.5 million women alleging gender discrimination against Wal-Mart, the largest employment discrimination case to date. She also second-chaired oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in Green Tree Fin. Corp.-Ala. v. Randolph, 531 U.S. 79 (2000), involving compulsory, pre-dispute arbitration agreements.
Professor Malveaux graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University. She earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden Scholar, Associate Editor of the Law Review, and a Fellow in the Center for International Law.
Jeremiah Augustus Chin teaches Constitutional Law, Race and the Law, Federal Indian Law, and Civil Procedure. Their research emphasizes the connections between law and social science through Critical Race Theory, examining uses of social science data in Civil Rights and Federal Indian Law. Their recent publications focus on the intersections of race, law, and indigeneity; analyzing the school-prison pipeline, Cherokee Freedmen, and issues of Blackness, American Indians, and Citizenship.
They received their J.D. from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where they served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Journal for Social Justice, graduating with the Pro Bono Service Distinction. They also earned their Ph.D. in Justice Studies from Arizona State University. Their dissertation, “Marginalized Significance: Race, Science, and the Supreme Court,” analyzes the Supreme Court’s use of social science data in affirmative action and fair housing. After graduating, they served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Indian Education at Arizona State University. There, they co-founded the Critical Legal Preparation Program, dedicated to assisting underrepresented students succeed in law school through test-preparation, critical theory, and mindfulness. They taught undergraduate courses on Organized Crime, Introduction to Justice Studies, and Power and the Law.
Recently, they completed a book with Dr. Sabina Vaught and Dr. Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy called “The School-Prison Trust,” which discusses the social and historical locations of schools and prisons in relationship to colonization for Black and Native youth in the United States. They also completed the article “Antimatters: The Curious Case of Confederate Monuments,” applying physics as a metaphor for the status of confederate monuments—as statutes they are “matter” as government speech of the cities and localities in which they sit, yet the way states like Alabama have exempted Confederate monuments for historical preservation makes them government speech that municipalities are compelled to maintain, becoming “antimatter.”
Currently, their research focuses on the Constitutional Rights of Children, specifically the rights of marginalized youth under the First Amendment.
Mia F Yamamoto (born September 1943), is a Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney and civil rights activist. Yamamoto is a transgender woman of Japanese American descent, born in the Poston War Relocation Center during World War II. Yamamoto attended UCLA’s School of Law, where she co-founded the Asian Pacific Islander Law Student Association (APILSA). She married Kimberlee Tellez on September 2, 2015. Yamamoto was appointed to serve on the California Judicial Council Task Forces on Jury Improvement and on Fairness and Access in the Courts by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. Yamamoto served as President of the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice in 2001. Yamamoto is the recipient of the Rainbow Key Award by the City of West Hollywood, the Liberty Award by Lambda Legal, and the Harvey Milk Legacy Award by Christopher Street West/LA Pride. She has also been honored by API Equality and the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission for her advocacy on behalf of the LGBT community. She has received honors from the Criminal Courts Bar Association, National Lawyers Guild, and the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles.
