Cville Dems

Legal journalist/podcaster Dahlia Lithwick, one of Charlottesville’s very favorite ex-residents, returns “home” Thursday evening, September 22 at 6:45pm to PVCC’s beautiful Dickinson Auditorium to talk about her new book, Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America. She’ll be in conversation with Amy Woolard, Chief Program Officer for the ACLU of Virginia, with audience Q&A to follow. This special Cville Dems-organized event is free and open to all, no reservations required.

You’ve very likely seen her on MSNBC and CNN, listened to her influential “Amicus” podcast, read her columns in Slate and New York Times… now come out and see her in person!

Lady Justice profiles the women lawyers who worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic and malign presidency in living memory. There was Roberta Kaplan, the famed commercial litigator, who sued the neo-Nazis for their 2017 “Unite the Right” violence here. And Sally Yates, the acting attorney general of the United States, who refused to sign off on the Muslim travel ban. And Becca Heller, the founder of a refugee assistance program who brought the fight over the travel ban to the airports. And, of course, Stacey Abrams, whose efforts to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians may well have been what won the Senate for the Democrats in 2020.

We’ll have copies of her book available for sale at the event: please buy a copy to support Dahlia. It will make a great holiday gift for anyone, but especially for that idealistic daughter, granddaughter, or niece of yours!

We’ll also be giving a shout-out at the event to the local nonprofits who are doing the good work locally in some of the areas covered by her book: Protection of Immigrants and Refugees (IRC and International Neighbors and Sin Barreras), Sexual Assault and Harassment (S.A.R.A.), Women’s Rights (Charlottesville ​​NOW), Abortion and Reproductive Rights (Blue Ridge Abortion Fund and Planned Parenthood), and Racial Justice and Voting Rights (NAACP, Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, League of Women Voters, and Virginia Organizing). [Note: these groups are neither affiliated with the Democratic Party nor necessarily endorse our policy positions.]

Dahlia will be “in conversation” with Amy Woolard, a writer and attorney who’s lived and worked in Charlottesville for over 30 years, much of that time working on civil rights policy and legislation. Amy is now Chief Program Officer for the ACLU of Virginia and previously was Director of Policy for the Legal Aid Justice Center. Her poems and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

Bio: Dahlia Lithwick is the senior legal correspondent at Slate and host of Amicus, Slate’s award-winning biweekly podcast about the law.  Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Commentary, among other places. Lithwick won a 2013 National Magazine Award for her columns on the Affordable Care Act. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October, 2018.