Mirroing bio of Shanta Driver (Felarca’s boss) below:
Shanta Driver earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and social relations from Harvard University in 1975, and a J.D. from Wayne State University Law School in 2002. She is currently an attorney at Scheff, Washington & Driver, a Detroit-based civil-rights and labor law firm.
Reasoning from the premise that America is a profoundly racist nation, Driver passionately supports affirmative action as a necessary safeguard against discrimination targeting nonwhites in the workplace and academia. In 2008 she told an interviewer on National Public Radio that it was the “aim and intent” of Ward Connerly, the former University of California Regent who had led the fight to eliminate public-sector racial preferences in several states, to “resegregate higher education” by “driv[ing] black and Latino students ... off of campuses across this country.”
Driver is the national chair for the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights; the founder and national chair of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN); and the national director of BAMN’s nonprofit affiliate, the United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund. She was instrumental in organizing a 50,000-person “March on Washington to Defend Affirmative Action,” which took place on April 1, 2003. In addition, Driver was the legal architect of a student intervention into Grutter v. Bollinger, the University of Michigan Law School affirmative-action case where the Supreme Court ruled, in June 2003, that while hard, race-based quotas were impermissible, the “use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body” was a legitimate practice.
More recently, Driver headed up the legal team challenging the constitutionality of state bans on affirmative action in Michigan (BAMN v. Granholm, 2007) and California (BAMN v. Schwarzenegger, 2010).
Also under Driver’s leadership, BAMN helped organize the massive wave of immigrant-rights rallies that swept across the United States in the spring of 2006.
In 2011, Driver’s law firm filed a suit that was successful in striking down the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative of 2006 (a.k.a. Proposal 2), which had banned the use of race and gender preferences in college admissions and in government hiring and contracting.
Since the mid-1990s, Driver has been a guest speaker—chiefly on the subject of affirmative action—at hundreds of colleges and universities nationwide. She also has addressed scores of civil-rights, professional, religious, political, and governmental organizations, including the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the National Alliance of Black School Educators, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the NAACP National Convention, the Tavis Smiley Foundation Youth2Leaders Conference, the National Bar Association, the American Sociological Association, Americans for Democratic Action, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the National Organization for Women, and the Society of American Law Teachers.
Among the numerous awards Driver has received during her career as an activist are the American Association for Affirmative Action Rosa Parks Award, the Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth Humanitarian Award, the National Society of Black Engineers “Fulfilling the Vision of Tomorrow” Award, and the National Lawyers Guild-Detroit Unsung Hero Award.
Shanta Driver Bio 2
Shanta Driver has been organizing for civil rights for over 35 years. She graduated in Psychology and Social Relations from Harvard in 1975, and graduated from Wayne State University Law School in 2002. Ms. Driver is currently an attorney at Scheff, Washington & Driver, a leading Detroit civil rights and labor law firm.
Ms. Driver is the National Chair for the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) and the National Director of BAMN’s non-profit affiliate, United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund (UEAALDF).
Ms. Driver was the legal architect of the successful student intervention into Grutter v Bollinger, the University of Michigan Law School affirmative action case in which affirmative action was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003. BAMN spearheaded the 50,000-person March on Washington to Defend Affirmative Action and Save Brown v Board of Education on April 1, 2003, which played a key role in the Grutter victory. Ms. Driver is now heading up the legal team challenging the constitutionality of state bans on affirmative action in BAMN v. Granholm and BAMN v. Schwarzenegger. . BAMN and UEAALDF also successfully intervened in a lawsuit which upheld the voluntary desegregation program in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2007.
Under Ms. Driver’s dynamic leadership, BAMN has also become a leader of the movement for immigrant rights that burst into the streets in the Spring of 2006 with student walkouts and mass demonstrations demanding equal rights for all who live and work in the United States.
BAMN has also been active in the fight to defend public K-12 education in predominantly black and Latino/a urban districts through campaigns to stop state-takeovers and school closures and to prevent the privatization of public education through the proliferation of charters and market-based educational methods. BAMN student leaders, under Ms. Driver’s direction, have played an important role in the student movement that has grown on the campuses of the University of California to fight tuition/fee hikes, program cuts and attacks on the living standards of campus workers.
BAMN leadership was key in building the mass movement against police brutality that forced the prosecution and conviction of Johann Mehserle, the Oakland BART police officer who executed Oscar Grant, an unarmed young black man as he lay face down and unresisting on a subway platform two years ago. While the minimal sentence given Mehserle by the presiding judge was criminally inadequate, this was the first time a California police officer had even been arraigned on murder charges for an on-duty killing in over 15 years.
Ms. Driver is frequently invited to speak on the contemporary challenges to civil rights and specifically on the challenges to affirmative action and K-12 integration. She has addressed scores of civil rights, professional, religious, political and governmental organizations, including The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation; The National Alliance of Black School Educators; the U.S. Department of Transportation; the Missouri Department of Natural Resources; the A. Phillip Randolph Institute; Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; NAACP National Convention; Tavis Smiley Foundation Youth2Leaders Conference; National Bar Association; American Sociological Association; Americans for Democratic Action; the Progressive National Baptist Convention; the National Organization for Women; and the Society of American Law Teachers.
She has been a guest speaker on affirmative action at hundreds of colleges and universities, including Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard; Howard, NYU Law School, Stanford; UC Berkley School of Law; UCLA; University of Pennsylvania; University of Southern California and Yale.
She has been a featured guest on public television’s “American Black Journal” and “Am I Right?” as well NBC4 LA’s “News Conference” and “Fox and Friends”. She has also been a guest on several prominent radio talk shows, such as Democracy Now, Tavis Talks and The Tom Joyner Show.
Among the awards she has received are the American Association for Affirmative Action Rosa Parks Award; the Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth Humanitarian Award, National Society of Black Engineers “Fulfilling the Vision of Tomorrow” Award and the National Lawyers Guild-Detroit Unsung Hero Award.