Join us on Friday, February 5th at 9 am EST, Connecticut State Representative Robyn Porter will be our guest on the Criminal Justice Insider Podcast with Babz Rawls Ivy & Jeff Grant – Live on WNHH 103.5 FM New Haven, rebroadcast at 5 pm. Live-streamed on Facebook Live. On podcast platforms 24/7 everywhere. The Criminal Justice Insider Podcast is sponsored by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc.

Listen on SoundCloud:

Robyn Porter

State Representative Robyn Porter was first elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives in April 2014 following a special election. Since winning the 94th Assembly District seat, Porter has championed legislation that has provided fair wages and work spaces for Connecticut’s workers, reformed the state’s criminal justice system and increased protections for domestic violence victims.

Porter has been a member of the both the Appropriations and Judiciary committees. She has authored and sponsored legislation that restores respect, dignity and fairer treatment for incarcerated women, prohibits a judge from setting bail for those charged with misdemeanors, outlaws the solitary confinement of minors, requires more data from prosecutors and strengthens transparency between law enforcement and the public.

At the beginning of her second full term in January 2017, Porter was named House chairwoman of the Labor and Public Employees Committee. Under her leadership, Connecticut workers have benefited from tremendous progress in the workplace. Representative Porter has:

• Championed legislation that strengthened gender pay equity laws, which had not been updated since 1963
• Led a 14-hour debate in the House to raise the minimum hourly wage to $15 an hour by 2023
• Led a nearly 8-hour debate that establishes the Paid Family Medical Leave Insurance Program, the most generous paid leave program in the country to date
• Led the creation of the Council on the Collateral Consequences of a Criminal Record
• Expanded Workers’ Compensation Benefits to firefighters and police officers diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

In her role as the co-chair of the Minority Teacher Recruitment Task Force, Porter has worked tirelessly on legislation to ensure that school boards employ at least 250 new minority teachers and administrators across Connecticut, and also helped to champion the passage of African- American and Latino studies in the public school curriculum.

Porter graduated from Gateway Community College with an Associate’s Degree and later obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice from Charter Oak State College. She completed both programs with honors and was inducted into the Phi Theta Kappa International and the Alpha Sigma Lambda National Honor Societies.

She was employed by the Communication Workers of America from 2001 to 2017, is a longtime community activist who served as co-chairwoman of the Steering Committee for the Newhallville Community Resilience Team (NCRT). During her tenure at NCRT, the committee focused on increasing public safety by building social cohesion.

Porter is the proud parent of two adult children, Akeem and Aminah, and the spirited grandmother of Alana and Amir. She is a native New Yorker who has resided in New Haven, CT since the summer of 2000 and proudly calls it home.

Bio from https://www.housedems.ct.gov/Porter/Biography

Facebook

Contact