Daniel Werner ’91, Doctor of Laws

About Daniel Werner ’91

In the fight against human trafficking, Daniel Werner ’91 has been one of the most effective and outspoken voices in the pursuit of justice for victims.

Werner has been fighting for justice since he was a Grinnell student. His Grinnell efforts included organizing a boycott of grapes in the dining hall when he learned that California grape growers were not protecting their workers from harmful pesticides.

After graduation, Werner had a successful stint as an attorney for farmworkers in Florida and New York. He went on to co-found the Workers’ Rights LawCenter of New York, where he defended the rights of exploited workers.

For the past nine years, Werner has worked at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where he is senior supervising attorney and has litigated complex workers’ rights and civil rights cases. He currently directs the center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative, an ambitious project to provide representation to every immigrant detained in the Southeastern states as a result of Trump-era enforcement.

He is perhaps best recognized for spearheading a seven-year labor trafficking lawsuit against a Mississippi-based shipyard operator on behalf of hundreds of pipefitters and welders recruited from India. These recruits helped repair Gulf Coast oil rigs damaged during hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They paid up to $25,000 to be considered for positions based on false promises of permanent U.S. residency.

Thanks to the efforts of Werner and his team, workers were awarded more than $14 million in damages. It remains the largest award for this type of suit. For their efforts, Werner and his team were named the Public Justice Foundation’s Trial Lawyers of the Year in 2015.

Werner’s work goes far beyond the courtroom. He has spoken around the world about workplace exploitation and human rights abuses of immigrants. He is also co-author of Civil Litigation on Behalf of Victims of Human Trafficking, a guide for attorneys representing trafficked clients.

Acceptance Speech

Transcript

In 1991, I left this place. As a December graduate, I gathered with a few others at Grinnell House to receive our BAs and move on. Now at the age of 47, I'm finally receiving a degree at a Grinnell commencement.

What an honor it is to share this moment with all of you and with my wife Nan, and my children, Abe, Zeke, and Carmella. And what a journey it's been, and how lucky I am.

To paraphrase the Schuyler Sisters in the musical Hamilton, and to play ultimate frisbee with my hat, "Look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now." The current political and social upheaval and chaos will beget creative responses and world-changing ideas will emerge.

Your minds, based on your life experience and your learning here at Grinnell, are conduits for those ideas. The process you've learned here of arguing, honing, narrowing, expanding, editing, arguing more, and then honing again, will generate these ideas. Grinnell has nurtured this, and now you have the tools to nurture creativity in others.

And as you embark in your journey, find partners who are certain change is coming and who view Dr. King's faith in the moral universe bending towards justice not as an excuse to stand by and assume the bend will happen without engaging in the difficult work, but as a call to action to force that bend. Because in justice work, real change-makers are optimistic activists. People who look at their day to day, hard, uncomfortable, often mundane and usually chaotic work as means for progress rather than a sign of defeat. People who set aside ego and self-righteousness and empower positive partners and successors to generate the great ideas and make change happen.

The alternative to optimistic activism, cynicism, makes the discomfort of justice work intolerable. Without trusting in the effectiveness of intentional and intelligence justice work, despair and burnout lurk around every corner. Granted, there's a lot to be cynical about. Just look around. But try looking around without resting your eyes on the causes for cynicism.

Look around at how lucky we are. When we march, we see people who have never marched before. When arriving Muslims and refugees were facing a cruel and unconstitutional ban, and as immigrant families are getting ripped apart by enforcement dragnets, thousands of lawyers have volunteered days and sometimes weeks of their time to protect fundamental due process rights. This is a time when a dreamer who is undocumented and has known no place other than the United States has the anger, strength and inspiration to stand up in front of a crowd and say who she is with pride, "I am an immigrant and this country is my home." This is a time when federal government whistleblowers risk their livelihoods to preserve democracy and the rule of law, and fearless journalists amplify whistleblowers' voices. This is a time when I can stand in front of this graduating class and say with confidence that you are the change-makers.

You have spent your last four years at Grinnell preparing for now. As you embark into the chaos and conflict of your post-college lives and work, during this particular historic pivot point of mobilization, outrage, and creativity, there will be rare moments when the clicks and the cracks and the static sink into a rhythm. Those are the revolutionary moments.

How lucky you are to be emerging from this place, where the past four years have provided you with tools of intentionality, intellect, and empowerment. How lucky you are.

Thank you for this great honor.

To the class of 2017, congratulations.

I look forward to seeing you in the streets, at the airport, in the courtrooms, and empowering new leaders in the laboratories of creativity and change.