Sima Atri is a Toronto-based lawyer and organizer whose practice includes criminal defence, labour, housing, constitutional litigation, and strategic legal advocacy. She regularly appears before Ontario courts, including the Divisional Court, as well as the Landlord and Tenant Board and the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

Her work is grounded in defending collective action, supporting organized communities, and resisting the legal systems that uphold exploitation, criminalize dissent, and reproduce social inequities. She has extensive experience representing protesters, challenging restrictive bail conditions, and defending freedom of expression and associational rights. Organizers, tenants, workers, and community groups regularly consult her on protest defence, tenant organizing, labour disputes, movement legal strategy, and campaign support.

Before co-founding the Community Justice Collective with Leora during the pandemic, Sima worked with movements and workers in the United States challenging labour exploitation, policing, incarceration, and abusive immigration systems. Her work included federal civil rights litigation and legal support for a successful campaign to close a notoriously abusive jail.

Sima is called to the bar in Ontario, Missouri, and Louisiana, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Leora Smith is a lawyer, in-house counsel, and the managing partner of the Community Justice Collective. Her work focuses on defending political expression, collective action, and freedom of assembly, particularly in disputes arising from organizing campaigns, tenant organizing, protests, encampments, labour organizing, and other forms of public dissent.

Leora represents organizers and activists in matters involving protest-related charges, trespass notices, defamation claims, and legal disputes connected to political organizing and public statements. She also provides legal support connected to tenant organizing, encampment defence, and strategic litigation arising from collective campaigns and public criticism.

Leora is a graduate of Harvard Law School. Before co-founding CJC with Sima in 2020, Leora worked as an investigative reporter covering housing, policing, and the criminal legal system. Her reporting and writing have appeared in publications and outlets including The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, ProPublica, and CBC Radio.

Aliah El-houni is a graduate of the McGill University Faculty of Law where she obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) and a Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L.). A dedicated litigator, Aliah clerked at the Superior Court of Justice and has experience representing clients at every level of Ontario’s courts. Aliah is strongly committed to a future without prisons and police. They regularly appear on behalf of clients in criminal court and youth criminal court, have represented families on high-profile civil lawsuits against the Toronto Police Services, and work closely with abolitionist movements across the GTHA. Aliah dedicates much of her free time to mentoring new lawyers and building more accessible legal services as a volunteer with the 519 legal clinic.

Grayson Alabiso-Cahill is a lawyer based in Toronto whose work focuses on worker organizing, labour disputes, tenant organizing, protest defence, and collective action. He represents workers and tenants facing retaliation connected to organizing campaigns, including workplace discipline, union-busting, defamation lawsuits, protest-related legal proceedings, and eviction applications arising from strikes, rent strikes, and other collective action.

Grayson has experience defending picketers, securing reinstatement for fired organizers, and representing tenant union members before the Landlord and Tenant Board and at the Divisional Court. 

Grayson graduated from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where he received the highest standing in labour and employment law and received Honours Standing in his third year. During law school, he represented workers, students, and tenants through Downtown Legal Services and West Toronto Community Legal Services, and completed a media law externship with the Toronto Star.

Matthew Tran is a lawyer based in Toronto whose work focuses on immigration detention, migrant justice, housing, disability benefits, and collective organizing. He has supported movements and organizing efforts involving undocumented migrants, prisoners, workers, tenants, and unhoused communities.

Matthew has represented migrant injured workers fighting for compensation and access to healthcare, tenant associations engaged in rent strikes, prisoners held in immigration detention, and people with disabilities denied social assistance and benefits. He has experience appearing before administrative tribunals and working on matters before the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, the Landlord and Tenant Board, the Social Benefits Tribunal, the Immigration and Refugee Board, the Federal Court, and the Supreme Court of Canada.

Before joining the Community Justice Collective, Matthew articled at an immigration and refugee law firm focused on complex immigration and detention matters. He holds a JD/MA in Criminology from the University of Toronto.

Irina Ceric

Irina Ceric (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. Her academic research lies in the intersection of law and social movements, with a particular focus on the regulation and criminalization of dissent by movements for social and environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty. Irina is also a longtime community activist and legal support organizer and educator, having worked with movements in Canada and the US since the late 1990s. Prior to shifting into full-time teaching, Irina practiced criminal and clinical law in Toronto and Vancouver.

Joshua Sealy-Harrington

Joshua Sealy-Harrington is an Associate Professor and the Chair of Equality Law at the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law. His teaching, scholarship, and activism relate to constitutional law (focusing on equality), criminal law (focusing on prison/police abolition), and legal theory (focusing on critical race theory).

Before joining Windsor Law, Professor Sealy-Harrington was an Assistant Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, where he was awarded both “Professor of the Year” (by the student body) and “Person of the Year” (by the faculty association) following his zealous defence of Palestinian solidarity by students and academic freedom at the university.

As a doctoral candidate at Columbia Law School, Professor Sealy-Harrington draws on critical legal theory to explore the ways in which law mediates social hierarchy, with a particular focus on the promise and limitations of “identity” rhetoric in legal discourse and advocacy concerning race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class. His legal scholarship has been cited by various courts, including the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada.

Joshua also acts as Counsel at Power Law, where his practice mainly consists of pro and low bono litigation advancing race, gender, and international justice. He has appeared before all levels of court, including as lead counsel before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Joshua can be followed on twitter @joshuasealy.

Vincent Wong

Vincent Wong joined the University of Windsor Faculty of Law as an Assistant Professor in 2022. He is also a PhD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School, where his dissertation focuses on racial capitalism and the processes that produce and structure unfree status-excluded labour in Canada.

Vincent’s research focuses in law and political economy – specifically at the nexus between migration, race, markets, and the law. He is particularly interested in how a Canadian context-specific critical race theory (CRT) can better inform and be informed by the practice of anti-racist and intersectional movement lawyering.

Prior to academia, Vincent worked as a Staff Lawyer at the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic and Secretary of the Chinese Canadian National Council - Toronto Chapter. He has also previously held positions at the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto and the African American Policy Forum. He holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Toronto and a Master of Laws from Columbia Law School, where he was a Human Rights Fellow and James Kent Scholar.