Community Safety

Carl Takei is the Community Safety Program Director at the Asian Law Caucus. Previously, he was a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where he co-led the national organization’s shift toward divesting from police and reinvesting in communities, and fought abuses at the intersections of criminal legal and immigration enforcement systems. He led the ACLU’s successful advocacy work to terminate the U.S. Department of Justice’s “Criminal Alien Requirement” contracts with private prisons, culminating in that agency’s 2016 decision to phase out all of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ private prison contracts.

Carl is also a longtime co-chair of Tsuru for Solidarity, working with other Japanese American advocates and allies to end detention sites and support directly impacted communities. Carl is a graduate of Boston College Law School, and began his legal career as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire.

Devon Matsumoto (he/him) is the Senior Program Coordinator in the Community Safety Program at Asian Law Caucus. Previously he worked at Fresh Lifelines for Youth as the Leadership and Middle School Program Coordinator working to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. Devon draws from his own family's history of displacement, incarceration, and advocacy to guide his work.

Devon has also been an organizer in San Jose Nikkei Resisters, which works to educate, mobilize, and unite the San Jose Japanese American community around social justice issues. Devon is a graduate of Seattle University’s School of Social Work.

Eileen Kim is the Staff Attorney for the Community Safety Program at the Asian Law Caucus. She previously worked as an attorney adviser with the Social Security Administration Office of Hearing Operations in San Bernardino, California.

Eileen is an experienced advocate across Black, Brown, and AAPI spaces. She has spent the last decade studying prison-industrial complex abolition and the Black liberation movement and has since offered her personal time, voice, and skill set to advocating for an abolitionist world where community-driven public safety would make the carceral state obsolete. Namely, she has taught a college-level seminary course at a men’s state prison in California’s Inland Empire and spoken on panels and podcasts about mass incarceration, abolishing the police in the social psyche, internalized racial oppression, white supremacy in the church, and America’s xenophobic racism toward the AAPI community – in tandem with the AAPI community’s complicity in anti-Black racism. She has also marched at multiple protests, performed spoken word at a BLM rally at Los Angeles City Hall, and written two books for charity – The Language of Abolition and a children’s book, Grandfather and Simon the Bear, aimed at helping Asian American youth navigate racism. She has also worked with outreach programs and non-profits overseas in Mexico, Kyrgyzstan, England, and Benin.

Eileen is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and has interned with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, Greater Boston Legal Services, the Boston Juvenile Court, and Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services.

Megan Vees is a Litigation Staff Attorney. Her work focuses on advocating for the rights of immigrant communities and communities of color subjected to injustices in the criminal legal system. Prior to joining Advancing Justice-ALC, Megan worked as a staff attorney on Public Counsel’s Consumer Rights & Economic Justice Project, where she had a special focus on bail and other forms of criminal debt. Megan began her legal career clerking for U.S. District Court Judge Jesus Bernal in the Central District of California, followed by a fellowship at The Bail Project. While in law school, she participated in the Criminal Justice Policy Program’s bail reform project and the International Human Rights Clinic. Prior to law school, Megan worked at the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, where she informed detained children of their rights in deportation proceedings. She also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru and worked for a refugee rights organization in Cameroon. Megan holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.

Nicole (she/her) is a Community Advocate in the Community Safety Program. Previously, she conducted research on the politics of defunding police and has worked as a community organizer advocating for education justice in Massachusetts.

Nicole was born and raised in greater Boston. She earned a BS from Tufts University in Biopsychology and minored in Sociology.

In her free time, she enjoys reviewing books, hiking, and going to concerts.

Tatiana is a Community Advocate in the Community Safety Program. Prior to ALC, Tatiana worked as a client advocate at a non-profit law firm solely representing and advocating for the needs of survivors of human trafficking.

Tatiana is a fluent Spanish speaker, she was born and raised in the Bay Area. She earned a BA in Sociology and a BA in Latin American and Latinx Studies from UC Santa Cruz.