Ring of Fire
Saturday 4pm - 7pm
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likes to say he's been an environmentalist all his life. As a young boy, he kept pet snakes and raccoons, bred homing pigeons and pheasants in his backyard and learned to train hawks. He even considered becoming a veterinarian. Today Kennedy is widely recognized as the country's most prominent environmental attorney, working tirelessly to safeguard the environment and public health. He is the founder and director of Pace University's Environmental Litigation Clinic in White Plains, New York; president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international coalition of 99 grassroots groups; and senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The peripatetic Kennedy also crisscrosses North America several times a year, stirring audiences of college students, community groups and elected officials.
His op-ed columns appear regularly in The New York Times and other major newspapers. In 2004, he wrote Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy. The bestselling book fulfilled a lifelong dream: At the age of 10 Kennedy had told his father, then a United States Senator from New York, that he wanted to write a book about pollution. March 2005 brought another literary milestone: his first children's book, St. Francis of Assisi. He is also co-author of The Riverkeepers.
Mike Papantonio is a senior partner of Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Echsner & Proctor, P.A., one of the largest plaintiff's law firms in America, having handled thousands of cases throughout the nation including Asbestos, Breast Implants, Pharmaceutical Drug Litigation, Factory Farming, Securities Fraud, the Florida Tobacco Litigation, and other mass tort cases. "Pap" has received numerous multi-million dollar verdicts on behalf of victims of corporate malfeasance.
Papantonio is listed in the publications, Best Lawyers in America and Leading American Attorney. He is also a Fellow in the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and the International Society of Barristers. Both organizations invite only 500 trial lawyers throughout America to participate as members. Papantonio is also a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates; the American Association for Justice (formerly the ATLA); the Southern Trial Lawyers Association; and the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers; where he served on the Board of Directors for five years. He is a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer who has authored and co-authored instructional articles on handling complex litigation for trial lawyers.
