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Marguerite "Ezili Dantò" Laurent is the founder and President of Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ("HLLN"), a network of lawyers, activists, concerned individuals and grassroots organizations dedicated to institutionalizing the rule of law and protecting the civil and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. Marguerite Laurent is Haitian and Ezili's HLLN is a Haitian-led, capacity building organization. Ezili's HLLN runs the Ezili Dantò Listserve, reaching over one-and-a-half million readers with its postings and newsletters. HLLN closely monitors the situation in Haiti, issues its own news analysis, position statements, counters the colonial narrative on Haiti and informs about events that are not covered in the mainstream press. Marguerite Laurent is an award winning playwright, a writer, performance poet and an entertainment attorney who has represented many top Hip Hop artist over the last 15 years including some members of Public Enemy and the Last Poets. Ms. Laurent is a pro-democracy Haitian-American activist who was once, from 1994-1995, legal advisor to President Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti.


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Ezili Dantò/Marguerite Laurent is an award winning playwright, a performance poet, writer, Vodun dance choreographer and human rights activist attorney. She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in Stamford, CT. She holds a BA from Boston College and a JD from the University of Connecticut School of law. She is a gifted spoken word artist and the writer, performer and producer of the "Red Black & Moonlight" series - her critically acclaimed one-woman Jazzoetry Vodun dance theater works, which she has toured internationally and performed at colleges and universities, performance art centers, and theaters, including at non-traditional theater venues such as the United Nations and Carnegie Hall.

Ezili Dantò/Marguerite Laurent is also an essayist, political and social commentator and educator who specializes in teaching about the light and beauty of Haitian culture, the "Symbolic and Archetypal Nature of Haitian Vodun, creative writing, Haitian dance, Caribbean and African culture. She has been a Partner Artist with the Bushnell, Connecticut's largest performance art center, a Stamford Mayor's Grant recipient and an Urban Artist Fellow with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Institute of Community Research. She also works as an entertainment business attorney within the Hip Hop and R&B music, recording, merchandising and independent film industries, representing numerous national and international recording artists and independent film directors, producers and screenwriters. She also conducts workshops studying and analyzing the impact of Hip-Hop message music and African culture globally.

She is founder and President of Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ("HLLN"), a network of lawyers, journalists, activists and grassroots human rights and cultural organizations dedicated to institutionalizing the rule of law and protecting the civil and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. Ezili's HLLN is the pioneering Haitian-led voice of the disenfranchised masses of Haiti, known internationally for their counter-colonial narrative on Haiti. Ezili Dantò's works - writings, performances and human rights activism - give flesh, blood, context and humanity to the often tragic journey of Haitians, abroad and in Haiti, struggling to define self outside of the negative neocolonial images of Haiti which generally passes off Haitian life, existence and history as no more than a sort of daily disconnected police blotter entries and mere perpetual crisis. Ezili Dantò wrote a judicial reform agenda for Haiti. Her pivotal and most challenging work thus far was as legal advisor, in 1994-1995, to Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide promoting the democratizing process in Haiti. The "Red Black & Moonlight" performance series is a musical memoir based on that story and her life and work in the United States.

Ms. Laurent is the author of Vodun Woman: A Performance Poetry Collection and the Kenbe La books.