2024 Cheers to Justice! Virtual Wine Fundraiser
Thursday, May 16 2024 | 6PM - 7PM EASTERN
Join Youth Represent for an evening of delicious wine from House of Brown and a virtual tasting led by our guest of honor, Master Sommelier Chris Gaither.
Impact of Funding
Your support to our Cheers to Justice Wine Fundraiser will increase our ability to offer our robust programming to better serve youth across New York. Youth Represent employs a multi-disciplinary approach to serving youth which includes three primary pillars - Legal Representation, Youth Leadership & Empowerment, Advocacy & Coalition Building.
Legal Representation - Our Community-Lawyering Model partners with community organizations and combines direct legal representation, Know Your Rights workshops, and technical assistance. Our legal representation targets employment discrimination, eviction, school suspension, summonses, and other criminal and civil legal issues.
Through our Strategic Litigation practice, we advance strategic class and individual plaintiff litigation to bring reform to employers who discriminate against clients based on criminal histories and race. To date, we have secured $8M in settlements on behalf of 24,000 class members.
Youth Leadership & Empowerment - Our City Dreamers Advocacy Camp trains justice-involved young people to be advocates in their own right. We then connect young people with speaking engagements and advocacy opportunities as part of larger reform efforts, and provide ongoing support and training.
In 2020, we piloted a powerful youth leadership training model, Train the Trainer, where young people become trainers themselves and leaders in peer education on legal issues that both directly and indirectly impact them and their community. Young people understand best what legal information will be the most useful to other young people, and how to communicate that information clearly.
Advocacy & Coalition Building - Youth Represent uses legislative advocacy to decrease the criminalization and incarceration of Black and Latine youth in NYC. We advance a systemic reform agenda that reduces the number of young people entering the legal system and expands opportunities and protections for those who have been through it. Our goal is to build the movement for youth justice by deeply involving young people in every aspect of the campaign, from strategic decision-making on the steering committee, to developing social media and other communications, to leading meetings with elected officials.
About Chris Gaither
Chris’s storied hospitality career spans over 20 years. His first restaurant job in Atlanta was a means to an end — a way to pay his bills while attending Morehouse College. He immediately loved the challenge of serving tables, the fast pace, the attention to detail, and the imperative to continue to learn about food and wine.
His passion and curiosity for wine led him to apply for — and receive — a coveted wine internship at The French Laundry. There, Chris went from having a mere interest in wine to being devoted to wine. He moved to San Francisco to work as a Sommelier at Spruce and from there went on to be Wine Director at Restaurant Gary Danko. After stints at Sociale, Michael Mina, and Octavia, Chris, in 2018, opened Ungrafted with his wife, Master Sommelier Rebecca Fineman.
In August 2022, Chris obtained his own Master Sommelier credential, making him one of four Black Master Somms in the world. In May of 2023, he and Rebecca opened GluGlu wine bar at Chase Center, home of the Golden State Warriors.
Chris’s numerous accolades include:
2012 Best New Sommeliers (Wine and Spirits Magazine)
2013 Top New Somm Competition Winner (Guild of Sommeliers)
2013 Zagat 30 Under 30
He is an adjunct instructor at the San Francisco Wine School and in March 2024 joined Brown Estate full-time to run wine education and direct-to-consumer sale
