I am passionate about the intersection of civil rights work and economic justice. Racial discrimination is often also economic with impacts on housing and employment. Throughout college and law school, I sought out experiences to help me become an advocate for economic and racial justice. As an Equal Justice America (EJA) Fellow at Legal Aid Justice Center, I will continue to do this work.

My passion for civil rights work and direct client services began in college when I worked as an intake volunteer at the Texas Civil Rights Project. I heard first-hand accounts of potential clients’ traumatic interactions with police and abuse within prisons.

While at UVA, I continued to gain experience in economic and racial justice issues while I worked as a research assistant and did pro bono projects. As a research assistant, I studied the affordable housing crisis in Charlottesville and its impact on the city’s racial demographics, finding that as housing costs have increased, Black citizens have been forced to move outside of the city. As a pro bono volunteer, I researched reparations for past racial harms.

My experience at my summer internship at the Bronx Defenders and as a clinic student in the Civil Rights Clinic, offered in partnership with the Legal Aid Justice Center, also contributed to my experience in economic and racial justice work. While at the Bronx Defenders, I researched the current impact of Bawdy House laws. Bawdy House laws rooted in the 19th Century have been a tool weaponized in NY’s Narcotics Eviction Program to carry out drug-based evictions. Working to repeal such housing laws is important to economic justice as these laws cause significant economic consequences, including homelessness. I graciously received a summer fellowship grant from EJA to do this work.

In my clinical work at the Legal Aid Justice Center, I helped represent a child of color targeted by the criminal justice system at a Serious Offender Review (SOR) hearing and assisted with expungement cases. Expungement cases are critical as they can help reduce economic barriers to reentry into society by helping to find adequate housing and employment without the stigma of being previously convicted. I also assisted in the continued work on a class action settlement calling for adequate healthcare for incarcerated women. I interviewed women at the facility and helped craft declarations to be read at status hearings.

I will be returning to the Legal Aid Justice Center as an EJA Fellow in the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Program (CRRJ). I couldn’t be more ecstatic to begin my fellowship and I am grateful to EJA for working with me for a second time.