February 2025

Through my work as a delinquency defense lawyer at EBCLC, I have heard from my almost exclusively BIPOC male clients, how terrifying interacting with police can be for them. This is why many young people who have similar racial identities and lived experiences to those of my clients have an instinct to run when approached by police. Unfortunately this is a rational response to a policing system that regularly abuses its power, is built on foundations of white supremacy and slavery, and has murdered so many Black, Brown, and Native people in the United States.

Earlier in my fellowship I had an opportunity to speak to a group of young people about their rights when interacting with police. As I prepared for that training, I researched existing resources on youth rights around police. Many of the resources reflected the stark reality that when youth interact with police, they need to be advised not just how to protect their rights (not answering questions and asking for a lawyer), but also how to protect their lives.

Unfortunately, in the last few months multiple clients of mine have experienced profoundly terrifying arrests by police. In one instance, a client was out eating a meal with some friends and two unmarked cars pulled up and people ran out of them at him and his friends. Terrified, he ran, not realizing they were police until he heard someone yelling they would tase him. The officers were looking for people other than him, but ended up arresting him because police had issued a warrant for him for an incident that allegedly occurred nearly six months prior. The warrant was issued and my client was arrested despite already being on probation, having a probation officer who knew his whereabouts, and having an upcoming court date at which any potential charges could have been addressed. Instead, officers elected to traumatize my client through a needless arrest.

Another client was recently arrested on a warrant issued because he allegedly violated probation by staying at a friend's house for a few nights without permission. He was arrested when a friend was pulled over while he was a passenger. He described the arrest as involving multiple police cars and a helicopter. The friend, also a teenager, was cited and released, but because my client was accused of having done something most teenagers do at some point–staying out without permission–he spent several days in juvenile detention.

These experiences are traumatizing, yet my clients are expected to trust and rely on the very systems that harm them for rehabilitation. In a system that claims to be responsive to the needs of young people, the constant issuing of warrants for youth on probation is profoundly wrong. While I, as their lawyer, can help them to address these warrants when they know about them, they often aren’t even made aware of their existence–as both my clients experienced–until they are arrested. I hope that juvenile courts and probation departments will one day recognize that these approaches to youth in their systems do more harm than good.

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January 2025

Last week I joined a statewide group of activists called the Fix School Discipline Coalition at a lobby day in Sacramento. What made this lobby day both unusual and special is that it was focused, not on a particular piece of legislation but more broadly on the stories of young people and their families impacted by exclusionary school discipline practices like expulsion and suspension. The goal of the lobby day was to help legislators understand the reality of what different school discipline practices do as they head into another legislative cycle making critical decisions about schools and students.

The Fix School Discipline coalition is a group I have been working with for nearly a year. They are a coalition of policy and legal organizations, organizers, community-based organizations, and youth advocates. I have worked with them on implementation of a new law reducing discriminatory suspensions and through them have made statewide connections to create resources for non-lawyer advocates to do expulsion defense. To get to work closely with community-based organizers has been a real privilege and I have learned a lot from folks at several organizations including CADRE, Black Parallel School Boards, and Cancel the Contract on how to be a better community lawyer.

To meet some of the folks who I have worked with in person alone was a great part of the lobby day, but the part that was particularly special to me was to hear the stories they shared with legislative aides. I heard the story of an advocate from the Black Organizing Project (if you have not heard about them, considering reading about their historic work to remove police from the Oakland School District) who spoke about the impact of a “village” approach to young folks who have issues in school. She talked about how having support from an organization called Youth Radio as a young person made all the difference in her life. I heard that same message echoed by young people who came to advocate for themselves and their peers with the support of Fresh Lifelines for Youth. They also spoke to the contrasting negative impact of expulsion and suspension.

I spent a legislative session working for a Washington State Senator before law school and have been in the shoes of the legislative aides we met with. Seeing youth and community organizers share and being able to speak on behalf of my own clients reminded me of the impact of true storytelling in places of power. I could see that at least some of the folks we met with were moved by the stories they heard and hopefully would communicate that to their bosses. I am grateful to be able to support the voices of those ready to tell their own stories and to lift the stories of some people who could not be there to speak for themselves. That is how I aim to practice law every day—in court, in school meetings, and in the halls of the legislature.

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December 2024

Recently our social work team (a social work student supervised by one of my amazing colleagues who is both an attorney and social worker) began working with one of my clients. I have been so grateful to work with them and to see all they have already been able to do for my client. Someone asked me recently what the most challenging part of my job is and I told them that it is witnessing my clients living through very difficult situations and circumstances and feeling either ill equipped, without capacity, or unable to help. I have no doubt our social work team faces similar emotions in their work since the reality is that many of the challenges and harms faced by our clients are systemic. However, their expertise and the expanded capacity they have brought to my client’s team make us collectively able to address so much more than I was able to do on my own.

They are working to connect my client with new service providers to address, not merely the expectations of the juvenile court or of school, but also to provide access to activities my client is excited about and that will help them to meet their own goals. They have also begun working to find options that may address basic needs for both my client and their family. Their work will not only help my client to meet the expectations of a judge or a school, but also to feel supported and that there are places they can go and be a teenager and do things that match their passions.

I am similarly grateful to get to frequently work in collaboration with community based organizations who serve my clients. The mentors, counselors, therapists, coaches, and others who do so much to support my clients, not only in being what others expect them to be, but also in figuring out who they want to be, are essential collaborators in my own work. I call on them before every court date and school hearing. They lend support and recognition of my clients as whole people who are working through the challenging processes of learning and growing. Their expert voices are essential in spaces which often see young folks only as the small moments in which they interact with system-actors, which are often in difficult and even traumatic contexts.

The reality of nonprofits and community based organizations is that the funding and capacity can rarely meet the full needs of the community, or even of individual clients or participants. However, I have learned that by working as a team, both internally as our social work team and I have done, and externally, as I have with the many amazing community based providers working with my clients, I can do so much more for my clients than I ever could alone.

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November 2024

This has been an eventful month for many reasons, including for me professionally. I negotiated a settlement of an expulsion case for a client and had a number of complicated court dates, which all ended in relative success for my clients. I also led several trainings, including one in partnership with a community partner organization for the community on expulsion defense.

Another eventful thing that happened this month was the election, the effects of which I am already starting to see on my client population. At the community training I helped lead, which was well attended by both youth participants at my partner organization and organizers, one young person asked a pertinent question. They asked what they could do to protect themselves against discriminatory school discipline if federal protections against discrimination, especially for trans and queer youth, disappeared. I described the state and local protections and ways to respond, but also acknowledged the very real fear from which the question arose.

At a client meeting recently, one of my delinquency clients asked about the impact of Proposition 36 on any future cases he may have (Prop. 36 will allow for felony charges and increase sentences for certain drug and theft crimes). He also noted the potential impact of the recall of our District Attorney, Pamela Price, and the choice of her successor on how the DAs will be charging offenses and seeking potentially harsher outcomes in juvenile court.

While there were many negatives which came from the election, there are also some positive things coming from elected officials that are benefitting my clients. One client may benefit from a law passed during the last California legislative session–AB 1186–when it comes into effect in January. That law will ensure that youth expected to pay restitution (which can be tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars) will no longer be held jointly and severally liable with their co-parts. This means that if a young person is found to have committed an offense with several other young people, they can only be required to pay a percentage of the restitution owed to any complaining witnesses of the offense–shared with the other young people–rather than being responsible for the entire value along with the other youth adjudicated for the offense as they are now. This will make a huge difference in reducing the amount of debt that young people have as a result of youthful offenses.

Young people are paying attention to our elections and the actions of our governments, because, even if they are too young to vote, the impacts are clear and direct on their lives. I have seen young people, in partnership with organizers from partner organizations, push for changes in positive directions. Now, more than ever, we should empower youth and organizers to push for better from our elected officials and governments–for protections for the rights and voices of young people, for decriminalization, and for access to better support for education, housing, and community resources.

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October 2024

One facet of the school to prison pipeline that I have unfortunately seen a lot of this month is the sharing of information about young people between schools and the probation and juvenile court systems. This shows up in a number of ways and makes students’ schools–the spaces where, no matter their status with the courts–they ideally should feel safe to go to and learn, into yet another space in which their actions are criminalized.

For my clients this goes well beyond schools reporting actual allegations of illegal activity by them to the police–it includes sharing information about their attendance, grades, disciplinary history, and even special education with their probation officers and thus essentially with juvenile delinquency courts. Federal privacy laws theoretically protect student information and state laws include confidentiality rules related to information and records related to minors from both courts and schools. While there are some exceptions which allow information sharing between these two systems about a given young person, in my experience, probation and school districts tend to share far more than they should about the young people they are theoretically helping.

I have had a school district ask repeatedly for a probation officer to be involved in my client’s special education and disciplinary meetings. A school district representative recently shared information about a client’s disciplinary case with a probation officer without any prompting and the probation officer in response gave them the status of the client’s court case. A district said they would need to see a client’s probation terms to know if their education plan for him would comply with court orders.

This information sharing has very real ramifications for my clients. One of my clients is currently being charged with a probation violation after their PO attended a suspension meeting at their school. To have schools be a source, not only of their own discipline systems, but of further criminalization of my clients makes these students much less likely to feel safe at or committed to their school communities. This can then have a cycling impact where their detachment causes poor attendance or further school misbehavior which then becomes additional criminalization for failing to comply with probation terms.

This cycle is why a school to prison pipeline is not a completely accurate description–instead the reality is a school-prison nexus where the systems repeatedly overlap and cycle young people through into ongoing instability. These systems purport to have goals of helping young people–rehabilitation and education. To better serve those goals, these two systems should be significantly more restricted in the ways in which they share information about the young people in their “care.”

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September 2024

This month, and throughout my fellowship so far, I have had the absolute privilege of working with a number of amazing community-based partner organizations. I have witnessed these organizations support my clients whole-heartedly and in ways that I do not have capacity or lived experience to do.

One of these organizations, called Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth or RJOY for short, is working closely with one of my clients. Through one of their programs they have a group of credible messengers–people who have lived experience with the policing, court, and carceral systems–who work closely with young people impacted by those same systems. I spoke to several of these messengers when they came to support my client at several court dates this month. To see them be there for him and to know that they were ready to support him when he came home made a huge impact on my client. They came ready to support him in every way they could–with mentorship, creating a restorative community through weekly circles, therapy services for him and his family members (also delivered by people with shared lived experience), and even a job. While waiting outside court, they spoke to me about the importance of showing up for young people and how starting the process of healing for these young people can make a difference for a whole community. One of them shared with me a proverb– “the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” He noted that he has seen the violence and harm in communities hurt the young people he works with. He believes that hurt people hurt people and that this harm is often perpetuated unless it is interrupted with healing. He explained that responding to young people who perpetuate harms in their community with restorative practices rather than the punishment should be the solution.

I have worked with many organizations doing this type of healing work this year–Young Women’s Freedom Center (YWFC), Youth Alive, Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY), East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC)–among others. I have learned so much from the work they do and the ethos they bring to it with their youth participants and have been very grateful to see the difference they make in my clients’ lives. Through the trainings and self help materials I have been developing and will continue to work on during the last year of my fellowship I hope both to support their work and to give something small back to these organizations who are providing essential service to their communities.

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August 2024

One of the forms of direct service work that I have done during my fellowship is juvenile record sealing. This often involves filing a petition and motion and a brief court hearing. When successful it results in records of any juvenile delinquency system involvement being removed from our clients' RAP sheets and ultimately destroyed by the agencies that keep those records. In many ways this is some of the more joyful work we do at EDJY because we can so frequently secure a clear win for our clients, many of whom are still haunted by their juvenile records well into adult-hood.

However, over the course of the summer I worked closely with a law student intern on a record sealing client’s case and as my student reflected on this experience, she pointed out how wrong it was that our client even needed our support to seal their record. This case, which was not too different from many of our other record sealing clients, involved a decades old arrest of my client while they were a child. Many people are unaware that arrests–even without a conviction–end up on RAP sheets as part of a person’s delinquency or criminal record. It makes sense that many are unaware of this fact because it is so nonsensical. It goes against the very foundation of our (admittedly flawed) criminal and delinquency legal systems–innocent until proven guilty. Although many who are “proven” guilty are actually innocent, even the legally innocent may still face long-lasting repercussions from police involvement.

It should be no surprise to any person living in the United States that many of our record sealing clients are black and brown people of color. BIPOC communities are overpoliced as a result of systemic racism inherent in our policing and criminal systems. As a result, police interactions, as was the case for my client, are common for people within those communities, regardless of any actual criminal or delinquent actions. My client did not know that a brief interaction, common in their community, would show up during certain types of employment interview processes until it happened. A situation in which police viewed them as delinquent–when in reality they had done nothing wrong–impacted their sense of dignity and comfort in their job search years later.

While I am happy that I, with the help of my law student intern, was able to secure record sealing relief for my client, they never should have had to go through that process in the first place. Arrest records should never end up on RAP sheets and juvenile records should be sealed automatically at the conclusion of a juvenile case. Advocates in California are continuing to push for policy changes on these issues and I will be watching for ways I can contribute to their efforts.

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July 2024

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June 2024

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May 2024

This month, I had a client who was released from detention after a court hearing where I represented them. I visited them in detention and helped set them up with several providers who they would begin working with upon their release. I also worked with them and their family to help them get started at his school again once released.

However, this was not an easy process. Their school initially did not appear to want them to return—naming the incidents that led to their arrest, none of which were school related—as a reason. While this was not legal and I was able to use this illegality to help them to return, the biases against them remain. They have not had a perfect month since their release, but the immediate treatment of them as being on thin ice certainly did not help.

To initially struggle with new probation or school expectations is not unique or unusual among my clients. Another client, very shortly after their last court date, violated their probation, which was immediately filed with the court and accompanied by an arrest warrant. However, after a few weeks of working with new providers and some time to adjust, they were able to show significant improvements. Despite this, they still had to deal with the warrant and probation violation at their next court date.

Both probation and schools often have somewhat unrealistic expectations that young people, many of whom are dealing with traumas from detention or other parts of their lives, will be able to immediately connect with providers and follow a long list of rules to the letter. As an advocate it is often my job to point out that my clients are young, have been given a lot of new expectations to manage, and are working through pre-existing issues. It should be the baseline expectation that it will take them time to adjust and to build trust with new mentors and providers they have been referred to. They should be given the time and opportunity to show improvement, rather than perfection.

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April 2024

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March 2024

Both the education and juvenile criminal systems often purport to be rehabilitative in nature, but the reality experienced by my clients tends to be primarily punitive. From what I have witnessed among my clients, systemic punishment generally does not help them to learn from their mistakes, support them in improving behaviors, or address the root causes of the difficulties in their lives. Instead it often makes them feel stripped of their agency and overwhelmed while simultaneously expecting them to be accountable for their actions with minimal support.

One of my clients initially got into trouble at school after the school failed to implement a restorative justice intervention that they had promised and which could have prevented the incident which led to the school discipline. Since then, I and another of my client’s advocates have pushed the school district to recognize that the root causes of the client’s behaviors have not changed and that the district should offer support to address them. Despite once again promising restorative intervention, the school failed to implement it, which resulted in another incident and further discipline. Another of my clients, who was already struggling in school, was also punished for a school discipline incident which could have been addressed through prior or alternative interventions by their school. However, the punishment from the school has caused my client to further disconnect from their education, which will likely ultimately result in further punitive measures from their district.

Statistical research as well as qualitative observations of my clients show that exclusionary discipline tends to do more harm than good. It creates cycles of behavior which ultimately exclude students from their education without helping to address what is preventing them from doing better. In both my clients’ cases the incidents themselves showed a clear need for certain supports from their schools to resolve conflicts and bullying from school staff and peers. However, their districts elected to use punitive responses which have worsened, rather than helped, my clients to engage with their education or improve their behavior.

The young people caught in the school discipline system are often struggling with trauma, disabilities, and other serious challenges in their lives. Yet, they and their families are charged with navigating complex requirements of their time and energy to meet the expectations of school districts to demonstrate their accountability. The system expects young people already struggling to follow expectations, to comply with even more difficult rules and requirements than they had to follow when they initially did something wrong.

As an advocate I try to emphasize to the young folks that I work with the connection between their ability to choose their actions and the consequences that the systems they interact with may levy depending on their choices. I discuss with them that they have agency, even in the face of system-imposed restrictions, to make choices that will further their own goals with respect to how their schools and the courts treat them. However, these young people should not be expected to bear the full weight of responsibility for the challenges they face, especially when the systems punishing them are the same ones that failed to support them in the first place.

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February 2024

The last month has been among the busiest so far in my fellowship. I did my second expulsion hearing, my first juvenile court appearances, and have been supervising a law student for the first time. Supervising a law student and experiencing several firsts in my own career has reminded me both how little law school prepares students for the practice of law and how correspondingly valuable clinical experiences can be for law students.  

In my experience, law school at its core is not a practical training for being a lawyer, despite being a professional degree program. Instead law school aims to give students the foundations of broad areas of law and, as a mentor put it to me before I started my 1L year, “teaches you how to think like a lawyer.” However, the law school pedagogy often disregards the critical practical skills of daily strategic decision-making, communication, and trauma-informed best practices, and the basic understanding of the formalities of different legal spaces like court. While there are some practical law school courses (shout-out to my amazing legal writing professor), they are relatively few and far between.

Instead, clinics and internships tend to fill the gaps. These practical experiences give a first taste of the practice of law and in the best examples, give students a chance to stretch their comfort zone—participating in making decisions for cases, working closely with clients, and doing oral advocacy. When my clinic’s law students started this semester, they asked me what it was like to be in my first year as a lawyer and I told them honestly, that there are many moments where it feels very scary. I am still learning how to deal with the weight of the responsibility I feel for my clients. However, the experience would have been so much more difficult if I had not had the excellent clinical education I received in the same clinic for which I now work. Through my clinical experience, I learned many of the practicalities of education advocacy, how to advise my clients while still following their stated goals, and some of the soft advocacy skills so often required outside of court. While my career will continue to have many firsts and though my learning curve is still very steep, my clinical experience made me substantially more prepared than I would have been otherwise. As a supervisor for a law student in clinic this semester, I am working to provide that same level of confidence building experience as I received from the education justice clinic at EBCLC.

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January 2024

Both the education and juvenile criminal systems often purport to be rehabilitative in nature, but the reality experienced by my clients tends to be primarily punitive. From what I have witnessed among my clients, systemic punishment generally does not help them to learn from their mistakes, support them in improving behaviors, or address the root causes of the difficulties in their lives. Instead it often makes them feel stripped of their agency and overwhelmed while simultaneously expecting them to be accountable for their actions with minimal support.

One of my clients initially got into trouble at school after the school failed to implement a restorative justice intervention that they had promised and which could have prevented the incident which led to the school discipline. Since then, I and another of my client’s advocates have pushed the school district to recognize that the root causes of the client’s behaviors have not changed and that the district should offer support to address them. Despite once again promising restorative intervention, the school failed to implement it, which resulted in another incident and further discipline. Another of my clients, who was already struggling in school, was also punished for a school discipline incident which could have been addressed through prior or alternative interventions by their school. However, the punishment from the school has caused my client to further disconnect from their education, which will likely ultimately result in further punitive measures from their district.

Statistical research as well as qualitative observations of my clients show that exclusionary discipline tends to do more harm than good. It creates cycles of behavior which ultimately exclude students from their education without helping to address what is preventing them from doing better. In both my clients’ cases the incidents themselves showed a clear need for certain supports from their schools to resolve conflicts and bullying from school staff and peers. However, their districts elected to use punitive responses which have worsened, rather than helped, my clients to engage with their education or improve their behavior.  

The young people caught in the school discipline system are often struggling with trauma, disabilities, and other serious challenges in their lives. Yet, they and their families are charged with navigating complex requirements of their time and energy to meet the expectations of school districts to demonstrate their accountability. The system expects young people already struggling to follow expectations, to comply with even more difficult rules and requirements than they had to follow when they initially did something wrong.

As an advocate I try to emphasize to the young folks that I work with the connection between their ability to choose their actions and the consequences that the systems they interact with may levy depending on their choices. I discuss with them that they have agency, even in the face of system-imposed restrictions, to make choices that will further their own goals with respect to how their schools and the courts treat them. However, these young people should not be expected to bear the full weight of responsibility for the challenges they face, especially when the systems punishing them are the same ones that failed to support them in the first place.

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December 2023

My last blog post focused almost exclusively on an expulsion hearing that I worked to prepare for intensely over the course of a few weeks. Expulsion cases are fast, time intensive work. However, outside of expulsions, most of the work I do in EBCLC’s EDJY clinic is much more long term. It involves monitoring the implementation of special education services throughout the school year, supporting clients through their terms of probation, and perhaps most importantly, staying in touch with and building trust with my young clients and their families.

Checking in with my clients, understanding their goals and needs, and then thinking through how I can help to support those goals and needs is the foundation of my current work. The Education Defense & Justice for Youth clinic uses a stated interest, rather than best interest model. This means that I seek to understand what my clients want and to advocate for those outcomes, trusting that my clients are the experts in their own lives. Young people who have often experienced adults who say they want to help, but who do not necessarily listen to or work towards what that young person wants have no reason to trust me when we first meet. Working to earn their trust is essential to understanding and advocating for my clients’ goals for themselves and their cases.

As a colleague recently noted to me, with some youth clients, actions speak louder than words. Meeting them in their community, helping them to start at a school they like or access a resource they need, or being by their side at expulsion and delinquency hearings are extremely important ways of earning trust. A major event in my life as a young almost-attorney was being sworn into the California bar this month. As a licensed attorney I will be able to speak in court on behalf of my clients and sit next to them before the judge. I look forward to being able to show up for my clients in this way soon.

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November 2023

My past month of work has been largely focused on preparing for and presenting a client’s case at an expulsion hearing. Preparing for and attending an expulsion hearing is an odd experience. It requires much of the same preparation that an attorney would do for court—writing opening and closing statements, gathering witnesses and witness statements, and planning for cross examination. However, an expulsion hearing lacks many of the rules and formalities of court—hearsay can be admitted, though not entirely relied upon; objections to evidence are ruled on by school administrators who may or may not be familiar with the law; and the procedures followed at hearings differ dramatically between school districts. While this offers some additional flexibility to present a young person’s case, it also means they do not have as much access to protections like the 6th Amendment right to confront witnesses.

Expulsion hearings occur after a student has been referred for expulsion proceedings by their principal or superintendent. The expulsion referral and the district’s case often focus on a specific incident, but provides very little context about why or how it happened. The district’s case also typically reviews every difficulty the student has faced in school. This is generally done without acknowledging gaps in support provided to the student and contexts such as a student’s disabilities, racial biases against them, and the roles that others play in conflicts at school. Advocates like myself at expulsion hearings help ensure that the young person’s side of the story is told. I also aim to explain why expulsion is not allowed under the education code; the alternative ways the school could have responded; and to provide the broader context of who my client is—a young person with strengths, goals, and challenges in their life.  

Expulsion is meant, under the California education code, to be a last resort for schools. In most cases, they are required by law to offer students “alternative means of correction” if feasible and potentially effective. This law is meant to force schools to fulfill their fundamental purpose—educating students—by giving students support to learn and grow from their mistakes and to feel safe in their own schools. However, too often, administrators jump to expulsion without considering whether the cause of an incident can be addressed another way. Does a student need help to feel safe when they walk between their classes or to and from school? Were they ever given a chance to reflect on the impact of their words or behavior and support to learn better ways to respond to challenging situations? Could a student be given services for their disability that will help them engage at school? These young people generally need help to feel safe, to learn with counselors and through restorative processes how to improve their social-emotional skills, and/or to participate in their education. Instead, in the moment when they need the most support, they are pushed out. As a client recently poignantly put it “they were on me to go to school for so long, and now they suddenly don’t want me anymore.”

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October 2023

I am nearing my first full month of work with the East Bay Community Law Center’s (EBCLC) Education Defense & Justice for Youth (EDJY) clinic. Over the course of the last month I have begun working with four clients: one in the midst of a delinquency case, two seeking to seal their juvenile records, and one facing an expulsion from school.

Although the law underlying each of these cases differs significantly, the core of my work on them does not. Each case involves helping my client to share their story with a court, a probation department, or an expulsion panel. In several of my cases this involves putting together a written motion, letter, or brief along with a packet of materials in support. Later, I may also be able to advocate verbally in meetings with opposing counsel, a hearing, or in court. In some of my cases, other advocates have already worked with my client, allowing me to lean on the work already done in collecting records and information about them, their experiences, and their accomplishments.

However, as I have met with my clients, I realize how much of their stories do not fit into the records I have reviewed. Their records may touch upon the impact of still having a juvenile record, but they do not fully convey the sense of frustration a client expressed to me about the discrimination in housing and employment they face nearly a decade later. The details of an incident do not communicate the hurt that another client shared about the unfairness of the blame for a situation being placed on them.

I wish more courts, school administrators, and probation officers took to heart these impacts of the juvenile court and carceral systems and of the handling of school discipline. Both the school and juvenile court systems are often framed by those who work within them as helping young people to “rehabilitate” or thrive. However, in my clients’ cases, the ways in which they thrive are attributable to themselves, their families, and their communities and not the systems they have had to deal with. Their needs for healing or help are not served and are often increased by the impact of those systems on their lives.

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September 2023

I just began my work as an Equal Justice America and Brian Lewinstein fellow at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) on September 18th. I am so excited to be back at EBCLC within the Education Defense & Justice for Youth Unit (EDJY) as a fellow after having worked with this organization for two years as a clinical law student. I can speak from personal experience about the exceptional training in community and client centered lawyering that law students receive at EBCLC and I am looking forward to supporting the clinical education of law students over the next two years.

I am also excited to be working within a team that seeks to provide holistic support to its clients and that strives to uplift and center the voices of the young people we work towards dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline. For example, I heard this week about a training that was done over the summer building on the work I did as a law student last year developing community education and engagement projects. One of those projects was creating a full day training for an amazing partner organization that trains youth organizers within one of the school districts where EDJY often works. Since the training was over the summer I was not able to attend, but heard from my colleague that it went well and that EDJY is remaining in touch with the youth organizers that attended and is waiting to see if there are additional ways that we can support their work. For more information about EDJY’s mission, take a look at this webpage: https://ebclc.org/about/the-work/education-defense-justice-for-youth/ .

For now I am familiarizing myself with some of the specialized areas of law in which EDJY works, including learning about the record sealing process and the details of delinquency law in California. Soon I will put that knowledge to work as I begin to work with clients and partner with my colleagues on ongoing cases and policy advocacy efforts.