Activist. Vegan. Cyclist. Parent. (Almost) Criminal defense attorney.

Sea legs

12 hours off the boat and I still feel like I'm rocking. Weird.

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Sea of Cortez

For the past few days I have been living on a sailboat with 4 friends in San Carlos, Mexico. We've sunbathed, read crappy novels, crashed a beach club pool, hiked to an oasis, and sailed. I learned how to steer a sailboat, and am fully convinced that I could solo around the world if only I had a boat. I am actually posting from the sailboat right now. Awesome.

Anyway, I'll post more soon, but until then. . . (click each for larger).

Hilarious.

Our Student Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter has started a Veg Mentor Program. We're basically going to serve as a resource for people who want to go veg or vegan. Anyway, go read the Veg Mentor bios. Well, go read Matt's Veg Mentor bio. It's genius. Pure genius. Just scroll down for Matt.

Summer Work

The mission of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center (NWCRC or Center) is to strive for a just and equitable society. To do this, the NWCRC utilizes litigation, advocacy and education to safeguard the constitutional rights of activists, communities of color, and immigrants. The work I will do encompasses portions of all three of these legal tactics to advance particular campaigns. I will work with the Police Accountability project, the Center's End Racial Profiling Now! campaign and I will continue work on a project to protect the rights of political activists.

Police Accountability

The NWCRC is working with the two citizen police accountability committees; the Independent Review Division (IPR) and Citizens' Review Committee (CRC) to make Portland's citizen-based police oversight structure a truly independent body which effectively responds to citizen complaints. A report by the Center revealed that in addition to several high profile accusations of police brutality which have made this pressing issue much more urgent, police misconduct costs the City of Portland an average of $350,000 per year settling excessive use of force and wrongful death cases. With my summer stipend I would help the Center create a system with (1) the power to conduct investigations of accusations of police misconduct; (2) the power to compel testimony and gather evidence; and (3) the power to make enforceable determinations where police misconduct occurred.

To accomplish this, I will work with other communities who have implemented similar systems, participate in meetings with police and City administrators about creating this system, and participate in litigation. My job will be to serve the community and the Center as an advocate, as well as working with others to research and encourage city officials to implement this new policy. I will work to educate members of local communities about the processes of filing complaints, investigations and appeals.

End Racial Profiling Now!

A large portion of the work on this campaign will be to educate the communities affected by the Portland Police Bureau's racial profiling. My job will be to help create, maintain and implement Protect Your Rights trainings tailored to specific communities and address several key elements. The goal of these trainings is to educate people as to (1) their rights when stopped by police officers; (2) how to prevent escalation in the event of a stop; (3) general legal questions and concerns; (4) a legal clinic staffed by the Center's staff attorney and other volunteer attorneys; (5) resources for victims of police misconduct; and (6) other resources to spotlight potential police misconduct in the media. Creating the Protect Your Rights trainings will require legal research and substantial preparation with the staff attorney to create materials and to address the concerns of each community.

FOIA and Oregon Open Records

To protect the rights of activists and ensure that dissent has not been repressed entirely, the Center is conducting an independent investigation of government surveillance. To that end, the Center has filed requests with various state and federal agencies—through the Oregon Open Records law and the Freedom of Information Act—on behalf of more than 20 activists groups. The Center may deem litigation necessary both to compel agencies to comply with the requests and where illegal surveillance may have occurred. In the event of litigation, I will assist the staff attorney in legal research, filing and arguing motions, communicating with state and federal agencies, as well as acting as liaison between the Center and the activist community.

Benefits

Working with the NWCRC as a stipend recipient will not only enable me to be a valuable resource to under-served communities in Portland but also develop my skills as a future attorney. I will learn to expand and use my research skills and bridge the gap between legal professionals and City administrators thereby gaining significant experience. The lessons I will learn under the supervision of attorneys will fill the gaps between my legal education by giving me hands on, practical experience in multiple areas of legal practice including trial preparation, research, mediation, and client counseling. The summer employment will provide me the opportunity to be carefully supervised by the staff attorney but also allow some flexibility. The litigation and administrative law aspects will be educational and challenging. Serving the Center's constituencies through advocacy and education will allow me apply my dedication to social justice with my new legal skills.

Photos From Sunday

For more (and better) pictures from the Anti-War Demonstration, check out The Oregonian's Flickr site here.

Summer Stipend Recipient

“We should empower common people to do uncommon things.”
- Cesar Chavez

When I was six years old my mother's union went on strike. We were at the union hall until after midnight one night and I did not understand why. The next day my older brother and I joined my mother and her co-workers on the picket line and I still did not understand why.

Years later, I came to understand that we were waiting to hear whether the negotiating committee had come to an agreement with management. I came to understand that a work stoppage and picketing are two very powerful tools workers have over their employer. When I applied to law school, it was to protect, preserve and promote these basic rights of the workers.

When I was fifteen, I drove two drunk friends home from a party. I borrowed another friend's car because I was the only person at the party who had not been drinking. I did not have a license, nor did I have a safe ride home for myself. After dropping everyone off, I drove to another friend's house in hopes of finding a ride. At one point a police cruiser pulled up behind me and followed me for more than a mile. As I pulled off of the major road onto a darker residential street, the lights on the police cruiser lit up.

Before the officer could tell me why I had been pulled over, I acknowledged that I did not have a license and the car was not mine. I was arrested and taken to a juvenile facility.

To this day, I do not know why I was pulled over. I know that I was a racial minority in a nice car in an upscale, predominantly “White” neighborhood. Did the officer have a reasonable articulable suspicion to stop me? Was I selected as a result of racial profiling? How could this situation have been different? When I arrived at law school, these were questions I began to ask, and hope to address.

In college, I worked as a union organizer with the AFL-CIO. I was in the office one day when I received a phone call from a member's wife—she was frantic. Her husband, an active and loyal union member, had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As we attempted to calm her, we began to piece the story together.

He worked two jobs. One was his union janitorial job a few nights a week; the other was a non-union janitorial job the rest of the week. The night before we received the phone call, the woman's husband was working at his second job and he injured himself. A co-worker called the supervisor and relayed the incident. At this point the story became fuzzy, and it is unclear who called whom. However, what is clear is that ICE arrested our injured member, and he was deported.

Rather than help him get treatment, the supervisor reported the employee to ICE. I will never forget that feeling of helplessness. The supervisor knew he was an activist, knew that he was a union member, knew that he was undocumented. We knew what the supervisor had done was wrong, but we could do nothing about it. When I volunteer with Voz, a day laborer's organization in Portland, I think about that worker and his wife and family, and work to ensure that it will not happen again.

As a woman, and as a Latina, my mother worked particularly hard with my dad to provide a life for their family. When I look back now at the courage and fortitude it must have taken to support a strike, I am proud, not only of my mother, but of that legacy. It is this legacy that drives me to ensure that others are free to assert their rights.

My experience with police officers has shown me that empowering people with a basic understanding of their rights can have a tremendous effect on how they interact with authority figures. What can communities do to empower people to both question and respect authority? Losing the union activist at the hands of management taught me that workers' rights are worthless without basic human rights and liberties. To that end, the work I will be doing will give people that basic understanding as well as protect the rights upon which the Republic was built.

Our basic rights are being eroded. If we are to stem that tide, we must educate, advocate and litigate at every turn. As a stipend recipient my work will serve specific constituencies as a means to an end, for where liberty is denied to some, justice is not possible; where rights are not known, they will be eliminated. I have not simply a desire, but a responsibility to insure that the world in which I choose to live is not the world in which we are living.

Protest live blogging part 2

Chant of the day: while you're shopping bombs are dropping.

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Protest live blogging

Sign of the day so far: make levees not war.

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Yesterday

Bethany, Ang and I went to Powell's City of Books to see Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret. It was really interesting and I appreciate that he goes to great lengths to maintain the integrity of the project. Anyway, the whole point of this story is to say that Ang and I are on the PostSecret website. If you go to the site, and scroll down to the "PostSecret Events" and then click on that picture. Ang and I are standing in the back, on the left. I'm wearing a green hat, and Ang is in a grey v-neck shirt. Unfortunately, Bethany, who was standing on my right, was cropped.

MLB Goes (accidentally) Vegan

Major League Baseball makes the first major change to the universal cap in more than 50 years. The caps, formerly 100% wool, are now 100% polyester. Granted, it's still not organic cotton, but it's something.

Read more here.

Thanks to my brother, Aaron, for the tip.