Kelly Jentzen GALILEE Blog
January 4, 2010
Day one of our GALILEE trip to Washington DC is over, and it was an informative and exciting day. Our group of six NDLS students began the day at the office of Karamah, an organization of Muslim women human rights lawyers. We learned that Karamah has a tripartite mission of education, scholarship, and leadership-building in America and abroad. Knowing little about Islam and its laws, I was fascinated that Karamah focuses on ensuring that governments’ law-interpreting bodies construe contracts and other legal documents between Muslim men and women in a way that properly reflects Islamic law. The staff at Karamah carry out their work through educating lawyers and other officials in various countries. Additionally, staff members write papers on various relevant topics, and they host leadership workshops, both in DC and abroad, to educate and empower Muslim women. After an engaging discussion, we were treated to lunch at their office. We then took pictures, said our goodbyes, and made our way to the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition. Interestingly, one of the staff members at CAIR was a fellow Notre Dame undergrad with me, and seeing him again, for the first time since graduating, was a pleasant surprise!
CAIR Coalition works directly with detained immigrants in local detention facilities. They educate detainees about their rights, and in some instances, CAIR Coalition staff are able to link detainees with free legal representation. I did not previously realize that detained immigrants, as non-residents of the United States, do not share the same rights at citizens and consequently do not have the right to counsel that Americans enjoy. CAIR Coalition staff members and their pro bono partners provide resources and services to detainees that they may not otherwise even know exists, let alone afford, and this could make the difference between life in America and death in their homeland.
January 5, 2010
I was especially excited to begin today. We visited the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP) and met with their policy director, Mr. Jason Small. I worked at the Center for the Homeless in South Bend for two years after graduating from college, so issues of youth in poverty and their access to education, as well as issues of housing, fair wages, and the provision of life-changing services are of special interest. NLCHP believes that housing is a human right and not just a civil one. To that end, they research current trends in homelessness and poverty, track proposed bills in Congress that deal with these issues, advocate through action alerts, and generally educate the public. At 3 p.m. we met with Angie, a former colleague of mine at the Center for the Homeless who now works at Genocide Intervention Network. GI-NET’s founder and current president, Mark Hanis, felt called to begin this work through the inspiration of his grandparents, who were Holocaust survivors. After hearing about what would later be designated genocide in Rwanda, Hanis resolved that “never again” would such an atrocity occur. GI-NET is now five years old, and they work to mobilize resources in different areas of concern around the globe. They work with human rights activists on the ground in these areas to provide ordinary citizens the tools to prevent and stop genocide. In addition to providing aid, GI-NET, along with its members and supporters, lobby Congress and the President to take action to end genocide and mass atrocities across the globe. GI-NET is not an organization composed of lawyers, but there are two lawyers on staff and numerous ways legal expertise is helpful to the organization. After discussing ways that pro bono lawyers and law students may be interested in working with GI-NET, our group stopped at a coffee shop to discuss the happenings of the day. After some coffee, it was time for a Capital’s hockey game where we enjoyed rink-side seats. Caps win!
January 6, 2010
Our final day of GALILEE was no less interesting or inspiring than the first two. We began our day at Cornerstone School, which is a Christian-based charter school in the District. The school consists of about 200 students, grades pre-k through 8th grade, and they boast great academic achievement in a caring and safe atmosphere. Graduates have gone on to prestigious high schools and colleges. Our group split up and assisted various teachers with different tasks. I was placed in the first-grade classroom where I played reading games with Christian and Elijah.
After spending a couple of hours at the school, our group had a lunch meeting with Stephanie, who works for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Her story is a fascinating one, as she is a practicing lawyer, which is not necessarily a career I first thought would translate into a career with DHS. She works with the refugee and asylum division, and her office reviews cases that may be particularly novel or difficult to decide. Stephanie, through the course of her career working with refugees and asylum-seekers in different capacities and with different government entities, has traveled the world. She told us of a time she had to be evacuated from a refugee camp! Beyond her stories being fascinating for their adventure, we learned of yet another way to make a legal career through the promotion of international human rights.
Throughout these three days, we visited an immigration rights nonprofit with a local focus yet international reach (CAIR Coalition), a nonprofit with international reach working to systematically eliminate genocide and mass atrocities that currently necessitate the movement of people (Genocide Intervention Network), and today we discussed the work of a government agency responsible for setting the parameters around and actually making the determinations about who is allowed to become a United States citizen (DHS). All work in different ways, but all possess the same end goal.
After lunch, we traveled to our last destination – International Justice Mission, which is no less inspiring and thought-provoking than the rest. IJM has about 400 staff members around the globe working to realize their four-fold purpose of providing relief to victims of various kinds of abuse, holding perpetrators accountable through lawful means, structurally preventing abuse from occurring again, and providing life-changing aftercare to victims in order to help them transition to long-term success in their new lives. We learned the stories of three people, two who had been bonded slaves and one who was a victim of sex trafficking, and how IJM freed them from their past lives of despair.
Our past three days were full of meetings, fruitful discussion, coffee shops, and even some sight-seeing in our nation’s capital. I am inspired and encouraged after witnessing some ways in which lawyers, through a career in public interest or through a commitment to public interest through pro bono representation, can positively impact humanity. As I prepare to travel back to South Bend and begin my second semester buried in books and writing an appellate brief, I hope to keep the images of real-world legal application in my mind to help me get through the late nights of reading, researching, and writing. The harder I work now to gain legal skills, the better prepared I will be to take on the awesome responsibility of representing a client or furthering a cause with the passion, commitment, and professionalism of the people we met on our trip.
