Champions of Change Blog

Holding Our Nation to Its Promise

Ed. Note: Champions of Change is a weekly initiative to highlight Americans who are making an impact in their communities and helping our country rise to meet the many challenges of the 21st century.

On October 13, Attorney General Eric Holder recognized me as a Champion of Change for helping low-income people get their day in court. Of course, the real heroes are the people who fight daily in court to protect their lives and their families, despite an inability to find a lawyer, language barriers, and other obstacles. Here are two of their stories.

Charles Guider was late making a mortgage payment after his mother died.  When he tried to pay, none of the banks or mortgage servicers that had bought and sold the mortgage over the years would take the money. One of them filed for foreclosure. He’s still in his home today because his civil legal aid lawyer persuaded the lender to accept the money and drop the foreclosure.

Charles is one of the lucky ones. Record numbers of people are turning to the courts for help dealing with the effects of the financial crisis on their lives, including foreclosure, eviction, unjust denial of subsistence benefits, and domestic violence. The vast majority cannot afford a lawyer and cannot find one to help them for free. Nonetheless, the House of Representatives is pushing for a 27% cut in funding for the Legal Services Corporation, which provides lawyers for low-income families needing legal help.  To spur discussion about the need for civil legal aid, my colleagues and I produced a series of short videos telling the stories of Charles and other homeowners.  Please watch them and join us in the push for civil legal aid funding.

Maythe Ramirez tried to warn the judge in her child custody case that her husband had beaten her and might harm the children.  But Ms. Ramirez speaks Spanish, and there was no interpreter in the courtroom. She later told a New York Times reporter, “It is really as if you are doing nothing in court, standing still and not being able to explain what’s really happening.”

Ms. Ramirez had the misfortune to be in court in California, a state that provides interpreters for some court cases but not others. But her story is prompting change. Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah are among the states that have vastly improved their court interpreter programs in the past few years. And the American Bar Association is developing a historic set of standards for language access in courts, which will help the courts educate legislators and others about the need to fund this important aspect of access to the courts.

I have spent over a decade building a national program that uses advocacy, policy analysis, scholarship, public education and litigation to ensure that the justice system works when low-income communities need it. When I hear Charles’s and Maythe’s stories, I know our work is far from over. I am proud to have the opportunity to work with my fellow Champions of Change to hold our nation to its promise of “equal justice under law.”

Laura K. Abel is Acting Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. 

Making Change, One Child at a Time

Ed. Note: Champions of Change is a weekly initiative to highlight Americans who are making an impact in their communities and helping our country rise to meet the many challenges of the 21st century.

I am the daughter of Mexican immigrants, and was raised in the Mission District, San Francisco’s Latino neighborhood. I grew up attending the local public schools that, sadly, lacked many resources. Thanks to the guidance of First Graduate, a non-profit that helps students become first-generation college graduates, I was able to attend an excellent private high school. I was stunned and pained by the tremendous disparities I observed between the education I received there, and the education my working class peers and I had obtained in the Mission. I arrived being academically far behind my classmates, so my eventual admission to Harvard College represented a very meaningful accomplishment to me. I decided to devote my career to helping other low-income students obtain the quality education they need and deserve. Public education can and should become a means to improving the life of every individual and I believe it truly is the key to moving our nation forward.

I aspire to become a leader in education, and I am committed to acquiring a comprehensive, grass-roots understanding of public education. I believe the best kind of learning happens through the provision of services to people in need, which allows both parties to benefit and grow together. I have therefore served as a summer school teacher in San Francisco, teaching Humanities to eighth and ninth grade students from low-income families, and given presentations on the college admissions process to middle schools and high schools across the city. A strong believer in the value of learning across cultures, I have also been a mentor in a program for Native American youth, and a literacy and career coach in South Africa. During my semester abroad in Namibia, I interned at a school for orphans and vulnerable children called Hope Initiatives, where I taught students between the ages of two and twenty about a wide range of subjects including History, Math, Science, English and Health Education. My students have taught me many invaluable lessons - in particular lessons about resourcefulness and resilience. I have also learned that teaching is one of the most essential and most demanding jobs anyone can do, and I look forward to a day when our society will treat the teaching profession with all the respect and admiration it merits.