Recommended Citation: Osha Oneeka Daya Brown, Lee Doane, Sterling Fleming, Hakim Trent, Jeremy Valerio, &and Outside Organizers with No New Jails NYC, $11 Billion for What?! Incarcerated Organizers with No New Jails NYC Explain How to Shut Down Rikers

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Osha Oneeka Daya Brown, Lee Doane, Sterling Fleming, Hakim Trent, Jeremy Valerio, and Outside Organizers with No New Jails NYC†

The House of the Interpreter

                 The Social Studies class didn’t teach me shits your Honor
                      We was shooting dice at third period
                 WE WAS in the bathrooms getting nice smoking
                      blunts at third period
                 My principal was a drug dealer
                      My teachers was drug feelers
                 My projects was an institution that prep me for
                      THE Metal fence institution
                 We went to jail to have family reunions
                 This is deeper then confusion
                 No computers, No cellphones
                      The history class didn’t teach me the truth about
                      myself I’m actually more valuable than what you
                 considered to be wealth
                 The system treated me like a gun used me and placed
                      back on the shelf the science class didn’t teach
                 me about health
                 I’m dominant
                      We need COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS to reach our
                      Accomplishments
                                                               – Hakim Trent-El

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Alejo Rodriguez†

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Introduction: An Odyssey and an Awakening

In 1985 I was convicted for a robbery related homicide. I wish I could say that it wasn’t me, that they picked the wrong person out of the line-up, or that I had nothing to do with the actual shooting, but I can’t. The minute I picked up a gun with the thought that a robbery would somehow rid me of my drug dependent lifestyle was the minute I became the coward who would end up taking someone’s life. I received an eighteen years to life sentence and before I knew it, I was in Attica Correctional Facility. I was a twenty-three-year-old unskilled high school graduate who had never been incarcerated. I didn’t know how I would make it to see the next day, let alone the next eighteen years. All I had was the present, “one day at a time.”

Prison is a world in and of itself. It is designed to break the human spirit. Yet, strangely, there was a familiarity about prison that I didn’t expect. Sure, the constant threat of cell bars, prison guards, and gun towers were all new and intimidating, but the sense that there was no way out and the constant threat of violence were, in many respects, no different than where I grew up in the Bronx. Many of us came from the same neighborhoods, same families, and formed the same gangs. Drugs were readily available, as was gambling, and prostitution. It would be years before I would hear the term “school-to-prison pipeline,” but once I did, I knew for certain that it was more than just a catch phrase—we were its by-product. Continue reading →

Lee Clark†

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As a trans person, one of the places that I have found safety is through the way I represent my gender expression. Clothing is at the pinnacle of my gender expression; it is something that I have had control over for a long time. To quote the famous social theorist Simone De Beauvoir, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”¹ I might have been assigned female at birth, but I definitely did not express my gender in feminine ways, opting for clothes from the boys’ section of stores rather than the girls’ section. One way that people have been classified in society for centuries is through the lens of the gender binary as showcased through clothing, media, and culture. Clothing and fashion are where I recognized my personal autonomy at a young age, and how I could fight back against gender restrictions throughout my life.

A quote from Daniel Friedman, a suit designer from Brooklyn-based tailoring company Bindle & Keep, who works almost exclusively with trans and non-binary² clients, resonated with me: “It’s all about feeling great in your body, especially when people have been struggling their entire lives and they finally get into something that really fits them . . . the way they’ve always envisioned something would fit them. That’s not fashion anymore and that’s what we’re after.”³ Obviously, clothing is fashion, as it pertains to garments and construction, but it extends further than that. Bindle & Keep is dedicated to dressing an identity and a body. Clothing and gender have a direct correlation as one of the ways to present one’s gender daily. Cis and trans people alike curate outfits and silhouettes that are used to present gender. But while the trans community is fighting for our fit in the courts, we are also fighting the gender binary that has never recognized our identity. Continue reading →

Sean Meehan†

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Landlord harassment against low-income, rent-regulated tenants is an enduring problem in New York City that forces vulnerable tenants from their homes as landlords illegally pursue greater profits. Protection from harassment was a significant issue during Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s unprecedented land use revision of nearly 140 rezonings from 2002 to 2014.^[1] As communities throughout the city began to understand the inequitable effects of rezoning, particularly for low-income communities of color,^[2] many tenants and community groups began to organize and demand greater protection from the anticipated effects that rezoning would have on their communities.

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Lelia A. James^*

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Introduction

There is a need for police reform here in the United States. The violent policing of Black men, women, queer, trans, disabled, undocumented, etc. is an example of how Black lives are continuously disvalued. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter gained mass public awareness after the police killed the unarmed Black men, Michael Brown in Ferguson, MI,^[1] Freddie Gray in Baltimore, MD,^[2] and Eric Garner in Staten Island, NY.^[3] Black Americans are more than twice as likely as white Americans to be killed by police officers.^[4] The #BlackLivesMatter chapter-based organization is creating a movement that aims to put an end to disvaluing Black lives. They have a ten-point plan called “Campaign Zero.”^[5] Campaign Zero is a police reform campaign that recommends policies and proposals different state legislatures should consider and enact.^[6] One of the tools listed to help end violent policing is the use of body cameras on police officers while they are on duty.^[7]

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Nick Bourland *

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Introduction

As Justice Kennedy recently noted, “[d]e jure residential segregation by race was declared unconstitutional almost a century ago, but its vestiges remain today, intertwined with the country’s economic and social life.”^[1] In order to effectively combat the full range of contemporary housing discrimination, including its more evolved forms, such as predatory lending^[2] and discriminatory rezoning plans,^[3] plaintiffs must be able to plead Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) claims under the disparate impact theory.^[4]

After decades of use nationwide, disparate impact was definitively endorsed by the Supreme Court for FHA claims in 2015.^[5] However, the endorsement came with a caveat—a poorly defined “robust causality requirement.”^[6] As detailed below, this heightened causation standard haphazardly blurs the line between disparate impact and disparate treatment, leaving plaintiffs’ well-plead FHA claims in jeopardy of dismissal.

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Matthew T. McDonough†

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Introduction

The U.S. Supreme Court’s March 29, 2016 per curiam decision in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association means that, for a time, unions have won the battle.^[1] But the question concerning the lawfulness of fair share fees, crucial to the feasibility of collective bargaining, will undoubtedly return to the Court. Spearheaded by the Center for Individual Rights and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund, two conservative non-profit law firms,^[2] union opponents are dedicated to stripping public unions of their right to charge non-members for collective bargaining negotiation and other services rendered.^[3] This jeopardizes thousands of collective bargaining agreements across the country and not just those in the public sector.^[4]

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Kara R. Finck[1]

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At its core, family defense protects the legal relationship between a parent and their child, one of the most intimate, complicated, and nuanced relationships in practice and under the law. Family defenders represent parents and caregivers accused of neglect or abuse of their children in family and dependency courts. While the process of individual representation may appear straightforward, the ideals of family defense incorporate an explicit recognition of the social determinants that bring families into the child welfare system in the first place, including poverty, substance abuse, and untreated mental health issues. Although much of the attention paid to the child welfare and family court systems is focused on children and their placement in foster care, family defenders understand that any intervention by the child welfare agency and family court system has a profound impact on children and families. Often referred to as attorneys for parents, in literal contrast to attorneys for children, family defenders advocate beyond the direct representation of an individual client. Even the act of renaming lawyers for parents in abuse and neglect proceedings as “family defenders” as opposed to “parents’ attorneys” highlights the potential impact and scope of this work. Inherently, family defense practice incorporates legal advocacy that supports, strengthens, and stabilizes the client’s family, consequently promoting better outcomes for children.

This article posits that there are three critical components which should be included in any family defense practice model designed for advocating for parents and children in the child welfare and family court systems. A robust family defense is defined not only by its commitment to the zealous defense of clients, including all of the legal tools available in litigation, but also by its recognition of the unique context of family defense, which incorporates social services, community engagement, and anti-poverty lawyering into a comprehensive response for parents in family court.

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