PROFILES in JUSTICE
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PROFILES in JUSTICE 2017 ANNUAL REPORT Table of Contents From our Board President 1 Programs & Timeline 2 Leadership Profiles Angela Ciolfi, Director, Litigation and Advocacy 4 Adeola Ogunkeyede, Director, Civil Rights and Racial Justice 5 Brenda Castañeda, Director, Economic Justice 6 Rachael Deane, Director, JustChildren 7 Edgar Aranda-Yanoc, Senior Lead Organizer 8 Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Director, Immigrant Advocacy 9 Program Highlights 10 Financials 12 Donors 13 Board of Directors, Advisors & Staff 27 2 Legal Aid Justice Center FROM OUR BOARD PRESIDENT Dear Friends, Welcome to the Legal Aid Justice Center’s 2017 Annual Report. 2017 marked LAJC’s 50th Anniversary. As Board Chair, I am deeply honored to have the privilege of stewarding the incredible investment of time, resources, and passion from so many who came before me. Their investments over the last five decades laid the foundation upon which today’s staff proudly stands and fights for justice in our Commonwealth and across the country. In a different world, there would be space in this report to give our 50th anniversary its full due, but form follows function. There was precious little time in 2017 for retrospection. It was a dark year in many ways. LAJC’s client communities faced unprecedented challenges. Yet, time and time again, thanks to your support, LAJC’s staff rose to the challenge. And it should not be lost that in the face of 2017’s trials and tribulations, LAJC launched its exciting new Civil Rights and Racial Justice Program. To quote Martin Luther King, Jr., “out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” This report introduces you (or re-introduces you) to the amazing advocates whose work you sustained last year. I hope it fills you with the same pride and hope that it does me and the rest of LAJC’s Board of Directors. As LAJC moves forward into its next 50 years, our collective legacy is in good hands. Thank you, Jonathan T. Blank, Board Chair, LAJC 2017 Annual Report 1 50 YEARS of MORE JUSTICE, LESS POVERTY. Volunteers from Boyle and Bain, a private law firm, CALAS receives its first provide advice to CALAS federal-era funding for legal clients one afternoon per aid from the U.S. Office of week, establishing a pro bono Economic Opportunity. model still in use. 1970 1984 1967 1978 1996 A group of Charlottesville Outreach services The U.S. Congress drastically attorneys and law students begin to rural reduces federal funding for legal establishes the Charlottesville counties of Nelson, aid providers nationwide and Albemarle Legal Aid Society Greene, and Louisa. imposes significant restrictions (CALAS) despite some on the representation of low- opposition from the local income clients. CALAS begins to bar and the law school. examine its options to continue serving the full range of legal needs of low-income families. Today, Legal Aid Justice Center serves the The Civil Rights and Racial Justice Program works metropolitan areas of Charlottesville, Richmond, to end the criminalization of poverty in Virginia by Petersburg, and Northern Virginia. Our four exposing and addressing the connections among programs, Civil Rights and Racial Justice, policing, poverty, race, and injustice. This program Economic Justice, JustChildren, and Immigrant works to reform our criminal legal system’s over Advocacy, continue to push forward our mission reliance on incarceration and to dismantle systems to seek equal justice for all by solving clients’ legal of racial injustice. problems, strengthening the voices of low-income communities, and rooting out the inequities that The Economic Justice Program provides assistance keep people in poverty. Each program combines to families and communities facing legal dilemmas legal representation, community organizing, and related to housing, public benefits, employment, systemic advocacy to achieve real reforms for healthcare, consumer protection, or the rights of the communities in Virginia. elderly. It engages in systemic advocacy with and on TODAYbehalf of low-income people in these issue areas. CALAS becomes the Legal Aid Justice Center following a series of mergers and federal/non-federal splits with legal aid organizations in Richmond LAJC dedicates the Charles (Central Virginia Legal Aid Society) B. Holt Rock House, restored and Petersburg (Southside Virginia with community support, to Legal Services). LAJC opens offices serve as headquarters for a in Petersburg, Richmond, and Falls pro bono project with the Church to ensure these areas have firm of Hunton & Williams. access to unrestricted legal services. 2001 2007 1998 2003 2017 CALAS gives up its federal LAJC conducts a LAJC launches the Civil Rights funding to a newly formed capital campaign to & Racial Justice Program legal aid organization called purchase and renovate focusing on the criminalization Piedmont Legal Services. the Bruton Building at of poverty in Virginia. LAJC CALAS launched the 1000 Preston Avenue also launches a formal JustChildren Program and in Charlottesville to initiative focused on the rights the Virginia Justice Center for serve as a permanent of immigrant farmworkers Farm and Immigrant Workers headquarters. throughout Virginia. (later becoming the Immigrant Advocacy Program). The Immigrant Advocacy Program supports low- income immigrants in their efforts to find justice and fair treatment. In addition to representing clients with individual legal issues, we promote systemic reforms to reduce the abuse and exploitation of immigrants and advocate for state and local policies that promote integration and protect immigrants from aggressive immigration enforcement. JustChildren is Virginia’s largest children’s law program. We rely on a range of strategies to make sure the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable young people receive the services and support they need to lead successful lives in their communities. TODAY3 ANGELA CIOLFI Director, Litigation and Advocacy we appealed. Now we are back, asking every Why do you care about the work LAJC judge, lawmaker, and executive official with the is doing? power to stop this senseless state-perpetrated Caring is visceral. It’s that hard place that forms victimization to take action. This campaign is not in my chest when something seems piercingly about driving. It’s about basic human dignity unjust. It’s that soaring feeling when the and the right to survive. movement wins its first chip in the facade. It’s that warm rush when I get to tell a client good What do you think is the most important news. Quite simply, LAJC’s work makes me feel alive. thing LAJC has done? Ever??? That is a tough one. It may be that the most important thing we ever did was decide What called you to go into legal aid? never to say “we don’t do that.” Of course, My origin story won’t sell any books. I had a there are things we just don’t do, but we are happy, if ordinary, childhood growing up in the constantly adjusting our priorities to meet the foothills of the Blue Ridge, mostly taking for needs of the communities we serve. That’s why granted my lucky lot in life. I came to legal aid our lawyers were there at Dulles and filed one after a series of eye-opening experiences: from of the first challenges to the Muslim Ban just sitting in my hometown courthouse watching the hours after it went into effect. That’s why we criminal justice system create more problems were on the ground in Charlottesville before, than it solved, to listening to the judge I clerked during, and after August 12th providing legal for, U. S. District Judge Reginald Lindsay, training and community support. That’s why we tell stories about what it was like to be a 4th supported Charlottesville community members grader attending a black school in Birmingham, in their push for greater police accountability. Alabama, when Brown was decided. I continue That’s why we spent 5 years lobbying the to learn from community members and Virginia Board of Education for graduation rate colleagues every day about what it means to accountability, eventually resulting in a 9-point struggle against corporate and governmental increase in the statewide graduation rate. systems that feed off our most vulnerable. What case has affected you the most What one thing are you most proud of from personally? the last year? Every case affects me personally. Every day From the last year, the thing I am proudest of is in our offices we see senseless legal and the biggest case I ever lost. In 2016 we filed a human tragedies. You can’t not take that class action lawsuit on behalf of the nearly one home with you. million people whom Virginia traps in a cycle of debt, unemployment, and incarceration by suspending their drivers’ licenses for being too What initiatives will you be tackling next? poor to pay court fines and fees. In 2017, our What will the world throw at our clients next? case was dismissed for technical reasons, and Whatever it is, we will be ready. 4 Legal Aid Justice Center ADEOLA OGUNKEYEDE Director, Civil Rights and Racial Justice What called you to go into legal aid? What case has affected you the most To be effective, anti-poverty work must explicitly personally? recognize the racial disparities that exist within Scott v. Clarke, where we represent in federal the poverty population across the country and court the women of Fluvanna Correctional work to reform the systems that contribute to Center in their quest for better healthcare at or perpetuate those disparities. Virginia is no the prison. Through this case, LAJC has been exception to that disparity. I came to legal aid able to shine a spotlight on one life-threatening to challenge the ways in which contact with one consequence of mass criminalization in such system- the criminal legal system- creates Virginia-the state’s failure to provide adequate economic instability for far too many Virginians, healthcare to those it incarcerates.