Spreading Change on Campus: Reflections on Year One of the Leadership Fellows Program
For the last year, I have had the pleasure of working with the People’s Parity Project’s Leadership Fellows. Now that we are recruiting the next cohort of fellows, I would like to take a moment to reflect on what I have seen.
From the beginning, it has been clear that our fellows are dedicated to building a pro-people legal system that values people over the powerful. At the cohort’s retreat in Atlanta, the fellows developed a vision of law school that acknowledges the racist and classist foundations of the U.S. legal system and the harms perpetuated by capitalist and conservative ideologies within the same. However, they balanced this recognition of systemic issues within the legal system with hope for a better future, led by students with strong ethical convictions who are empowered to organize in their schools, workplaces, and communities.
They centered their local- and state-level vision on the needs of the communities they serve, supporting community-led movements and uplifting the voices of those most intimately affected by our laws. At the national level, they envisioned a new narrative and purpose for the legal profession that does not merely view lawyers as representing the interests of their clients, regardless of the harm they do to our country and world, and they committed themselves to creating a profession in which lawyers, as workers, wield their power to strengthen democracy, fight corporate power, hold governments accountable, and fight for the rights of the marginalized.
Even in only a year, I have seen our fellows live out these values that they envisioned during that first time that they were together. Fellows have started campus PPP chapters and used their positions to educate their peers and communities on their rights during protests, to highlight the importance of judicial elections and state courts, and to create publications giving an outlet for progressive thought on campus. They have studied the professional diversity of their state judiciaries to show the need for more pro-people judges with experience working with the people rather than powerful interests. They are hard at work organizing for increased support for public interest students, for workers fighting non-compete agreements in their states, and in response to the likely invalidation of race-conscious admissions policies at colleges.
Through all of these campaigns, our fellows have continued to center the needs of their communities and provide opportunities for their peers to join in the movement and develop the skills they need to be pro-people lawyers. I am so proud to have been a small part of these leaders’ development, and I can’t wait to see how they continue to make change. It is an inspiration to see such amazing organizers in action.
If you are a rising 2L interested in becoming a Leadership Fellow, please don’t hesitate to reach out at steve@peoplesparity.org or to apply at https://actionnetwork.org/forms/ppp-leadership-fellows-application.
Steve Kennedy is the Organizing and Network Director at People’s Party Project.
