Continuation Chronicles

-- By WilliamDavidWilliams - 25 Apr 2012

Imagination Test

Martha Tharaud believes that the efficacy of lawyering can be determined in assessing the amount the people that one can impact in terms of improving their living standards or quality of life. She doesn’t want workers to be afraid, and has used her courage since 1953 to help them as a labor lawyer. Although Martha Tharaud technically does not exist, she is reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau in her conviction for justice regardless of if she is ridiculed or is an outsider in terms of being a non-conformist. Henry David Thoreau stood up for John Brown despite the latter’s public ridicule and ultimate execution. Tharaud, Thoreau, and Brown all passed the imagination test. As I strive to pass this test as well, I have role models that I can use to help me on this path. Justice + Comfortable Life = Passing the Imagination Test

Why Do I Want to Pass the Imagination Test?

I really believe that I have been engrained with the importance of justice since birth. In the midst of my life, I have seen a lot of pain. My mother told me that in spite of what had happened in my family’s history, she believed in me. Seeing my relatives still working in the fast food industry has made me want to fight harder. Knowing that I have not heard from my father since I was two years makes me wonder what societal constructs I can change to help prevent black men from giving into the media messages of treating women poorly. I have seen pain in my mom’s eyes from receiving no child support and in her fingers and in her feet from rheumatoid arthritis. The pain is not from splitting, however, and she has not used that as an excuse for not raising her children. Listening to her tell me stories of how her mother was treated as a domestic and how her great grandmother had to work as a domestic in white households as well, gave me more impetus to find ways to make things better. Becoming the first person in my family to graduate from college and giving back through participation in Teach for America, I have seen the importance of education to improving life chances. However, education would be more fruitful if the institutional injustice in public education was corrected. I have seen too many children suffer to sit through class because they had not had a good meal. There have been too many teachers that give up because struggling against the system has become too hard for them. In addition, kids such as Trayvon Martin are killed like my student and Oscar Grant because of institutionalized racism, whether conscious or not.

These experiences have engrained in me a general sense of the need to work to help hundreds of thousands of people achieve their “civil rights,” but I still do not how exactly how that will take place.

Passion Selection

I saw a position for “Civil Rights Summer Associate” on a public interest database this spring. I applied immediately, as I knew that this position could allow me to work in civil rights areas in a law firm during my 1L summer. The firm, Beldock, Levine, and Hoffman, LLP specializes in civil rights litigation in employment discrimination and police misconduct. Thankfully, I had some experience in the latter through my participation in the Frederick Douglass Moot Court that I could express in the interview. As far as the former, I have been working since high school and participated in a teacher's strike as part of a union, so I have some insight into employment sector issues. However, I have so much to learn, and thus knew that working at Beldock would be an wonderful opportunity for me to grow as a person and to gain the tools necessary for me to be the lawyer I need to be.

Upon selection to work at this civil rights law firm, I realized that my entire life has led me to this position. In recognition of this and the effort to pass the imagination test, I decided to make my second paper a recognition of this objective and a set of “chronicles” in its continuation. Hopefully, in understanding how my past experiences have led me to where I am today, I can better determine through the chronicles how I should shape my future.

When I start in May, I will chronicle each day of my first week working and update throughout the summer. It is my goal to borrow a license in a courageous and creative way during my time at the firm. I believe these chronicles will be an effective method of helping me track progress toward that endeavor.

Taking Action –

Update: May 11th, 2012 I was accepted into a class called Public Sector Structural Reform in K-12 Education. I had talked this over before I applied with Eben, and he said that passing the imagination test requires action. He is right. Although I still have to keep working on it, I realize that you need to figure out what makes you "tick" and follow that path despite conformity or possible ridicule. Robinson is principled, despite other immoral practices in his profession. He said "A real lawyer knows how to take care of a legal problem." I hope I am on this path to be a "real lawyer," as I strive for it each and every day.

Tuesday, May 29th …

Hi William David,

I'll also be taking that course (see you there!), and am very interested to hear how your work with your firm goes - keep the updates coming!

Rohan Grey

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