This year, in addition to our Haywood Burns and Weinglass Fellows, the NLG National Office is hosting five fellows from the COVID-19 Rapid Response/Systems Summer Institute. A collaboration between People’s Parity Project (PPP), the Systemic Justice Project (SJP), and the Justice Catalyst (JC), the COVID-19 Rapid Response/Systems Summer Institute engages law students in summer legal fellowships, working with legal and law-related organizations. While working on urgent projects, fellows also participate in additional educational and community-building programming.
NLG National Office fellows are working on a Street Law project, conducting legal research in order to create Know Your Rights materials designed for movement organizers and activists. These materials include research on political prosecution of activists, COVID-19 emergency orders, resources for civil rights litigation, know-your-rights guides for gender justice movements, and a workers rights guide. Fellows from Systems Summer Institute have also been placed with the NLG SF Bay Area Chapter and the NLG NJ-DE Prisoners Legal Advocacy Network (PLAN).
NLG National Office Systems Summer Institute Fellows:
Sarah Ahmed is a rising 3L at the Texas A&M University School of Law. She is interested in work that explores the systemic roots of our social problems and scrutinizes the assumptions of neutrality and justness in our legal system. As a future lawyer, she hopes to advance the ways that legal professionals can help to bring transformative change.
Natasha Bynum is a rising 2L at CUNY School of Law in Queens, New York. After studying Food Systems and Public Policy at The Evergreen State College, she continued her education in the fields of small sustainable farms in upstate New York. Natasha plans to pursue a career in Environmental Justice.
Pat Keogh is a rising 3L at Cardozo Law in New York City, went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and is originally from New Jersey. Broadly interested in civil liberties, he has a particular affinity for free speech and voting rights issues.
Alessandra Stevens is a rising 2L JD/MPH student at Northeastern University School of Law. Alessandra is currently based in Atlanta after a year as a Scholar in Action studying sexual and reproductive health at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. She has a passion for reproductive justice, immigrant rights and grassroots policy campaigns
Kylie Yapp is from Anderson, Indiana and a rising 2L at IU Maurer School of Law. She is interested in working in public service or nonprofit law. On the side, she also wrote a children’s book called Too Many Raindrops.
