Persistence can pay off.
One day, while sitting in his “Social Inequality in America” class, St. Louis Fellow Brodhi Ramirez ‘27 listened to a teaching assistant discuss the role that the legal and social justice organization, ArchCity Defenders, played in the Ferguson Uprising.
“I got chills for a minute, and that same day, I sent Jacki [Langum, Deputy Director of ArchCity] an email,” Ramirez said.
Needless to say, he got the job. Ramirez spent the summer at ArchCity as a St. Louis Fellow, supporting their mission of providing pro bono legal and social services support to St. Louisans.
ArchCity Defenders is an advocacy organization based in downtown St. Louis that “combats the criminalization of poverty and state violence, especially in communities of color,” through their legal support work. The organization offers legal representation and impact litigation, provides social services to clients, and engages in advocacy and community collaboration efforts.
Since its beginning, ArchCity has provided legal representation to its clients in municipal courts, and over time has taken a more holistic approach to providing support. Through his St. Louis Fellows summer, Ramirez was able to see the many ways the organization supports the needs of St. Louisans.
The firm’s lawyers have begun to offer assistance for the collateral issues that come from clients’ contact with the criminal legal system, including clients’ losing custody of their children or losing their housing.
Deputy Executive Director Jacki Langum spoke to how ArchCity’s evolving services have risen from interactions with clients.
“All of it has been in response to what the community needs and what we experience with the individual clients,” Langum said.
During his internship with ArchCity, Ramirez assisted with various aspects of this holistic approach to support, including engaging in the organization’s record expungement work and community outreach programming.
As part of his work, Ramirez read through clients’ expungement applications and saw how people are often negatively affected by crimes they committed decades ago. “[Expungement] does impact people and you get to see how it can change their life,” he said.
Ramirez said that one interaction in particular as a St. Louis Fellow strengthened his preexisting interest in law. As he was staffing ArchCity’s booth at a Freedom Summer event, a woman came up to him to discuss a housing issue, and he was able to point her to an ArchCity attorney for further support.
“It was [both] sad and nice to see a real person and feel like I could play some part in helping them, especially with St. Louis’ history with the disenfranchisement of poor and Black communities,” he said. “It reminded me of why I’m interested in law and why I want to be a lawyer—it’s to help people.”
While the crux of ArchCity’s work centers on legal support for clients, ArchCity also works to change and dismantle systems that systemically disempower lower income individuals and people of color.
“We have a community collaborations team, where we actually have organizers on staff, which is really rare for a law firm,” Langum said. “We are able to engage our clients in legislative and policy making so that they are involved in making the world [a place] that they want to participate in.”
She further emphasized that ArchCity centers its work on the most under-resourced communities in St. Louis.
“Our goal is to primarily focus on communities of color because those are the ones with increased contact with the criminal legal system,” Langum said. “And they’re also going to be disproportionately impacted by the lack of resources.”
Both Langum and Ramirez spoke to the mindsets that enable them to continue working to improve people’s lives, even while effecting change is a constant uphill battle.
“When you are working collectively, you’re unstoppable,” Langum said. “I think when you have those days where it gets frustrating or you have a setback, you know that unless you keep doing that, there’s never going to be change.”
Ramirez also noted how affecting change, even if it’s on a smaller level, is a valuable pursuit.
“Even if you’re not changing the system right now, you’re still helping people in real time,” he said. “That’s also very important.”
The St. Louis Fellows Program is offered annually to select WashU undergraduates and is made possible by generous donations to the Gephardt Institute. Learn more here. If you would like to make a gift to support future St. Louis Fellows, please click here or contact Stephanie Kurtzman, Executive Director, at GephardtAdvancement@wustl.edu.