Summer Internship at The Bronx Defenders

Dear Friends, Please help my friend and co-intern from the capital defense office in Mississippi last summer, Perisha Wallace, fund this summer at The Bronx Defenders. WE ONLY HAVE UNTIL MAY 14TH TO MAKE THIS POSSIBLE. She has already accepted the internship offer but will have to withdraw if we can't secure funding. The Bronx Defenders is an excellent public defense organization that has pioneered the model of holistic public defense, providing criminal defense as well as civil legal aid and case management in one place to really help people avoid coming right back into contact with the criminal "justice" system. Public interest law is so underfunded that many students want to practice it
 end up working at private firms instead because they can't afford not to. Public interest law school internships are not funded by the organizations where students intern, because they can't afford it. It's actually typically funded by law schools. But Perisha's law school has not provided her with summer funding this year, and has denied her the ability to do the criminal defense internship for credit to get financial aid for the summer because of her status as a transfer student. Furthermore, she is finding this out at a time when deadlines for most other
 summer grants have passed. This work is deeply personal to Perisha. Coming from a community affected by mass incarceration, she is dedicated to representing others in similar situations. While many public defenders and public interest lawyers have safety nets that make it possible to take on exhausting and underfunded jobs, we need to come together as a legal community to support those who don't. Please help an amazing woman who is going to make an incredible trial lawyer--fighting to defend the poor and underrepresented and keep people out of jail/prison--gain the skills she will need to do so! Thanks, Shira & Perisha