This past summer, due to the generous support of the Laidlaw Foundation, the incredible kindness of my friend, Elli Ament in lending me her car, and the guidance of Georgetown’s Center for Research and Fellowships, I worked in Charleston, West Virginia, at the statewide headquarters of Legal Aid. There, I received incredible mentorship from many, many different people in the office. I can honestly say that the experience of working in indigent legal services fundamentally changed how I would like to spend my life’s work.
I grew up in a rural factory town in Upstate New York which rests at the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. On both sides of my family, we’ve been Appalachian for generations. The broad, but distinct region holds a lot of connotations in the American mind. I like to think the region is first known for its beauty, but likely a close second is the rural poverty which continues to afflict many. During my time at Georgetown, I’ve often felt a little out of place socio-economically. Sometimes this was due to offices failing to provide services to “students in precarious financial situations.” Other times that out-of-place feeling was linked with peers whose financial backgrounds had far outpaced my own. Most often it was due to the imposter syndrome I subjected myself to. It feels cliché to say this since we know from study after study how ubiquitous imposter syndrome for low-income students at elite institutions is. I want to name that in my reflection on this summer since for me it started with that overwhelming feeling that I was not qualified to do the good in the world I once hoped to.
This summer I worked on legal issues for West Virginians living in poverty who also had a history of substance use disorder. This work saves lives and promotes self-sufficiency, two essential goals for crafting flourishing communities. The project I worked on worked with clinics treating folks in recovery from Substance Use Disorder. Sometimes when folks enter a period of recovery, they face repercussions from the time they spent in active drug use. For example, someone, during a period of active opiate addiction, may have driven while under the influence and received a criminal citation. They may have faced an abuse or neglect case in the family court system for their active drug use. In these circumstances, they might benefit from legal representation. Criminal charges, family separation, and other legal issues can cause significant barriers to maintaining a period of recovery. Because of this, removing these barriers builds recovery capital and can help prevent relapse & fatal overdoses. Legal work for persons experiencing Substance Use Disorders saves lives. Additionally, it can increase self-sufficiency by eliminating barriers to income. Most often this summer, I saw that in the criminal record expungement work and the driver’s licenses restoration cases I took part in. When you live in a rural area, the ability to work is intrinsically linked to the ability to drive. I’ve seen this my whole life growing up in a rural area and West Virginia was no different in that regard. Therefore, when someone can get a better job by having their record expunged or obtaining their ability to drive again, barriers to self-sufficiency get removed. Folks can better support themselves, making them less reliant on the social safety net programs and continue contributing to their communities in robust ways.
I think it was good work and I am so fortunate to get to do it. However, throughout the summer I kept wondering if law was really the best language to speak to poverty. Substance Use Disorder becomes particularly pernicious in poor towns, as my boss Brendan Wood explained to me during my first week at Legal Aid. He used a metaphor of two plants. If you have one plant in good soil with a regular amount of water, putting a little bit of vinegar won’t completely kill the plant, but if you have a plant in rocky soil with no water, even the smallest bit of vinegar will be detrimental to an already dying plant. The plant will soak up the vinegar to get just the smallest bit of nutrients. Yet we know in West Virginia that metaphor is not quite apt as pharmaceutical companies pumped millions of painkillers into towns of less than 5,000. It was not a little bit of vinegar on a plant here, but rather an entire container. At the time, it did not garner national attention largely because often poor, politically-disempowered Appalachian communities get viewed nationally as disposable. The Opioid Crisis of Appalachia has now received national attention, but not nearly enough. When I spoke to friends from outside the region, I often heard “it was terrible.” As I saw this summer, it’s still going on and the poverty in the region is on no one’s campaign priority list. People will die. Children will be doomed. This is my home region and I see it on fire. I think the rest of my life may well be spent just trying to pour a bucket of water on it.
At Legal Aid, there was wonderful attention devoted everyday to individuals’ lives. I also want to work towards more systemic change, which may need to come from outside the local legal system. Law has trouble speaking to poverty, but courts can compel fairness towards the impoverished. This is only possible when we fund programs that serve the poorest among us. In addition to those funds, we need to work to limit the dangers of poverty in America. Children deserve homes. People deserve dignity. Communities ought to flourish. We can build this America, but only if we work diligently to make the world a better place. As young professionals we must acknowledge that we live in a broken world, which is simply too broken to leave it as such. We must actively work in pursuit of a higher goal than our own personal financial gain, but rather for the improved condition of us all.