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Jacque Larrainzar said during the community panel in thinking about building community connections, "Don't come to us when you need us. Come to us for a relationship." -Vicki

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I loved learning about the Oakland City Attorney's Neighborhood Law Corps because it seems like a fantastic way to both grow and and enhance community connections and to find truly bad actors in the business community.  I plan to push for a similar unit in my office.

I don't doubt that everyone remembers Ms. Margaret  - how not?!  What struck me most about her presentation was her rightful insistence on gathering data ex ante, on having the facts and figures before meeting with the powers that be.  Passion is critical, but what has the greatest likelihood of generating action is hard evidence.

Lastly, I'm extremely grateful for the systematic approaches to various phases of the work, and to the work overall, that PRP has derived and so generously shares.

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What a magnificent human being Ms. Margaret is!  As I said in the takeaways section, the Neighborhood Law Corps is an inspirational idea. That the community should be involved in the governmental process from soup to nuts seems totally obvious, but clearly is not, so centering that idea and all corollary ideas resonates fully. Lastly, data! Data! Data! As lawyers we know that evidence must drive the narrative, not the other way around. Yet, at the higher levels of policy-making, one can find situations where the narrative is set and the task is somehow to find the evidence to support it.

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Having the process broken down into cognizable pieces, along with the prompts in the prep, made what is generally a distasteful activity into something that was not cringe-inducing. Regrettably, I have an attitude: why should I have to pitch this? It's righteous, it reduces suffering, and anyone with half a brain should be able to see the merits immediately. But coming at it from the ground up, as it were, not only helped me to put it together, it helped me to see why, even though a given issue or case to be pitched may indeed have obvious and inherent merit, it might be necessary for a decision-maker who might have too many such ideas coming at them to have the idea sold to them, as it were.

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I hate that judges have to be elected, and therefore have to engage in politics, but there it is. Given that it is what it is, I support any and all efforts to educate lawyers and laypeople about the importance of the court, and the consequences of not paying attention to the issue.

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And it was a good decision.
My original subject matter was not actually something that my office will be directly involved in whereas the topic I switched to could be a source of cases for years to come.
Once again, having a clear set of steps for a process is so helpful - and fungible. I definitely want to evangelize my unit about this and other PRP processes.
I ended up with over 20 suggestions for how to proceed, which is excellent.

The process reminded me of what is called relationship co-counseling, which is a process for people, not therapists, to help one another with personal issues they may be having.  What makes it workable and, for many, highly effective, is the intentional use of one way attention-giving, with time limits, and agreed upon parameters for questions and so forth. The rules of the game, so to speak, tend to help people be direct, honest, and intuitive, which is what the consultancy protocol felt like as well.

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These days, there can never be enough focus put on worker's rights, the corollary of which for us is fighting worker exploitation, and voting rights, which is the sine qua non for our entire republic.
More than half of my time is spent on worker exploitation issues, whether labor trafficking, wage theft, or the spectrum of issues between them.
The use of anti-trust laws in support of worker rights seems extremely promising and I have no doubt that a situation will arise in LAC that might benefit from this approach, so I am very grateful for the idea and for being given the basic contours of making such a case.
As to voting rights, I loved how emotional the woman who is a self-identified republican, but first and foremost a citizen and an election official. I supervised a voting site in the County in 2020 for election day and for several days leading up to it. It was a marvelous experience, especially managing the large group of volunteers, who consistent of several ethnicities and language capacities, and who ranged in age from 16 to 72. I had a rare feeling - pride in my fellow Americans. It was cool, and this country is worth the effort and more.

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I would add a few theater games from Viola Spolin's book, Improvisation for the Theater, or as taught by her daughter, Aretha Sills. There are hundreds of games, but a few in particular would be amazing team-building exercises, they would get the blood flowing, the body moving, and the brain working, and they would be tons of fun if used in between panels and/or work sessions. The games I'm thinking of include, Who Started the Motion, Gibberish, Mirror, Slow-motion tag, and several others.

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This panel was a good reminder to get out from behind my desk and walk the streets, see the neighborhoods I purport to represent and talk to the people who are affected by the issues I want to take on. I learned to connect to the community through schools because that is a place that many people will be engaged even if they aren't calling their City Council member or part of a community org.

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I was very interested to discover--and inspired to take back to my city--that the city of Oakland has set the example for building equity into its municipal code.  How important this is (and yet, it is only a recent development).

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I think the most memorable takeaway for me was the connection with other fellows and our ongoing conversations throughout the convening.

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This was really helpful, particularly Ms. Margaret's comments about connecting with communities and the people who are actually experiencing the environmental justice issues that our offices may be working on.

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This was helpful, but for some reason, it felt rushed. It would have been nice to have a bit more time.

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I may have missed something in the pre-work or pre-convening materials, but I wasn't aware that there were other PRP conferences overlapping with the ALF convening so I was confused when there were other people in some of the sessions. It would have been helpful to just have a quick primer on what other events were going on and a general idea of who the attendees were.

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I found this session helpful, but part of me wished this was a longer-term part of the fellowship where we'd been working on the early stages of a specific pitch during previous sessions and then focused on the final presentation parts at the convening (or maybe even just broken it up into smaller pieces over the course of the convening

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The descriptions of the nitty-gritty of the process were much appreciated, as was the 'oath' we took.

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Brainstorming with fellows regarding the pitch was very helpful because it allowed us to fashion and refine an idea or concept to make it more pallatable and relatable for the intended audience.

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This was a highlight for me! I really enjoyed hearing each fellow's idea and getting insight into their work. Lots of variety in what we're each doing. It was also fun to connect by working on a project together.

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I thought the panel was excellent, but also really appreciated the group session's breakdown based on jurisdiction because it helped us approach some of the issues from the same background limitations

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Inspiring to see how government can gracefully lift up a savvy, dedicated community effort long in the works.

I'm also curious to dig into Oakland's municipal code more -- for equity provisions and the many other progressive nuggets they seem to have legislated.

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I found the panel on workers' rights very insightful, especially in how creatively each of the panelists were approaching the topic. The discussion of using anti-trust law to go after misclassification of workers, while not necessarily applicable to many other jurisdictions, was a useful frame to apply to the problems we might see in our jurisdictions.

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The panel made it click for me that I should be doing more to lift up potential judicial candidates at the local level. I immediately texted someone I know who ran and lost, and am making a little list in my head of other people I want to encourage early and often.

Also helpful to hear from the professionals exactly what the voting public perceives when it comes to judicial races.

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Helpful for digging into the difference between goals for outcomes and acquiring the tools to achieve those goals. Also appreciated having the groups broken out by level of government, it made the subject matter very relevant and relatable.

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Good to know more about the orgs that exist to help those interested, but who may not be "connected," get through what is a long and arduous process.

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I appreciated the opportunity to discuss after how we might support workers' rights from our respective perches, given our particular strengths and limitations. Came away with some small, but hopefully achievable, goals.

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Depending on the timing/location, it might be nice to have an optional walking tour or something similar to explore the host city and spend more time with other fellows outside the conference environment

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Connecting in person was really valuable; thanks to ALF for making it happen!

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Connecting in person was really valuable; thanks to ALF for making it happen!

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Instantly something to bring back to the office to use in working through and pitching new ideas

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I found this session extremely useful. But I kept running into mental roadblocks. What affirmative environmental litigation could I possibly pitch that my office hasn't already brought? And if my office hasn't brought such a lawsuit, is this really a subject for my office or is it for the state Legislature to fix?