Innovation Law Lab: Reason to Hope

This evening I photographed a fundraiser for an exciting, passionate, effective organization serving refugees in the USA. They provide legal services, document-preservation, cell phones, legal observation apps, and compassionate human contact for refugees and asylum-seekers jailed in the USA, and they are creating asylum policies that can be applied all over the world. What’s most remarkable is that theirs is a success story. It frees women and children who never should have been detained in the first place. It saves people from deportation and death. It works. 

Not only that, it works on donations. It works because people care more about the lives of refugees and asylum seekers than about personal financial success. The organization is a few lawyers, a couple of tech geniuses (one of whom is a friend of mine), and a sprinkling of administrators who have built a way to help refugees and to connect them with lawyers who represent them for free.  

Innovation Law Lab works because the people who run it are creative and committed to humane ways of treating refugees, and because they consistently think creatively to develop effective resistance to inhumane and demonic US policies. If you’d like to be lifted up and given hope, open the link and scroll down to the Ted Talk by Stephen Manning. If you can spare sixteen minutes, you’ll be moved and encouraged.

My blip is two women lawyers, Sara and Christine, who were recognized tonight for their extraordinary service. Together they have successfully freed people who would have been deported and then murdered in their home countries. One of the women works for a legal firm that allows her time off for pro bono work. The other has a partner who supports her so she can donate all her time to immigrant advocacy. As extras I am adding a portrait of Stephen Manning (the Ted Talk guy), and a joyful hug between one of the administrators and Sara. I think you can see in the photographs the passion and fire that was in the room tonight. It was a privilege to be there.