‘Be the Change’ transcript: Purvi Shah on the moments of beauty as a civil rights lawyer

Listen to Be the Change: Purvi Shah on the moments of beauty as a civil rights lawyer.

Purvi Shah: That, to me, is one of the biggest beauties of being in social justice work: If you’re doing it right, all you have to do is show up and be persistent and committed and have your words, like what you say you’re going to do, actually be what you do. But the work over the years will transform you. It will teach you. And that hope and that imagination, that sense of it’s possible, I think that’s such a powerful thing.

[Music: “Saulsalita Soul” by Mr. RuiZ]

Savala Nolan: This is season two of Be the Change, a podcast that shares interviews with changemakers about how they became — and are becoming — the change they want to see in the world. I’m Savala Nolan, director of Berkeley Law’s Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice and author of Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body.

This season of Be the Change is a collaboration with Berkeley Voices, a podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs at UC Berkeley.

In this episode, I talk with Purvi Shah, founder and executive director of Movement Law Lab. Purvi is a celebrated and much-loved civil rights litigator, policy advocate and law professor who has spent over a decade working at the intersection of law and grassroots social movements. She is also a warm and wise person who shares her knowledge generously.

Purvi and I talk about the nuts and bolts, the nitty-gritty of founding a legal nonprofit in response to current events, and the fascinating intellectual and philosophical theory behind movement lawyering, a type of lawyering that aims to support and foment lasting social change. We get into all that, and we also talk about when it might be a good thing to loosen your grip on your power, how confidence is a process, and moments that give you chills, in a good way, as a lawyer.

[Music fades out]

Savala Nolan: Purvi Shah, thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of Be the Change.

Purvi Shah: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to have this conversation with you.

Savala Nolan: As am I. So, let’s jump right in. Tell me, if you will, about Movement Law Lab, the organization that you founded and run. What is it? What does it do? And maybe it’s appropriate to also kind of drop a little footnote in defining movement law, since some of our listeners will know what that is, but some of them don’t. And it’s not like an aerobic law lab, right? It’s got a different meaning. So, talk us through what this organization is. What does it do?

Purvi Shah: Well, I think what would be helpful is to start a little bit with why I founded the organization.

Savala Nolan: OK.

Purvi Shah: In 2014, I was working at the Center for Constitutional Rights and, like many of us, was watching the news and seeing what was unfolding in Ferguson.

It was very early, just the first few days after Mike Brown was killed, and watching the kind of community resistance, watching the way the sort of fury that was in many ways unleashed, it felt like a really powerful echo of the Black freedom struggle.

I marched into office, went to my executive director and asked, “Why are we not going to Ferguson? This is a part of our history and legacy. We’re not really seeing lawyers down there.” And so, he kind of looked at me and he said, “Well, listen, we’re a bit tapped out with some of the things that are going on. But if you want to go, and you can go, go.” And I said, “Absolutely.” And I got on a plane the next day.

And I tell this as the origin story for the lab because Movement Law Lab is really a movement-born project. And what unfolded for me over the next many years was a process of being a part of the birth of the movement for Black Lives, and really, from the very beginning, from those early days in Ferguson, seeing an absolute need for lawyers of conscience to be a part of that resistance.

I immediately wondered, not so much exactly what I could do, but what was it that we needed hundreds and thousands of lawyers to do? And the answer came back that there were millions of things we could be doing.

And for me, that experience of coming into a moment that now, looking back, is historical, in which we thought that there was a really critical role for lawyers to play in both flanking a community and what became a national and international movement. But also, in the short term, just responding to the actual content of what was going on.

So, building the lab really came out of that. I was a part of building something called Law for Black Lives, which formalized a network of 5,000 lawyers that were participating in the Movement for Black Lives.

And, you know, as it grew across the country, sparked by this organic movement in Ferguson, and then traveled like wildfire across the country, these lawyers started to integrate into that movement. And many of us were people of color, a majority of the lawyers were African American or Black. And that was really powerful. How we showed up for that moment was absolutely different.

[Music: “Beauty” by HoliznaPATREON]

Movements are born out of moments that are sometimes organic, and then they need to be nurtured and grown. But those moments actually have the potential to transform the way lawyers think.

Our mission at Movement Law Lab is to support a new generation of lawyers and legal organizations to work alongside progressive movements for change. And we intentionally invest in lawyers that come from marginalized communities. And we’re really trying to have these lawyers actually participate in building a society that allows everyone to live stable and thriving lives with full dignity.

And inside that is sort of embedded this idea of movement lawyering. So, movement lawyering really is a different approach. It’s not really about winning cases. Movement lawyers deploy law strategically to change culture, systems and power. We see ourselves as long-term partners to grassroots movements and as sort of rooted and embedded in those movements for change.

Savala Nolan: I definitely want you to talk more about that. And I have a couple follow-up questions related more to movement lawyering.

[Music fades out]

But before we get into that even further, I’m curious about whether it was immediately obvious to you that you were going to need to build something new, that you were going to need to step away from CCR and create something that didn’t exist or, you know, harness the energies that existed into something a little more formal, or whether there was a period where you thought, “I can integrate this into what I’m doing at CCR, and I don’t need to create something new.”

Purvi Shah: I think that’s a great question. You know, this is one of those experiences where you kind of come into it, and you don’t really have a grand plan. I think that’s the big learning I had from being in a moment that was historic and transformative, is that when you’re inside that moment, you have no idea.

When I got off the plane, and I got to the church where everyone was gathering in Ferguson, I was just functioning as just a traditional movement lawyer, just walking into the space and listening and doing a few chores and making a few signs and just trying to understand what are people talking about? What is this community seeking, in terms of a solution that actually connects to their idea of what would be fair and right and just in their community? What does law even have to do with any of this? In the solutions that people are seeking, is there any role for law?

So, I went in really curious and without an agenda, which is how I was trained and how I learned to be a movement lawyer.

Those early days in Ferguson, it was a very community-wide experience. You had teachers and preachers and veterans and street organizations and youth all out on the street together.

And I remember having a conversation with a few youth, asking them, like, “Why are you guys out here? This is kind of risky. The police are out here. They’re throwing tear gas. You know, you guys could really get hurt.” And the youth said, “Well, we’re getting arrested and locked up, and we’re getting hurt every day, so we have nothing to lose being out here in this moment, working together to actually demand something different.”

That’s the beauty and power of movements, and why I love social movements so much, is they are transformative. And when some people take risks and challenge difficult things, it inspires other people to do the same. And the legacy of the Ferguson movement is it inspired resistance across the world.

I was having conversations with the National Conference of Black Lawyers. I was having conversations with other legacy radical legal organizations. And I think what we discovered was that our generation needed a way to express its voice.

So, it was pretty organic. We started building it out of CCR. There were a lot of hands that went into it that were of people who worked at other organizations. We built a national steering committee, which included some elders that were from some of those legacy organizations and it just started to grow.

You know, for me, it was also a journey of stepping back and to allow other people to lead that organization. And it’s blossomed incredibly in the last five years.

Savala Nolan: So, the kind of work that you’re describing, the work that you do at Movement Law Lab, and that was happening a lot for Black Lives is, as you’ve said, as old as the hills, right? There have always been lawyers who’ve wanted to be proximate to the people who are on the front lines of movements.

But it’s also quite revolutionary and antithetical to a lot of what goes on in law school. You know, as we’re, I guess, indoctrinating is a strong word, but for lack of a better one, as we’re indoctrinating 1Ls (first-year law students) into this profession and the mindset of the profession, movement lawyering is not what is taught, by and large. You know, you have courses here and there, but it’s not the overriding principle that guides how most lawyers are taught to lawyer.

And so, I want to just take a minute and ask you — you mentioned this sort of element of theory coming to the fore in movement law in more recent decades — what is that theory? What is the ethos that is animating movement law? And maybe there’s multiple theories. You know, it could definitely be a space of contestation. But from your perspective, what are the theories or what is the theory that animates or defines movement law and differentiates it from other types of public interest lawyering or social justice lawyering?

Purvi Shah: So, the difference between movement lawyering and other types of lawyering and other public interest lawyers is that it has a different starting point, a different theory of change and different set of ideas that undergird it.

One of the key ones is that movement lawyers believe that social change requires shifting power, culture and systems. So, we’re broadening our lens from law at the outset, and we’re thinking more about, how does social change happen?

And I think if you study social change, you would say that it’s more than any one tactic, which law is arguably a tactic inside a movement, it can be useful. But that we’re aiming for something bigger when we’re trying to be movement lawyers. We’re trying to redesign the underlying systems and structures of society. We’re trying to shift norms and culture. And we’re trying to change who has economic and political power. So, our starting point is social change.

I think underneath that is this idea that social movements, and not just legal victories, create social change.

[Music: “Selena Leica” by Blue Dot Sessions]

Throughout history, we have seen organized groups of people, whether it was the labor movement, whether it was Indigenous movements, anti-colonial movements, that we have always had social movements that have agitated for and won transformational change.

And so this idea that we’re trying to get to social change, and we’re getting clearer about who are the actors involved and necessary in the process of social change. And more importantly, that social movements need to be made of people who are proximate to the problems, and that there’s an element of needing to lead those struggles, to have self-determination and, ultimately, to build power.

I think that’s another really key piece of movement lawyering. We’re trying to actually change power dynamics in society. And that’s, you know, that is getting at the root of why oppression happens.

I think if you go a little bit further down the elevator, it’s this idea that social movements are complex. They’re ecosystems. They’re powered by a lot of different types of activists and organizers.

So, we’re not just looking at supporting protesters. We’re looking at supporting social movements, which are dynamic, they’re filled with visionary activists, community organizations. And we feel that inside these broad ecosystems, grassroots groups are a key sector. And so, we want to approach and connect with grassroots organizers. And in some ways, grassroots organizing is a key engine for transformation. It’s partially how we suture people together. It’s how we design and sequence campaigns and fights that can actually lead to bigger change.

[Music fades out]

Notice I haven’t even really talked about law yet.

Savala Nolan: Right.

Purvi Shah: That’s really the big transformative offering of movement lawyering is that we’re situating ourselves in something much bigger. And then from that place, we’re asking, “Well, what is it that lawyers and the law can do?”

And I think the reality is, is that lawyers and the law, we have an important role to play in social change. And law has always been a tool, right? And I think more often than not, law has been a tool and a weapon in the hands of the powerful. But it changes based on whose hands it’s wielded in.

So, I think this other core concept behind movement lawyering is this idea that there is no inherent logic or truth to law. It’s really that law … it’s not inherently objective or neutral or ethical or moral on its own. But when lawyers use law in conjunction with people trying to transform systemic issues, it can be a tool. It can be a sword and a shield to advance those causes. So, we have a role to play, but it is actually a role that is optimized in partnership and in collaboration.

And I think that’s kind of the last piece of the theory, really. It’s understanding law as an important arena of struggle, but it has its limits. So, we’re walking this tightrope of engaging, using the sort of system, as we might say, the legal system, but that we also acknowledge that law alone doesn’t transform some of the problems that are why people are organizing and coming together. So, it’s this dynamic relationship to law, it’s a clarity of your role and your purpose, and it’s this willingness to embed in a bigger project in which you’re just one actor of many.

Savala Nolan: What’s so fascinating to me about what you’re describing for me is that it is in some ways at odds with what it feels like to become a lawyer — at least at a school like Berkeley, and at least when I was a student, although I think it’s still true today. There’s something that happens in law school where you can start to think of yourself as, like, the white knight with the magical sword and all the power, and you should hold on to your power because you’ve earned it, you know, and other people don’t get it because they didn’t go to law school. And you should sort of swoop in and storm the castle and save the day.

And, you know, that’s problematic. It’s at odds with this sort of interaction and transfer or shifting of power that you are describing. I’m curious whether you yourself have had to do a little bit of unlearning, or whether you see it in some of the lawyers of good conscience who are drawn to your work — that part of what they have to do in order to do the work is loosen their grip on the power that they have amassed, or think they’ve amassed, by becoming someone who does, indeed, hold a relatively elite place in our culture as a lawyer. Is that a challenge that you have to engage with and work on, or did you just magically not have to worry about your own greatness? (Laughs)

Purvi Shah: Of course I did. Of course I did. I mean, I think it’s how law and law teaching is designed to train us, right? This idea of the exceptionalism of the lawyer. I remember my first day in law school being in the auditorium, and as everyone was in, welcoming a new class of law students, there’s also this thing we do which we say, “Five of you ran 100 marathons and 20 of you cured cancer.” And I mean, obviously, I’m being hyperbolic, but we do this thing.

Savala Nolan: But it’s the sort of the resumé-sharing at the beginning of law school.

Purvi Shah: Exactly. And I get the spirit of it, which is, you know, to feel proud that you’re in that room with other people, which honestly for me was a massive accomplishment coming from an immigrant family. I was the first in my family to go to graduate school. It wasn’t lost on me, as I walked into that room, the uniqueness of the ability to be in law school.

I think this is also very American — this idea of American exceptionalism and this idea that elitism is kind of rooted in how we teach and train lawyers.

So, it is absolutely countercultural. And a lot of my conversations with young lawyers and law students is to be really aware that that’s part of the socialization process. I mean, law is ultimately an elite tool. We are an elite guild. It is a very high bar to get into this guild, and we keep the doors kind of closed, and that has a self-perpetuating kind of culture inside of it.

Look, nothing is one thing, you know, no experience or no institution has only one dimension. But I think, overall, law is still extremely white. Ninety-seven percent of our profession works for the interests of power, right? Only 3% of the legal profession works for issues of justice and poverty. So, we have a profession that is really in a crisis, I would say, of culture and of leadership and of social responsibility.

So, yes, of course, that culture is going to perpetuate it. I think the dance of being a movement lawyer is owning the privilege that comes with the training and the role and the degree and the bar card, but really not letting it get out of whack inside you.

So, for me, I think I certainly had to do that. And I don’t think for me it was like, I don’t think I ever felt egotistical, or arrogant because truthfully, law school was very disempowering for me. I felt like the kinds of ways of knowing that I had, the kind of wisdom that I brought, I didn’t feel validated in my first year.

Savala Nolan: Same here. I mean, that’s common, right?

Purvi Shah: Exactly.

Savala Nolan: Excuse me for interrupting, but it’s super, super, super common.

Purvi Shah: So many of us. Now that I’ve mentored, like, hundreds, I feel like I’ve heard that story from so many people of color, particularly women of color. I really felt like everyone had gotten some memo that I didn’t in law school. And it really took me a while to figure out how to feel confident in the learning and in the knowledge. And the Thelton Henderson Center is actually a really big influence for me in finding that.

But I think the mistake is thinking that just because you are othered inside the legal world that you don’t have any work to do on your own unlearning. And I think for me, those lessons really came in my first five years of practice.

I think it’s really unique what you have to unlearn. But for me, I had to unlearn centering myself even in ways that were about fear of not being good enough, or in ways that are an anxiety about performing and really feeling the responsibility of representing another person in a very important matter in their lives. I had to learn how to manage that in order to really become a sharper tool for my client.

And I don’t think that’s about shutting those inquiries down. That’s a process. Confidence for me was a process. Feeling capable was a process that required discipline, it required learning and humility.

But, at some point, things started to really come into clarity. And I started to learn how to quiet my sort of inner elitism, or my inner critic, such that I could actually show up for the work that I needed to do and to be present with people, as oftentimes we’re accompanying them through something that is one of the hardest things in their life.

So, that ability to just be really present and to be humanistic, to be connected, to not be an automatron that’s, like, just moving through cases — which, the system can do that, it can make you function at a rapid pace and in a way that the pressures are big.

I think there’s constant learning on this journey. I’m, you know, 17, 18 years into my legal career, and I still feel like I’m learning things.

[Music: “Urban” by Serge Quadrado, then fades out]

Savala Nolan: Thank you for saying that confidence is a process. It reminds me of something that Judge Henderson said when I was … I think I was recording a conversation with him a few years ago, but it may have just been in conversation. You know, he worked for the Department of Justice under Bobby Kennedy. He was sent to the Deep South to observe what was going on with the violent, anti-Black resistance to attempts by Black people to vote.

And he described some of what he saw that was just harrowing and vicious and difficult. And I remember asking him, “Where did you get the courage? Where did you get the courage and the bravery to go down there and be part of this movement?” And he said, “Well, I didn’t take it with me.” You know, like, he learned to be brave by being there, and the process of doing the work made him brave and courageous.

It’s not that we have to have all of this stuff, all of these virtues amassed, before we can engage in the work, right? Doing the work actually helps us amass what we need in order to do it better. So, thank you so much for underlining that for our listeners.

Purvi Shah: Absolutely. That’s, to me, is one of the biggest beauties of being in social justice work is that, if you’re doing it right, all you have to do is show up and be persistent and committed and have your words, like what you say you’re going to do, actually be what you do. But the work over the years will transform you. It will teach you.

And that hope and that imagination, that sense of it’s possible, I think that’s such a powerful thing. It’s like we may not have it all the time, but what I found is when you’re in a collective, when you’re a part of a movement, when one person doesn’t have it, another person does. And that to me is really the beauty and the importance of collective action and collective organizing.

Savala Nolan: Well, you have teed up my next question so beautifully, it’s almost as if we rehearsed it, which we didn’t, it’s just almost as if we did. Beauty, transformation, joy, imagination, success. You know, these things matter. They’re as important as the grind and the hustle when we’re doing this type of work for social change. And part of why we have these conversations on this podcast is to give people a little nudge toward stepping out and trying their hand at being the very change that they want to see in the world.

So, I want to zero in on the beauty and the joy and the power of transformation, because those things are encouraging, right? They encourage us to give it a shot. Can you talk about some of the joy of this work or the possibility for transformation that keeps you going and keeps you engaged?

And transformation is kind of a massive word, and you can take it on a big scale or a little scale. I don’t mean it in a massive, massive way. Transformation can be something that’s very small, but meaningful. Talk to us about the happiness and what you imagine as being possible as the success of this movement work continues to grow.

Purvi Shah: I think that’s such a great question. And honestly, it’s a question that took me many years to pay attention to. I think I started as a young lawyer, really just in the grind, in the hustle, just really trying to ensure that I was doing something useful, something that was meaningful.

And it took me many more years. I think being a long-distance runner in movements requires you to ask this very question is: What gives you joy? Where can you find beauty? And I think, for me, the answer has always been in the small moments.

[Music: “Brer Menuet” by Blue Dot Sessions]

I was a community organizer before I went to law school, and law school kind of, you know, crushed a little bit of that. But then once I got out of law school, I just remember … I have these vignettes in my head of really small moments in which magic happens inside movement work.

So, I’m thinking about this moment where I was a tenant lawyer, and I did a lot of eviction cases after the foreclosure crisis of 2006. And I was representing tenants in various communities in Miami, in Liberty City and in Allapattah. And one of the big issues going on was the shut off of water in properties that were foreclosed, but where a bank owned the property. So, it was the tenant property, but now, with the landlord going into foreclosure, a bank owns it. So, water would get shut off in the buildings. And we were trying to pass legislation at the county level that would change a bunch of administrative things to get running water back in people’s houses.

And I had a couple clients that I was prepping to testify at this hearing, and I had one client who was an undocumented immigrant, a mother of a disabled child, a woman who had been a survivor of domestic violence. And I had represented her in maybe five evictions because people are in a revolving door of crisis. And even when we win eviction cases, we don’t resolve poverty and economic inequality.

And so, I was really just, we were very close. She used to call me “Madrina,” and she wanted me to be the godmother to her daughter. And I was encouraging her to speak, and I could just see this fear, this anxiety. Obviously, her immigration status was of concern.

And I decided to do this thing where I prepped her with another member from the community organization, which was a Haitian man from a very different community who had his own situation and also was living in a property where when it rained outside, it rained inside.

And to me, the joy comes in this moment where I’m prepping them in this conference room in my legal office. And they both moot their testimony, kind of nervous, and then they try it again, and then they start relaxing, and they start laughing, and they start, you know, giving each other, they’re listening to each other.

And you see that moment of magic where solidarity happens, where a person realizes that they’re not alone, that the suffering that they’re enduring is not their fault, right? And then they link arms with someone maybe they would have never crossed paths with otherwise.

Savala Nolan: Purvi!

Purvi Shah: I know!

Savala Nolan: You’re giving me chills.

Purvi Shah: It’s magical to be a part of those moments. And that, to me, is the joy of doing this work. I facilitated that, in some way. But mostly, I got to witness what humans do when they are in situations that are difficult. I believe people actually want to be connected to each other, and they want to show up for each other.

So, I feel like I’ve seen that. I have another vignette: During the time of the Muslim ban and the airport protests. I took my parents, who are immigrants — I’m a first-generation American — I took my parents to their first protest. And this protest was special because we were a part of the diaspora that was being targeted, even though we’re not Muslim. You know, when it comes to the way people from South Asian countries are treated in the United States, people don’t know the difference at all.

And I remember this look of my dad holding a sign in a protest in the rain, and this look in his eyes that’s, like, mischievous and irreverent and bold, and he’s laughing. And, you know, it’s that moment to me — that’s the beauty. It’s like you can see those moments when people start to feel like there’s something so powerful in being in a group of people that are willing to challenge something. And I saw it in my parents’ eyes that day.

So, I think that those are moments that are really sustaining. They’re motivating. And I think, after that, it was just always how can I keep doing that? How can I keep being a part of a moment like that?

Savala Nolan: I want to build off this idea of encouraging our listeners to take a crack at being the change they want to see in the world. There’s so many reasons why somebody might be afraid to act on an idea. There’s so many reasons why someone might feel that they’re not the right person to act on an idea, even if indeed they have much to offer and give.

I would love for you to share with our listeners a little bit of advice that you got, or that you wish you’d gotten, that would have made it easier for you to take those first steps, or to keep going in a moment when it felt like, “You know what? This idea is actually not going to work, and maybe I should just call it quits.”. Share a little bit of that kind of wisdom with us.

Purvi Shah: Yeah, I think the way I like to answer that question is first with a “Why?” I think one of the things that’s always helped me is having a North Star, like a “Why?” What does this moment mean? How do we ground ourselves in the opportunity and the challenge of the current moment?

So, for all the young people that are wondering, “What is my role, and how do I show up?” I think the first thing is to name that this moment is one in which the stakes are really high. We are in a moment in which we are seeing the kind of … the old ways of being are really in crisis, right? The way we’ve organized our society, the way our society is built around greed and exploitation, the way that our electeds are unaccountable in many ways, our systems of governance and democracy don’t really meet a true meaning of those words.

I think the other piece of it is to really start with this idea that actually something really different is possible. It is possible to have a world that’s organized around wholeness and peace. And there is a way we could rebend our relationship with the world, and we could actually untangle and reconnect.

The reality of what isn’t and the possibility of what is — I feel like I’ve always had to hold those two things close, and they’re not always in equilibrium, right? There are a lot of times where your horror at what is can really overshadow your sense of possibility.

So, I think one of the first pieces of advice I can offer is to try to keep both of those as true. You know, this righteous understanding of the world, seeing it with clear eyes, pulling the wool back and saying, “Yes, this is unfair. These systems are brutal. They are harrowing to be inside. They are built on exploitation.” And then to hold as a twin, in the other hand, this idea that we can have a way in which our world is organized around need and care and dignity and not profit, that there is a possibility that we could be in right relationship with the earth. So, I think that’s a first piece.

I think the second piece is, who do we need to be to show up in that moment? I really never felt powerful as a child. I didn’t feel powerful as a young person. I really just never felt that I had some big role to play.

And I think there’s something about being open to the possibility that you have no idea yet what you are capable of. I think that kind of sense of, it’s OK if you don’t have the confidence, but to let it in a little bit when someone sees something in you and to hold the possibility that what you are fully capable of maybe isn’t clear to you just yet.

And then after that, I would just say: Show up. That’s it. If you show up, and you come with an open heart and a desire to be in right relationship with the work and the people around you, the work will teach you, and it will shape you, and it will give you the skills. And if you listen and you seek advice and mentorship and community and counsel, you will grow. That is the way of all things in the world.

And I think just like that idea of, “OK, I don’t know if I’m going to do anything of value, but I know I’m going to really try. And I’m going to keep growing and learning and being disciplined and joyful and connecting and creative. And I think that all of those things have really served me. So, you don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to be willing to be on the path.

Savala Nolan: Purvi Shah, thank you so very, very much for your time and your teaching and your embodied example. You are someone I look up to, and I’m really, truly thrilled to know you and so thankful to get to share some of the loveliness of you with our listeners. Thank you so much for being with me today.

[Music: “Saulsalita Soul” by Mr. RuiZ]

Purvi Shah: Oh, it’s been such a pleasure. I really appreciate this chance to talk and reflect, to be honest.

Anne Brice: This season of Be the Change is a collaboration between Berkeley Law and the Office of Communications and Public Affairs at UC Berkeley. It was produced by me, Anne Brice.

To hear each episode, follow Berkeley Voices wherever you get your podcasts and look for the special Be the Change series. You can listen to the episodes and read the transcripts on Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts. You can also find Be the Change on Berkeley Law’s podcast hub at law.berkeley.edu/podcasts/.

[Music ends]