Social Justice

by Irene Gilbert

Making copies can be rewarding: just ask the students of Roger Grande’s Social Justice class, who are required to participate in an internship one day a week for three months. They choose the organization themselves and are involved in everything from sorting files to organizing grassroots campaigns.

The class’s website offers students a bevy of organizations at which to intern, though students can arrange their own internships, said Grande.

The website points to internships at, for example, MassEquality, a political organization working to achieve LGBTQ equality, the Brookline Literacy Partnership, a student-led group at the high school that promotes literacy in low-income areas, and Bikes Not Bombs, an organization that uses bikes to encourage development of skills and sustainable transportation.

“This class is about trying to get students outside of the classroom, not just emotionally and mentally, but physically, because a big part of this class is trying to cultivate lifelong leaders for social justice,” Grande said. “And to do that, you’ve got to get outside of school; you’ve got to interact with the world.”

Senior Julia Lejeune arranged her internship through a family friend. She interned at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute and worked with Project Reach, a federally-funded project aiming to give asylum to victims of sex trafficking in the United States.

Though her work was mostly clerical, it helped her gain insight into what it takes to make a difference, she said.

“Doing the internship is this on-site learning about how these social justice activists actually make the change that you want to make so much,” Lejeune said.

According to Lejeune, the internship also helped her develop her own perspective on an issue that she was interested in.

“There are all these ideas about human trafficking and what sex trafficking is, but it’s really hard to know how to solve the problem and what actual methods are used to help victims of trafficking,” Lejeune said.

“When I would think about sex trafficking, I would think about donating money to programs in Nepal or Cambodia that rescue and rehabilitate girls and set up homes for them. I didn’t think that they need to be in the United States or they need to be in a safe place where there won’t be that risk at all.”

Lejeune is a leader in the Students Against Human Trafficking club, and she says that she is using what she learned in her internship to organize events for the club.

Also in SAHT is senior Marisa Lazar, who interned for MassEquality. Lazar said she learned about the political side of fighting for equality, particularly during the elections in November 2012.

“The way MassEquality works is that they’re fighting for gay rights through legislation, so they have bills that they’re trying to get passed, like the new Trans Rights bill for Massachusetts,” Lazar said. “And they endorse candidates who, when they’re elected, are going to be advocates for those rights.”

Senior Michaela Schwartz interned at the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, where she observed lawyers working on cases concerning issues such as workers’ rights.

“Just around the Boston area, there are issues that are ten thousand times more complicated than I originally thought they were, and trying to summarize them in paragraphs made me really understand the issues,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz said she believes participating in the Social Justice internships helps spur students to action regarding the issues they are eager about.

“Doing an internship really brings it into perspective and gives you really concrete things to do to fix problems- not completely fix them, but make a dent,” she said.

Grande said he sees the value of internships as a way to help students discover an excitement for a larger goal, whether in their personal interests or in their future careers.

“They get to practice that a little bit, or at least observe it, and then most meaningfully, hopefully they get connected to a passion,” he said.

Matthias Muendel, Seth Coven and Irene Gilbert can be contacted at [email protected].