Thursday, March 15th 2018
Nicole Gon Ochi
Nicole is a supervising attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles. Her full bio is found here.
How did you first get started working in this field?
I've worked in the field of public interest my entire adult life, starting out as a grant writer and then director of a job center at a homeless services and advocacy organization right after college. During my time as the director of the job center, I learned the heartbreaking stories of my clients and I saw a pattern emerge: the power of the law. For some, a wrongful and illegal termination led to homelessness; for others, it was a failure to diagnose a learning disability that led to dropping out of school; for many it was an eviction or entanglement with the criminal justice system that made it nearly impossible to secure basic needs. I went to law school to acquire the tools to intervene on behalf of the most vulnerable members in our community before their lives spiraled downwards like so many of my clients at the job center. And yet, in law school through mentors like Julie Su, Kimberly West-Faulcon, Kathleen Kim, Carol Sobel, and Gary Williams, my focus shifted away from individual services to impact litigation because I saw the power of group action to not only change people's lives, but to make them different people by empowering them to subvert the legal system, which was created by and for the privileged, in their favor.
What woman inspires you and why?
Julie Su has always been my legal heroine. I remember hearing her speak at my law school when I was a first or second year and everything that she said about community lawyering, coalition-building, and lawyers' role in interpreting their clients' stories into the language of the law resonated with me to the deepest part of my core. Unlike many of my colleagues, I had not been involved in a lot of student organizing and I had a more paternalistic framework for my public interest commitment that never felt quite right. When I heard Julie Su speak, I felt like everything fell into place and I understood exactly what I had been missing and what I needed to move forward. I worked with Julie as a law clerk and during my first 6 months at Advancing Justice. Although I did not spend a lot of time with her, to this day, I am inspired by her ethos, her values, and strive every day to live up to practice the visionary community lawyering that she taught me.
What does it mean to be a woman in social justice?
To be a woman in our society is to be oppressed. Unfortunately, the world of social justice is a microcosm of our society and many of the inequities persist, such as unequal pay, pregnancy or leave discrimination, sexual harassment, and microaggressions like mansplaining. It is critical for women, and particularly women of color to create the narrative for our movements and to lead the work.
Why is it important to have women in leadership roles?
It is important to have women in leadership roles to change the structural inequality that is baked into our institutions, including our social justice organizations. Children need to see women in places of power so that they can dream the biggest possible dreams. It is also important to have women in leadership roles because women often bring a different management ethos and have lived with structural oppression every day of their lives, so are better able to understand how to fight oppression.
