Brown Bag Lunch Series

Speaker: Marissa Ram, Attorney and Equal Justice Works Fellow in the New York Legal Assistance Group’s LGBTQ Law Project

Critics of the mainstream anti-trafficking movement have long warned that granting more power to the state through police, courts, prisons, and immigration enforcement as a means of combatting human trafficking actually renders marginalized communities (including immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, and those involved in survival economies) more, rather than less, vulnerable to exploitation, human rights abuses, and state-sponsored violence.  How could a human rights approach that looks beyond increased criminalization radically shift the anti-trafficking movement?  How might centering and elevating the voices and struggles of marginalized communities challenge, disrupt, and transform the social, economic, and legal structures that abet exploitation?

Marissa Ram is an attorney and Equal Justice Works Fellow in the New York Legal Assistance Group’s LGBTQ Law Project, sponsored by AIG and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP.  She provides direct legal services, community education and advocacy to homeless and street-involved LGBTQ youth (up to age 24) who are experiencing (or are at-risk for) trafficking or exploitation in both the formal workplace and street-level informal survival economies. Before joining NYLAG, she was an Equal Justice Works Fellow at Safe Horizon’s Anti-Trafficking Program. Marissa graduated from the UC Berkeley School of Law, where she founded a student-led legal clinic, called the Boalt Anti-Trafficking Project, and provided legal representation to immigrant clients, including those in detention and prison settings throughout law school.  Prior to law school, she served as a health educator in Mumbai, India, using a harm reduction framework in her work with homeless and street-involved youth engaged in the sex trade. She earned her B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and is an active member of the New York City Bar Association’s Sex and the Law Committee. 

The New York Legal Assistance Group’s LGBTQ Law Project, founded in 2008, exists to protect and expand the rights of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community and to provide services that meet the unique legal needs of low-income LGBTQ New Yorkers. LGBTQ communities, especially those of color, transgender and gender non-conforming individuals and youth, are at greater risk of living in poverty and of being targeted for violence. Through direct legal services and systemic advocacy efforts, we strive to work at the intersections of gender, racial and economic justice, and believe that with economic and physical security come empowerment, leadership and collective change.

Kosher pizza will be served.

Photo credit: the apostrophe/Creative Commons

Brown Bag Lunch Series