Impact Report
Summer 2024
Photo by Aristeo Sampablo, SQNews.
EBC Continues to Expand RJA Access The monumental California Racial Justice Act (RJA) allows people charged or convicted of a crime to challenge racial bias in their case. Since helping pass the bill, EBC has continuously fought for its fair and thorough implementation by expanding access to legal resources to those on the inside. This year, EBC has provided RJA trainings for incarcerated persons at Pelican Bay and San Quentin, and in a first for EBC this May, we designed and presented the first RJA training at San Quentin in Spanish. “The expansion of our organizing in this way feels very powerful,” says Simelia Rogers, program coordinator at the EBC. “To walk into a room with almost 200 Spanish speakers where every seat in the room is taken and people are lined up against the wall – it's more powerful than I could have ever imagined.” For people on the inside, necessary legal information and services are typically only available in English, excluding monolingual non-English speakers and undermining the RJA’s intended impact. This year, EBC has begun addressing this crucial gap in access by designing resources for native Spanish speakers. The success of the San Quentin presentation is a testament to the widespread demand for these services. “It's pivotal to me that EBC models the kind of inclusion in our work that we would like to see from the legal system and our partners,” Rogers says. By modeling this inclusion, EBC leads the way in fighting for top-to-bottom implementation of legislative successes.