We are thrilled to introduce our six dynamic and dazzling resident bloggers, coming at you from law schools across the country throughout the 2011-2012 school year!

They come from long-standing chapters, from brand-new chapters, from the South, Midwest, Northeast, DC, and the West, and they will be sharing their chapters successes, discussing challenging conversations they’ve had with colleagues and friends, and inviting us to think critically about a wide range of RJ issues.

Burke Bindbeutel, 2L, University of Missouri

Burke is just beginning an internship at the Missouri Commission for Human Rights. In the summer of 2011, he worked for the Missouri State Public Defender, in the Trial Division. A Missouri native, he has rediscovered his roots through the study of history as a research assistant for the War & Reconciliation project. Burke serves on the screening committee of the True/False Film Festival. In high school, he portrayed Benedick in a stage production of “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Joanne Caceres, 2L, Harvard Law School

Joanne’s interests in reproductive justice include community organizing and progressive advocacy. She is her chapter’s Community Liaison Chair and hopes in this capacity to encourage stronger and broader coalitions on campus. As a a first-generation Hispanic American, Joanne is particularly worried about how lower income and language barriers affect women’s access to adequate healthcare and education.

Mallory Carlberg, 2L, University of Oklahoma

Mallory is currently enjoying the newly regained freedom to choose her own schedule as a 2L at the University of Oklahoma. Despite it being at eight a.m., Health Law is her favorite class. She is interested in issues related to birth justice, comprehensive sex education, and abortion access. She is an editor for the blog at Oklahomans for Reproductive Justice (OK4RJ), a grassroots organization dedicated to caring and advocating for Oklahomans. Additionally she volunteers at a program assisting survivors of domestic violence in obtaining victim protective orders. This year she is co-founding an LSRJ chapter, and is excited to bring a red state perspective to RepoRepro.

Candace Gibson, 3L, University of Utah

Candace is starting an LSRJ chapter as a 3L at the University of Utah. Candace hails from Los Angeles, was raised in Utah, and as a young feminist fled to Smith College.  Before going to law school, she worked with refugee and ethnic communities on a wide range of issues at a small non-profit in Utah.  When her friends and she aren’t talking about politics, they like to analyze pop culture, especially Mad Men.

Shandanette Molnar, 2L, George Washington University Law School

Shandanette is a 2L and Master of Public Health candidate in Maternal & Child Health at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Additionally, she is a birth and postpartum doula and Certificated Lactation Educator & Counselor who volunteers at a local birth center and with a childcare collective. She hopes to blend her legal advocacy skills and public health scholarship with her commitment to reproductive justice, informed choices, and better birth and breastfeeding practices.

Susy Prochazka, 2L, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Susy is originally from both Prague, Czech Republic and Boulder, Colorado. In her sparse spare time, she enjoys reading sci-fi novels on the beach and surfing.  Before law school, Susy interned at several human rights organizations in D.C. to follow her passion while slinging coffee as a barista to pay the bills. As the co-president of her LSRJ chapter, Susy is working to introduce the concept of reproductive justice and all it entails to the broader community to encourage free expression of body, gender, and sexuality.

Whew. School has officially started, and I mean started. There’s no time to get acclimated to the crazy pace again as a 2L…one day you’re on vacation, and the next you have 40 pages of reading due yesterday. And it’s hard, after a summer spent digging deep into substantive law on the issues that interest you, to go back to the casebooks and professors who get their kicks by hiding the ball from bored law students. I want to be doing the real work already/again. Fortunately, as a student leader, the work is there to be done!

Before I go any further, I’d like to share some news: I, Erin Simonitch, will be your new resident student blogger. Yes, summer’s over and I’m still around–there’s no getting rid of me! Actually, the fabulous Julie is off to save the world and has graciously passed the Repo Repro torch to me. I am honored and thrilled to contribute to the web presence of an organization to which I’m so strongly committed and I hope I can live up to Julie’s legacy of smart, timely commentary on reproductive justice issues.

On to the really exciting stuff, right? Prior to school hitting me with the force of a speeding steam roller, I was fortunate enough to attend the LSRJ Leadership Institute in Atlanta. What an inspiration it was to spend time with my fellow LSRJ leaders from law schools across the country! If anything gives me hope for the future, for a progressive nation in which people’s reproductive health, lives, and choices are valued, raised up, and tirelessly defended, it is the positive energy for the movement and sense of shared community I felt among these dynamic women and men. A heady brew, and I drank of it deeply.

I talked to quite a few folks at the Institute who were starting up chapters from scratch, many of them in staunchly conservative areas. Their determination and boldness impressed me–I’ve got it easy in a social justice-focused, ultra-progressive law school. They are heroic. But the beauty of LSRJ is that it is a truly non-partisan organization that has the capacity to reach past the false political boundaries of the “pro-life v. pro-choice” debate.

In fact, one of the things that struck me in my conversations throughout the weekend of the Leadership Institute was that while we all shared a mission, our perspectives, our backgrounds, and our personal entry points into the work varied widely. Although the workshops and presenters were all fascinating and extremely useful to a baby organizer like myself, my favorite episode of the weekend occurred after hours in the hotel bar. While many Institute attendees were drifting off to bed, a few of us remained awake, absorbed in an intense and passionate discussion of parental rights, education, and home birthing.

The viewpoints expressed varied as we debated whether science education should be mandatory for all children, and how that might conflict with the right to parent as we choose and with minority groups’ interests in preserving culture against assimilating pressures. This topic dovetailed with that of choosing midwives or home birth over hospital births and the potential liability for mothers making decisions that garner disapproval from a majority in our society. Despite some strong differences of opinion, everyone stayed respectful and listened to one another–and in my case at least, learned a great deal and had my eyes opened further to the issues facing mothers. The parental rights activist among us had actually moved to another state to have her child in the way she chose, without interference from industrialized medicine. It was this freedom that took precedence for her and motivated her commitment to reproductive justice, reminding me once again how important LSRJ’s expansive perspective is in energizing our movement. Lisa is one of the activists starting up a new chapter in the South, and I think that she and her fellow leaders–who represent a range of RJ perspectives–are going to accomplish great things.

Today, facilitating my first general meeting and sharing my understanding of the reproductive justice framework with incoming 1Ls, I remembered that conversation along with many others from the Institute and my summer at the National Office. Once again, I felt the fire of inspiration spark back at me from my peers as we talked about registering voters, volunteering as clinic escorts, protecting access to contraception, and raising money for safe birthing kits to go to refugee women. As the meeting wound down, one of the new members spoke up. “I think everyone at King Hall should be in this room right now,” she said, and (naturally!) I couldn’t agree more. In a community devoted to justice, everyone should be at the RJ table.

Right now, I’m just praying that as a student leader, I can fuel the fire I felt in that room today and pass on the energy, knowledge, and perspective I gained at the Leadership Institute two weeks ago. But I know that I have a fantastic board and some great future leaders in the Class of 2011; I’m not bearing the torch alone. And I think, in fact I’ve got this deep down feeling, that it’s going to be an amazing year for LSRJ–not just within my own chapter, but across the country.

Because I’ve met our movement, and we kick some major booty, y’all.

Well, the bar exam has officially robbed me of my time, energy, and capacity to blog. But injustice continues. So we’re bringing on some super guest bloggers for the summer — starting today. Look out for posts from LSRJ interns Erin Simonitch (writing from California) and Emily Kane (from Mae Sot, Thailand). I’ll let them each tell you more about themselves….

And away we go!

It must be because this blog mentions “sex” so much (in the context of education), but everytime I check the comment spam filter I find the most misogynistic, racist, pornographic spam comments I have ever seen. Thank goodness for the filter.

So, I just got back from LSRJ’s killer National Leadership Retreat, Justice Doesn’t Just Happen. And let me say, it rocked. It was an important — and powerful — reminder that reproductive justice is not going to just fall in our laps. We’ve got to make it happen. And we can. Some suggestions for how:* An event educating your law school community about abstinence only, perhaps with a mock abstinence-only class.* A panel on the use of shackles on women who give birth while incarcerated (made easy with one of LSRJ’s easy events in an envelope).* For those of you who are alums, taking on a pro-bono case representing a young woman seeking a judicial bypass of a state parental notification requirement before she can get an abortion.And stay tuned in to this blog for more ideas and reactions, as well as exciting guest-posts from others in the LSRJ community.

Apologies for the long hiatus in posting, everyone. Our website and blog have been undergoing the final stages of updating — the tail end of our rebranding and name change that took place this fall.  I’ll be back later today with a substantive post about the issues of the day and week.