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When Grace Carson (BA \u201919) opens her laptop to study for the California Bar exam, she glances at sticky notes on her neat and organized desktop. They\u2019ve been there for years. She wrote them before she started at UCLA School of Law. Still, they serve as a powerful reminder \u2013 a culmination of her life\u2019s work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time,\u201d reads a quote from Angela Davis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This fall, after Carson takes the exam, she\u2019ll begin transformative work with tribal communities. Through the\u00a0Skadden Foundation Fellowship<\/a>, she will work with Native American tribes to develop restorative justice systems as an alternative to incarceration and punishment.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the University of Denver\u2019s College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, Carson earned a degree in\u00a0journalism<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0political science<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a combination of her passions for reading, writing and activism. She\u2019s always loved to write, and she\u2019s kept the proof. Tucked away in the closet of her Los Angeles apartment, she has a box of journals.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was never great at math,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cThe one thing I knew that I could do well was write.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n When Carson was 12 years old, her mother got a job as a reporter for a local paper in Louisiana. She didn\u2019t have a college degree, but her words spoke for themselves. Beautifully written stories captivated the paper, launching a career in journalism and community organizing. She started by reporting on the Horizon Deepwater oil spill. In 2010, the slick killed 10 people and discharged oil into the Gulf Coast for 87 days, threatening the health and safety of tribal communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSeeing that and witnessing the community health, she started getting more involved as an activist and an advocate,\u201d Carson said. \u201cI remember being dragged to events she was speaking at. Even watching that for me was inspiration to also want to do good things and change things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While at DU, she followed in her mother\u2019s footsteps. She served in an executive capacity for the Native Student Alliance, and she was appointed executive editor of the student newspaper, the Clarion.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Carson, writing is a release, but it\u2019s also a way to make systems more accessible. In the spring of 2020, Carson volunteered at a clinic to help get people\u2019s criminal records expunged. She wrote declarations: one to two pages detailing why someone deserves to have their records removed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carson remembers one of her first clients. They met over Zoom. Like a reporter, she asked a series of questions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s your income? What\u2019s the value of everything you own?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The questions are invasive but are required for the petition for expungement. With empathy and compassion, Carson listened. She was also vulnerable, explaining her family\u2019s own traumatic experience with the legal system, making it her life\u2019s mission to dismantle systems of oppression.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI can tell you\u2019re going to be a great advocate,\u201d the client said. \u201cThis is the first time with any lawyer that I\u2019ve felt seen and heard.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n From an early age, Carson remembers negative encounters with the legal system. As a survivor of child sexual abuse, she says the system failed her.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever it finally came out and my family was looking for justice, more than that we were looking for protection and safety. The criminal legal system didn\u2019t have any solutions. It made things worse,\u201d Carson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n