Joey Oteng
Hometown: Cincinnati, OH
Education: University of Vermont, Kent State University
Law school: Moritz College of Law
What does it mean to you to have an opportunity to assist us in our mission of using civil legal aid to help combat unfairness and injustice and help people rise out of poverty?
To me it has meant fulfilling a responsibility. If we are the people who benefit from the oppression of others, directly and indirectly, then it is up to us to eradicate the unjust positionality we inhabit. Getting to make interpersonal and institutional change while unlearning some of the intrapersonal classism, elitism, etc. that we’ve been socialized with matters. It gives us the knowledge, tools, and know-how to make systemic change. Raising those who have been most disenfranchised is to the benefit to us all, and focusing efforts to do so on that marginalized group is of the utmost importance.
How has this experience benefited you?
This experience has helped me learn how the law is applied, and allowed me to learn a brand new area of law beyond what I have learned in academic environments. It has helped me identify my strengths – interpersonal relationships, emotional literacy, authentic empathy – and what I can work in the future – being decisive, asking for what I need, and moving forward even with ambiguity instead of hoping for perfection.
Have you had any memorable experiences you would like to share?
Getting to sit with a Nigerian woman to fill out her intake paperwork, console her, and to assure her that we would help her figure out what to do was surreal. To be able to be a familiar face, to get to express empathy in between providing legal aid, and to be affirming of the identities people are bringing with them to court was significant. The majority of the clients we served in eviction court looked like me – disproportionately Black. To have me there to understand them literally and figuratively was huge. So many comments about feeling safe, seen, or that they mattered with me will stay with me long after this experience ends.