Spring Campaign for Writers at the Edge

This week, meet Alum Raha Jorjani

Watch Raha on this KTVU/Fox News report from 2021: ICE detainee fights to be released  after nearly 4 years in custody.

“As a society, we tout holding people accountable for harming others, but fail to hold society accountable for the way it harms, too. Truth telling is about telling the whole story. Not just the part that takes the pressure off us and puts it on someone else. This is what writing at the edge means to me: it means risking the dangerous to arrive at the beautiful.

The gift of time and space I was given at the Mesa Refuge created the stillness I needed to capture these nuances on paper. Beyond the gorgeous physical space, it is a powerful environment where writers feel welcome, supported, and encouraged to thrive–a writing home I could not be more grateful to have experienced.”

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As a managing immigration defense attorney with the Office of the Alameda County Public Defender in Oakland, Raha Jorjani (Bernstein Parker Activist Writer Fellow 2022) recognized the need for representation for indigent individuals impacted by both the criminal legal system and the immigration system. She founded and implemented California’s first public defender deportation defense model, which has been replicated locally and nationally. 

As a law professor, she’s served at UC Davis Law School and taught the first “Crimmigration” course offered at UC Berkeley Law School. Since 2005, Raha has provided pro bono representation and legal assistance to hundreds of immigrants, most of them detained, before the Immigration Court, BIA, U.S. District Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, and California state courts. At the Mesa Refuge, Raha worked on a memoir and expose of the Immigration Detention and Deportation system in 2022. You can find out more about Raha on the Alameda County Public Defenders website.

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Will you support writers like Raha Jorjani by donating to our spring campaign?
DONATE HERE

Campaign photos by Jean Melesaine