His arrival at Fordham Law brought some twists though. Intrigued by the progressive transformative justice policies going on at the Kings County District Attorney General’s office, he interned there the summer of 2019. But he became discouraged by the many repeat offenders cycling through the office in the short time he was there. He decided instead to intern remotely with the Center for Constitutional Rights, to learn more about international human and civil rights litigation. There he became interested in movement law.

“I gained so much exposure to different attorneys who were doing all kinds of work, not only at CCR, but across the nation and internationally, and I found that experience gave me some insight as to what the day-to-day work of a litigator who’s practicing movement lawyering would look like,” he said.

Movement lawyers support and advance social movements, both through traditional lawyer work in areas such as trials or housing, and through community events, like organizing free weekend classes for citizens to learn more about their rights under the law.

“The role of the movement lawyer isn’t a confined or restricted activity. It’s many different things, and it’s based on what the community needs and what the community is demanding. It’s another way of just simply empowering people,” said Johnson, who is one of Fordham Law’s Stein Scholars—a diverse group of law students committed to public interest law.

After his CCR internship, Johnson still felt a yearning to work directly with clients. Last fall, he began working with the Law School’s Family Advocacy Clinic.

“I had trepidations about doing only direct services work, because I care about institutional and systemic issues, but I realized there can be a balance of the two in various ways, and that’s where creativity comes into play,” he said.

His final internship, with the group Movement for Family Power, confirmed for him that empowering local communities is what he wants to do. This fall, he’ll join the staff of the Bronx Defenders as an entry-level attorney.

Johnson channeled that commitment to empowerment on campus as well; during his second year, he was president of the Black Students Law Association. The group helped the Law School craft a plan to address systematic racism within the college.

“I had a number of students who I worked alongside to try to make Fordham a better institution,” he said, singling out current and past students Christina John, Taylor Carter, Hema Lochan, Dana McBeth, Diana Imbert, and Leena Widdi.

“They’ve had a tremendous impact on my ability to develop and lead, as well as figure out my own path.”

Johnson acknowledged that completing his studies was difficult. As someone who didn’t know his father and had few male role models growing up, he said that the guidance of Professor Ian Weinstein, his Stein Scholar faculty mentor, helped him a great deal. Adjunct professor Kenneth Montgomery, whose trial advocacy class Johnson took, was also an inspiration.

“As a Black man, he showed me who I could become and how I could do it,” he said.

Johnson was raised by his mother and grandmother, who he said gave him “a sense of identity.” But it wasn’t always easy.

“I watched my mom struggle every day to make life bearable and enjoyable, and she did her absolute best. But I also saw throughout my own city that my reality was quite common. I witnessed a lot of the injustices that were happening, whether it was in the education system or the rampant homelessness or the hidden history of my city when it came to enslavement,” he said.

Literature played a part in Johnson’s developing identity as well, particularly Toni Morrison’s 1970 novel The Bluest Eye, which he read his senior year at Morehouse.

“It really put into perspective the ways in which Black youth are robbed of their innocence, and how that has a lingering effect throughout one’s lifetime.”

It was a different way of understanding how literature could be written, and how we can share our real-world experiences with others. That’s something that I try to bring into my legal work whenever possible.”

Leah Hill, a clinical professor of law who oversees the Family Advocacy Clinic, said Johnson displayed a sense of humility and commitment to lifelong learning that would serve him well. She noted that to be a successful movement lawyer, one needs to engage people of all walks of life respectfully. She saw that in Johnson when she first met him, and again at the clinic.

“He knew how to show compassion and empathy without being paternalizing or condescending, or pitying clients. He was just really a pleasure to work with, because I could see how deeply committed he was to social justice,” she said.

“Growing up, I was consistently faced with situations where we had less than my peers had or where systems at school were set up so that you had to pay for particular activities, and they had very few students [like us]who couldn’t pay,” she said.

“I had access to a lot of privileged stuff, but at the same time, I think that early experience prepared me for an interest in advocating for people who not at the top of the food chain.”

After high school Chamberlain went to Barnard College, where she earned an undergraduate degree in anthropology in 2012. She worked as a paralegal at a firm before landing a position in 2015 with the Legal Aid Society’s health law unit. Working with clients who were sorting out issues related to Medicaid changed her view of what law can do for people, she said.

“Pretty much every client I had would call and say, ‘Thank you for dealing with this issue. I’m also having a problem with my food stamps.’ Or ‘I’m also having an issue with my apartment.’ Or ‘I’m having an immigration problem, can you help?’ It was really incredible to be able to say, ‘Yes, we actually do that too,’” she said.

She enrolled in Fordham Law two years later, and this spring, she will graduate as one of the school’s prestigious Stein Scholars. Pending her passing of the New York State Bar Exam, she will return to the Legal Aid Society in the fall to work in the organization’s housing rights unit.

“I wanted to stay in New York City, and I wanted to do something that would really make an immediate impact in people’s lives, so housing law actually stood out as a realm where you can do that as a brand new law grad,” she said, noting parallels to her work with Medicaid recipients.

“It ended up being a logical conclusion to this path that I’d taken, because even though it’s not health related, it is in a way, right? Because if you’re not healthy, it’s harder to find a place to live.”

During her time at Fordham Law, Chamberlain worked for the Legislative and Policy Advocacy Clinic and for the first-year legal writing program as a teaching assistant. She also did a summer internship at for the Center for Reproductive Rights. In an article published last year in the Fordham Law Review, she argued for repealing a 2017 anti-sex-trafficking law called the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. In addition to failing to protect victims of sex trafficking, she argued that it punishes adults seeking to engage in consensual sex work.

“It’s a really interesting issue because it does implicate a group of people that have been pretty consistently maligned by society. In my opinion, everyone deserves certain fundamental rights, and everyone deserves basic dignity,” she said.

Aisha Baruni, director of counseling and public interest scholars, said Chamberlain has had a tremendous impact on the Stein Scholars program since she started. Most recently, she created a guide that rising 2L students in the program can consult to get a better sense of what to expect.

“She didn’t just come and tell me, ‘This needs to be done, and you should do it.’ She just did it and distributed it among her classmates. If it were on Yelp, it would get five stars. It got raves,” she said.

“It’s just an incredible thing to do—to see something that would be helpful only to others, and wasn’t something that she needed at all, and to gather information from upper class Stein Scholars to try to make the experience better for 1Ls and 2Ls.”

Housing rights are human rights, Baruni noted, and Chamberlain’s dedication to improving life for those in underserved communities is particularly relevant in New York City.

“The work she’s going to be doing is absolutely essential to help ensure that families living in affordable housing can remain in that housing,” she said.

“The Legal Aid Society is really fortunate to have her, because she’s is so deeply committed to this work. It’s not a trend, it’s her purpose.”

In some ways, the pandemic that threw the worldwide economy into an unprecedented tailspin has made Chamberlain feel like her work is more relevant than ever. She’s hopeful that there will be changes on a systemic level with respect to how we take care of each other as a society and what the government is meant to provide to people.

“I do think that one of the things COVID-19 has done is force the whole country to contend with the reality that poverty is caused by a whole confluence of interconnected things, rather than just being something that’s an individual’s fault. My hope is that out of this we can get a better, more compassionate, and realistic social system. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to be part of that movement and help, in a small way, shepherd it through,” she said.

“I’m really excited to be starting work, but at the same time there’s some trepidation too. What is the world going to be like in September? We don’t really know. It’s scary, but I think there’s also a lot of opportunity.”

But the men were reading about civil rights movements beyond the prison’s walls. They were reading about George Jackson, the African-American activist and author who attempted escape from a California prison and was killed. The men wrote letters, too, and they were hurt that the government ignored their cries for help. On Sept. 9, 1971, they took control of the prison, and for four days they attempted to negotiate better conditions.

On Nov. 1, Fordham welcomed Heather Ann Thompson, who spoke about her book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for history. Thompson and a panel of legal experts and civil rights champions discussed how the legal system responded to the uprising and how the uprising illuminates current incarceration issues. The event, part of the A2J Initiative at Fordham Law, was hosted by the School’s Stein Scholars, Stein Center for Law and Ethics, and Center for Race, Law and Justice. Fordham Law Dean Matthew Diller was inspired to organize the event after reading Thompson’s book. “It spoke to me in so many ways that I thought, we must have Heather Thompson at our school,” he said.

“Out of this completely chaotic and unpredictable moment comes, I would argue, one of the most extraordinary human rights stories in American history,” said Thompson, who is also a professor of history, Afroamerican and African studies, and social theory and practice at the University of Michigan.

The state’s response to the uprising was inhumane. Troopers and correction officers were sent across the state to the prison, and, Thompson explained, weapons were passed out to them like candy. They wanted Governor Rockefeller to come to the prison and persuade the men to surrender without legal or physical ramifications. Rockefeller, however, had no intention of visiting and had every intention of taking the prison by force. The troopers and officers dropped gas over the prison and, once the men inside could not stand, they stormed into the building and began shooting.

In the aftermath of the chaos, the state chose not to tell the truth, Thompson said. Government officials pinned the blame on the prisoners, prosecuting them and persecuting them via public media.

Eventually, due to pressure from civil rights activists and attorneys, the prisoners achieved some victory: The state, Thompson explained, ultimately appealed an important jury verdict on behalf of the prisoners. It was “the closest to justice that could probably be had,” she said. She revealed, however, that the public still doesn’t know half the story, as the government continues to hide key documents about the historic event.

Following her talk, Thompson joined a panel discussion Soffiyah Elijah, executive director of Alliance Families for Justice; Elizabeth A. Gaynes, president and CEO of the Osborne Association; and William Hellerstein, professor of law emeritus at Brooklyn Law School. The panel was moderated by Caroline Hsu ’09, a Stein Scholars alumna who is now staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.

The panelists addressed how dismal and racist conditions still exist in American prisons.

“We have the same latent racism emanating, showing its ugly head again,” said Hellerstein.

Elijah shared that a popular tattoo among guards in upstate New York is a black baby on a noose. She also showed a video of guards abusing a nonresistant black prisoner and dragging him across the floor while medical professionals watched silently. Such behavior is common in prisons, Elijah noted, except that, usually, it is not recorded and the prisoner ends up in solitary confinement for allegedly assaulting officers.

“People go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that law enforcement is not held responsible,” said Thompson. She revealed that, during research for her book, she was most surprised to learn not only how traumatic the uprising still is for those involved, but also how deep the state attempted to cover up the truth of those historic days. Thompson noted, for example, secret meetings held by Rockefeller.

Today America has more people in cages than anywhere else on the globe, Thompson noted. She called for everyone, no matter her profession, to work in justice’s name.

Before the event, Stein Scholars Leanne Fornelli and Milan Sova created a mock desk display centered on William S. Kunstler, a well-known civil rights attorney who defended a prisoner charged with killing a guard during the riot. People were able to learn more about the riot by sifting through papers atop the desk and in its drawers. The display highlighted issues of access to justice arising from the Attica Prison Uprising.

—Carrie Johnson