Tax and Social Justice: Perspectives of a Brunswick Public Service Fellow

As a Brunswick Public Service Fellow at South Brooklyn Legal Services from 2011-2013, the author spent many evenings engaged with low-wage, immigrant workers who were eager to participate properly in their federal tax system but often lacked the resources and information to do so. She traveled to church basements, workers' cooperatives, ESL classes, and domestic violence shelters convening with taxpayers and community-based organizations throughout New York City. When Hurricane Sandy ravaged Brooklyn's waterfront neighborhoods in 2012, she counseled Spanish and Russian-speaking disaster victims at FEMA outreach sites and staffed a weekly disaster relief clinic at a shorefront community center. Every client's case was unique, as were the circumstances underpinning the need for representation, but many had endured one or several life crises: domestic violence, worker exploitation, a major illness, the experience of war or persecution in another country, or a natural disaster at home in New York.