From Ryan Whirty of The Louisiana Weekly:
Two staffers in the Orleans Parish Public Defender’s Office have received awards from the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund to help the pair of aspiring attorneys attain their goal of tackling issues of racial fairness and social justice.
Victor Olofin, a reentry paralegal with the OPD, and Markus Reneau, an OPD staff investigator, were honored as recipients last month of the LDF’s inaugural Marshall-Motley Scholars Program award, which will provide each honoree with a full law school scholarship, internships with major civil rights organizations, and post-graduate fellowships focusing on issues of racial justice. A total of 10 honorees were named this year.
The fellowship program, which was launched this past January, is named after two of the country’s greatest jurists and civil rights advocates, Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley.
Marshall founded the LDF in 1940, establishing the organization as an independent civil rights law firm and legal organization that has led the fight for social justice by taking on numerous civil rights cases over the last 80 years.
“I am excited to welcome the inaugural cohort of Marshall-Motley Scholars and to entrust them with this opportunity to preserve and expand LDF’s rich legacy of pursuing racial justice in the South on behalf of Black communities,” Jino Ray, director of the LDF’s Marshall-Motley Scholars Program, said on the LDF’s website.
“The scholars enter this stage following in the legacy of LDF’s 81-year-long history of monumental legal victories that removed some of the most significant structural and foundational barriers preventing progress for Black Americans – particularly in the South. Collectively, they bring with them passion and a bright light of hope that inspires us to reimagine what ‘liberty and justice for all’ could really look like in America. The scholars also represent an opportunity to extend the fight for racial justice in the South to all corners of the region so that every community is equally represented.”
Olofin said he is thrilled to be an inaugural recipient of the prestigious fellowship.
“This is one of the biggest honors, an honor of a lifetime, an opportunity of a lifetime,” Olofin, a native of Loxahatchee, Fla., and a graduate of Florida State University, told The Louisiana Weekly. “I’m still wrapping my head around what it means to my journey and my future.”
He added that the MMSP will provide him and the other recipients the resources and support that many aspiring young adults don’t have, and he’s extremely grateful and excited.
“It will allow me to engage in reform work that many of us want to do but are troubled by law school debt, something that disproportionately affects the Black and Brown communities,” he said.
Reneau expressed similar thoughts as Olofin.
“It’s a great honor,” Reneau told The Louisiana Weekly. “Honestly, I’m still floating. I’ve known for two weeks and I still can’t believe it.”
Reneau, a native of New Orleans and a graduate of Yale University, added that he has always aspired to serve the community and improve people’s lives with his legal pursuits, and that the MMSP fellowship can help him do that, especially behind the scenes.
“I have been in this [the civil rights fight], and being able to receive [the LDF fellowship] is huge,” he said. “I can keep using my education to help my community. We all need to be soldiers in this fight. It’s kind of what this country owes Black people.”
Olofin will use the MMSP grant to attend Harvard University Law School this fall, an experience he hopes will set him up for a long, productive, dedicated career. He said his goal is to pursue “on the ground” advocacy for criminal justice reform, especially in the South, where such issues as disproportionately high incarceration rates and draconian drug laws particularly cripple communities of color.
He said that he envisions himself engaging first-hand in the criminal justice reform effort in several years following his educational experience.
“I see myself knee-deep in civil rights advocacy, and particularly prison reform in the South,” he said. “I’m excited for the unknown. I don’t know where I’m going to land, but I plan to continue [his career] and hit the ground running after law school.”
Olofin added that criminal justice reform is both necessary and urgent.
“The reality is that we still have two and a half million people in prison in the United States,” he said. “A lot of them are in and out of the system, and that’s devastating to families, and it disproportionately affects the Black and Brown populations. It’s keeping people in a cycle of poverty, and it has to stop. It has to end.”
While Olofin hopes to tackle the fight for social justice in the courtroom, Reneau aspires to explore, discover and communicate all the underlying factors and reasons for the ways the American criminal justice system harms people of color and their communities, and he adds that the LDF fellowship program will enrich that educational, explorative goal.
“It’s an opportunity to approach civil rights issues, but not down in the trenches [in court],” he said. “I want to be able to step back and explore the possibilities so I can better help the cause.” He added that he wants to help shape the policies that can lay the foundation for reform and social justice, especially educational policy. For example, he wants to challenge the misguided notion that the post-Katrina charter school system in his hometown of New Orleans has only benefited students and communities of color and the quality of their education.
Reneau said the belief that charter schools have had a singularly beneficial impact is a fallacy that needs to be corrected, adding that his own personal experience drives him to explore and promote change.
Reneau said he hopes to help create and guide the needed legal and political mechanisms that have long been incomplete or absent from American society that would finally allow for the pursuit and achievement of justice. He said he wants to prevent tragedies like the murder of George Floyd from even happening because society will at last already have the ability and structure to head them off.
“I want to become the best legal-minded person as possible,” he said.
OPD Chief Defender Derwyn Bunton said in a press release that he and everyone involved in the OPD are extremely proud of Reneau and Olofin. Both Reneau and Olofin began their tenures with the OPD during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Bunton said both have contributed significantly to the office’s efforts to preserve the health, safety and right to legal representation of local citizens during the global public health crisis.
“We are thrilled for Markus and Victor on this extraordinary honor,” Bunton said. “Without reservation or hesitation, they both dove headfirst into the uncharted crises of COVID-19. OPD is better because of their perseverance and commitment to our community. I can think of no one better to carry the torch and further the work toward equity and justice in New Orleans and across the South.”
