My project will be a photojournalist narrative project documenting the individuals whose lives have been affected by the criminal legal system including prisoners’ families, corrections and police officers, judges, lawyers, community members, and others doing important work. This will include contacting and scheduling interviews with various people or organizations, documenting the interviews, and taking film photos of the interviewees. During my junior year, I took Constitutional Law with Ann and it sparked my interest in law. Alongside that class, I was in other spaces discussing systemic racism and how the criminal legal system impacts people of color negatively. Over the summer, I participated in an internship with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office where I was paired with Assistant District Attorney Michael Perez, someone I plan on interviewing. Coinciding with that experience, I participated in a week-long National Advocacy program with the ACLU and learned about the different flaws within our system. This included defunding the police, decriminalizing marijuana, the negative impacts of policing in schools, community resources and solutions, and so much more. A lot of the discussions with the ACLU went against what the DA’s office implements and believes. The ACLU truly inspired me to look at the legal system through a social justice lens and forced me to reevaluate. My questions for each person I interview will differ depending on their job. For ADA Perez, my questions will be more pertaining to his impact on the individual and about his opinions on more radical change and accountability being called for in the office and nationwide (i.e. defunding the police, the new mayor, bail reform, decriminalizing certain drugs, etc). For someone that, for example, is involved in grassroots organizing (like Paige Fernandez), my questions would surround the ups and downs of being an organizer and trying to enact change in a system built to resist that change. I think this project will continue to challenge the image that I was taught about the criminal legal system and show how it truly is a broken system in need of abolition/reform. It will also help me compare abolition and reform. This will also help me grow as an ally and show me how to better support these people and organizations. My personal goals are to open my mind and learn more about this topic. Additionally, I want to learn more about the film aspect of this project – the Hasselblad (potential camera I may use) is very new to me and I have never used it before. I think it will definitely help to expand on my film camera knowledge as well as learning more about the type of film the camera takes.