This year’s Student Week Against Mass Incarceration (SWAMI), held between Feb. 28 and March 4, brought together social justice-focused groups from across the Fordham Law community in a series of events that examined the relationship between mass incarceration and the housing crisis.
The week of events at Fordham Law was co-sponsored by Advocates for the Incarcerated, Fordham Law Defenders, Housing Advocacy Project, Suspension Representation Project, Education Law Collaborative, People’s Parity Project, Coalition of Concerned Students, Fordham Law Advocates for Voter Rights, Fordham Information Law Society, the Stein Scholars fellows, and the Center on Race, Law and Justice. SWAMI is organized annually at the national level by the National Lawyers Guild.
“The purpose of the Student Week Against Mass Incarceration is to raise awareness about issues that are underrepresented,” said Eli Salamon-Abrams ’22, co-president of the Fordham Law Defenders, who helped organize events for the week. “A big part of this is presenting students with more knowledge on the issues that you can work on as a lawyer that can make an impact for people who are affected by these really oppressive systems, especially people of color and people living in poverty.”
As part of the program, Salamon-Abrams co-moderated, along with Yash Ramesh ’24, an interview and panel discussion with Shamika Crawford, a Bronx resident who helped to change court procedure after being left unhoused by the criminal justice system. Crawford was charged with a misdemeanor assault in 2019, and was given an “order of protection” that restricted her from entering the apartment where she, her children, and her boyfriend lived. Despite the boyfriend’s long history of domestic violence against her, and her being the only person named in the lease and the sole rent-payer, Crawford was forced to live in her car for months and was unable to see her children.
With the help of lawyers from The Bronx Defenders, Crawford filed a challenge with a state appellate court, asking for a hearing on the necessity of the order of protection filed against her. In 2021, the court ruled in favor of Crawford’s challenge, making a due process hearing possible for others facing orders of protection—now commonly referred to as “Crawford hearings.” While this appeal was pending, the underlying criminal case against Ms. Crawford was dismissed due to a lack of evidence.
According to Edward Soto, a lawyer with The Bronx Defenders who represented Ms. Crawford and who also participated in the panel discussion, situations like Crawford’s happen every day in New York City courts, with people often left without a place to live as their case awaits resolution.
During the SWAMI event, Crawford described how “nerve-wracking” it felt, after all she had experienced, to have her challenge heard by the appellate court. “It was scary … but at the same time, I knew that I was going to be heard,” she said. “We want to be heard on both sides, [and] both arguments should be heard the right way.”
Other SWAMI events touched on topics related to housing and employment, domestic violence, and parole justice. Additionally, the National Lawyers Guild conducted a legal observer training, in which participants learned how to effectively observe protests and record any instances of police misconduct, as well as how to connect people who are arrested with legal services.
“That’s another side of what was done at SWAMI,” said Salamon-Abrams. “Rather than just being informational, it was also practical, training people to use their skills and knowledge to try to do something more active.
“While in law school, you’re not a lawyer yet, but there are still a lot of ways you can use legal education and legal training to promote social justice values, ideals and practices—and not just promote them, but to actually engage in them yourself,” he said.