COMMUNITY VOICES 04/12/2009
LOS ANGELES PUBLIC INTEREST LAW JOURNAL 1 L.A. PUB. INT. L.J. 319 LETTER TO A YOUNG PUBLIC INTEREST ATTORNEY* Growing up in a working and middle class suburb of Los Angeles, the daughter of immigrant parents from Taiwan, I was fascinated with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr. were my heroes. A voracious reader, I devoured every biography of them I could find at the local library. When other children taunted my siblings and me for speaking Taiwanese, or local politicians called for the passage of English-only ordinances, I drew on the history of African Americans and their courage and perseverance in the struggle against slavery and discrimination. Given the absence of Asian Americans in history books, television, and media, I looked instead to King and other civil rights icons for role models of what people of color can overcome and achieve in the United States. I longed to be part of a community and movement for equal rights and justice and, inspired by such examples, decided that I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. Add Comment | AuthorSpecial Counsel at Inner City Law Center and Senior Attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.** Ms Hung serves as counsel to the Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance, and played a key role in reauthorization of a California law that addresses the exploitative working conditions of car wash workers. As an echoing green fellow at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Ms. Hung was part of the legal team that litigated the precedent setting El Monte Thai and Latino garment worker case. She also worked as a community organizer with Cambodian high school girls in Long Beach, CA, where she spearheaded a campaign that led to school safety reforms, and as a litigation associate at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers LLP where she initiated several diversity efforts. Ms. Hung is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. (**For identification purposes only.) |
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