Soffiyah Elijah Explained

Jill Soffiyah Elijah is an American lawyer, author and social justice activist.

Education

Elijah holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University and a Juris Doctor degree from the Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan.[1] [2]

Career

Following law school, she worked as a supervising attorney at the Neighborhood Defender Service in Harlem, New York, and in the juvenile rights division of the New York Legal Aide Society.[2] [3] Beginning in 1992, she taught in the defender clinic at CUNY School of Law.[2] She was a clinical faculty member and the director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University.[4]

Elijah was the first black director of the Correctional Association of New York, a position she held for five years.[5] At the Correctional Association, she worked with the Marshall Project to prosecute several guards Attica Prison for brutality against inmates.[6] [7] In 2016 she founded the Alliance of Families for Justice, an American organization that advocates for those with family members in prison.[8] [9] As a lawyer she has represented Marilyn Buck and Sundiata Acoli in court.[10]

In 2018 she was honored with the Spirit of John Brown Freedom Award.[11]

As an author she has written opinion pieces for the New York Daily News,[12] The Hill,[13] Democracy Now!, and the New York Times.[14] [15]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: The League - Jill Soffiyah Elijah Alumni Spotlight . theleagueonline.org.
  2. Web site: Karlin . Rick . Capital Profile: J. Soffiyah Elijah . Times Union . 20 February 2012.
  3. Web site: Soffiyah Elijah . The Center for the Humanities.
  4. Book: Esquivel . Adolfo Perez . Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners . September 2008 . PM Press . 978-1-60486-149-5 . en.
  5. Web site: McMahon . Lisa . Niagara University's Transformative Visions Presidential Series Discusses Criminal Justice, Policing, and Prisons . news.niagara.edu.
  6. Web site: Tatusian . Alex . Happy Birthday to The Marshall Project . The Marshall Project . 15 November 2019.
  7. Web site: Finalist: Tom Robbins of The Marshall Project and Michael Schwirtz and Michael Winerip of The New York Times . www.pulitzer.org . en.
  8. Web site: New Yorker of the Week: Soffiyah Elijah . www.ny1.com . en.
  9. Web site: Gorce . Tammy La . How a Leader in Criminal Justice Reform Spends Her Sundays . The New York Times . 23 April 2021.
  10. Book: Sullivan . Bobby . Revolutionary Threads: Rastafari, Social Justice, and Cooperative Economics . 4 December 2018 . Akashic Books . 978-1-61775-697-9 . en.
  11. April 30, 2018. 1. John Brown celebration at the farmstead. Adirondack Explorer. Michael. Virtanen.
  12. Web site: Elijah . Soffiyah . 'No new jails' means same old jails . nydailynews.com.
  13. Web site: Charles . J. B. . Honoring mothers on both sides of the bars on Mother's Day . TheHill . en . 14 May 2017.
  14. Web site: Opinion The Horror at the Attica Prison . The New York Times . 3 March 2015.
  15. Web site: New York Ordered to Vaccinate Incarcerated People; Will Gov. Sign Bill Curbing Solitary Confinement? . Democracy Now! . en.

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