Do you want to help lead a multiracial movement to build a justice system that truly serves all Americans? Friends of Justice is looking for a Summer Intern. Give us three months, and we’ll give you leadership experience that will last a lifetime.

Friends of Justice is a faith-based, multiracial movement working for democratic accountability in our criminal justice system. We’re concerned that mass incarceration is corrupting our democracy, compromising the equal citizenship of poor people, and aggravating social problems in local communities. Our solution is to rally the American public behind the “Common Peace agenda,” a new moral consensus that public safety must be built on a foundation of democratic problem-solving and equal justice under the law. We achieve dramatic impact with our innovative model of “narrative-based intervention.” We investigate cases of injustice, organize the affected community to tell their story, and generate national coverage about these unfolding cases that that dramatize the need for democratic accountability in our criminal justice system.

As a Friends of Justice Intern, you will travel with our Executive Director in Texas and Louisiana to investigate cases of injustice and to organize through churches in low-income Black and Hispanic communities. You would also gain experience in new media, investigating and writing stories for our nationally recognized blog. This internship would be excellent preparation for careers in law, public policy, ministry, and civil rights leadership.

Qualifications:

1. Socially/culturally flexible: Our work requires us to engage people across the lines of race, income, religion, and culture. To be effective, we adapt our cultural style (and diet) to the hospitality of the communities where we organize.
2. Character and emotional strength: We need an intern who is strong but gracious in the face of opposition, maintaining both civility and research objectivity.
3. Comfortable with diverse faith communities: Our mission is rooted in the Bible’s teachings about justice, and we organize through Black, Hispanic, and White churches in the South. If you have a faith background or prior experience in churches, that’s a great cultural resource that you would bring to our work.
4. Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Prior experience with web design or blogging is not necessary, but would be a huge plus.

Friends of Justice is based in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, a major urban center with high quality of life and low cost of living. We would help you find inexpensive furnished summer housing.

This is an unfunded position.

To learn more, contact Lydia Bean at bean@fas.harvard.edu or 617-429-0104.

Visit the Friends of Justice website at: https://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com.