Member #1

Jamie Borgan cuts the cake as the Center’s first member.

We probably didn’t do enough this summer to advertise the fact that, beginning this month, the Center for Justice would be a membership organization. That’s right. For a fifty dollar contribution you can now be a member of our intrepid, non-profit organization that dispatches lawyers, paralegals, social workers, energetic interns, law students, and even writers and videographers out into the world to try to make things better.

Early on we decided to honor the first person who would sign on. We had no idea who it would be and more than half expected it would be someone whom we didn’t know. We even day-dreamed about the public relations bonanza we could experience if our first member was a repentant predatory lender, or a recovering former polluter. But we didn’t expect the serendipity of our first member being Jamie Borgan. That changed the story. We would have liked to ask the first member to tell us about him or herself, and explain the decision.

But, with Jamie, that’s a hard question to fashion. At least for us. Jamie, a former CFJ intern in our Community Advocacy program, now works a floor below us in the Community Building for the Northwest Fair Housing Alliance. With Jamie, it’s not just what she does, it’s who she is, and it shows up day by day, in the subtle ways she’s tuned into the world around her and how she takes the time to care for the people in her community.

In addition to just being Jamie Borgan, she’s been a frequent contributor to our Kitchen Table feature section on the website, beginning with her poignant, insightful, but still humorous take on the commotions and police actions she wandered into last summer as an impromptu visitor to the scene of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. If you read it then, it’s worth another look; if you haven’t seen it, click here and you’re in for a treat.

You can read her most recent dispatch from the fence line in her West Central neighborhood here, and her portrait of the unusual One World restaurant in East Spokane, here.

In and out of her writings, one thing that stands out about Jamie is that she really does ask herself and others the sort of questions we should all be asking ourselves about how we set priorities and make difficult decisions in a stress-filled world that can be cold-hearted when it isn’t just outright crazy. And she does this with an enduring blend of engagement, humility, and humor. That’s just who she is.

The upshot is this: what an honor for us, that our first member is her. Her support of our work is a powerful testimonial just because of who she is. So now you can join her, by joining us, which you can do, by going here.

–CFJ