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Liz G Schultz: Fix the System. One Defendant at a Time.
81 Plays2 years ago
How do you know when to step away? How do you find a sacred, restful place by LEAVING faith? How do you dismantle systemic oppression in the prison industrial complex?
Civil rights attorney is trying to find those answers.
CONTENT WARNING: religious trauma and moral injury, discussion of the prison industrial complex and prison crime, impacts of COVID, disability, white supremacy,
This episode contains explicit language.
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we chat to ordinary people doing uncommon good in service of our common humanity.
We are creating community that builds relationships across difference by inviting dialogue about the squishy and vulnerable bits of life.
(un)common good with pauli reese is an uncommon good media production, where we put content on the internet to help people stop hating each other.
thanks for joining us on the journey of (un)common good!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Uncommon Good' and Guest Liz G. Schulz
00:00:00
Speaker
This work needs to be personal to all of us because you can't do it for them. You have to do it for us because this system harms all of us in so many ways. This unequal oppressive system absolutely harms all of us in our everyday life in ways that we have learned not to see.
00:00:30
Speaker
It's Uncommon Good, the podcast where we chat to ordinary people doing uncommon good in service of our common humanity. My name is Paulie Reese. Fam, I am delighted to bring you our season two premier guest, Liz G. Schulz. She is a civil rights attorney and the founding partner of the law firm Green Schulz Law, a content warning right off the top. This is a big one. We jump into religious trauma,
00:00:59
Speaker
and physical trauma, moral injury, a frank discussion of the prison industrial complex, the impacts of COVID on the carceral system, disability, white supremacy, and a whole boatload of explicit language. So if these things are not right for you to listen to, feel free to switch this one off and we'll catch you in the next one.
Exploring Public Defense and Personal Impact
00:01:23
Speaker
We go on to talk about finding spirituality after leaving Christianity, the work of public defenders, and the challenges of adjusting to life after disability. This was such a beautiful conversation with so much commonality between the two of us. Please enjoy my chat to Liz.
00:01:47
Speaker
On that note, I can say fuck, right? Because I say fuck a lot. You absolutely can. Perfect. Then I'm happy. I got my M&Ms, I got my double-foot steak coffee. When given the choice, are you a hot coffee person, an iced coffee person, or please tell me at least you're not a reheated in the microwave coffee person?
00:02:09
Speaker
Should I go? No, I promise it's okay. I have become a little bit of a reheated of the microwave coffee person, but here's why. So I used to be ice only. Sure. During the pandemic, I'm migrated toward hot. Yeah. And then we got a fancy, we, myself and the mouse in my pocket, no, just kidding, my very fabulous
00:02:32
Speaker
spouse got a fancy coffee pot that is a grind and brew. Nice. Because again, we all needed something during the pandemic to get us through. That's right. Still in a pandemic. And so rather than grind a whole new thing, sometimes I will pop it on the microwave, please don't judge me.
00:02:53
Speaker
especially given the extraordinary times that we're facing and the profound amounts of trauma that that inflicts on all of us, whether knowingly or otherwise. You gotta do what you gotta do. And sometimes that's not having to brew a second pot. Yeah. And a mentor of mine had this coffee pot and I tried to follow everything that she does, including getting this coffee pot. And on the trauma note, yeah, I just left public defense.
00:03:27
Speaker
We're having so much fun, and in my experience when I was doing chaplaincy work on the Parkway during the George Floyd demonstrations, humor was really important.
00:03:38
Speaker
because there is an incredible amount of profoundly and potentially traumatizing things that are a part of your job, partnering and accompanying people through their experiences. Absolutely. And while the George Floyd protests were going on, I was
00:03:59
Speaker
I want to say trapped in my house, frantically trying to get people out of Philly jails. So it was a deeply traumatizing time. June 1st is the day, June 1st, 2020 is the day that the courts were supposed to have their grand reopening at the beginning of the pandemic. I think what we all hoped was toward the end of the pandemic, which is unfathomable now. And June 1st, 2020, the courts did not reopen for different reasons.
00:04:29
Speaker
What I think the implication there that I'm hearing is that for anybody who was serving the sentence, there was just no movement on any of their casework while the courts were closed. Is that accurate? That is mostly accurate. There was very slow movement that took a long time to get rolling. And you mentioned serving a sentence and here's the kicker.
00:04:52
Speaker
A large chunk of the state road population, the jails in Philly, are folks who are not serving a sentence. They have not yet reached their trial date. Christ.
00:05:03
Speaker
Yes. And so at that time I was a Philly public defender and I was overseeing a project with another young Philly PD badass. What did you say? Boss bitch? Boss bitch. Yes, she's a boss bitch. And the two of us were frantically trying to get folks
00:05:25
Speaker
off of State Road, out of the jails back home, who were detained solely on the basis of out of county warrants and detainers. I know I just said a lot of words. Just, you know, big picture, Philly Defender was frantically trying to decarcerate, get people out of jail during that time. And I was assigned a slice of that population, specifically that we didn't really
00:05:51
Speaker
know that we were going to be able to get out. I think that's why it was given to me because I was still a fairly new public defender at that time. Yeah, still, well, I'm no longer a public defender. I'm still a fairly young attorney, I guess. Our work ended up being far more successful than we expected, which was great. We got about 200 people out while not able to get everyone out that we wanted to get out. And that was devastating. It was also really devastating to hear
00:06:21
Speaker
folks' stories every day. It was great to get in contact with our clients who were on State Road because that was a huge barrier to our work. So we found ways to do that. And it was absolutely heart wrenching to speak with these folks every day, hear the conditions that they were experiencing, learn of the reasons why they were detained, some of which were like stale warrants. They shouldn't have been in the jail.
00:06:50
Speaker
They were being detained illegally Some of them were proper warrants and detainers that we were able to work with the counties to get lifted So it in some ways was successful work and other ways, you know There's folks I wish we could have gotten out that we weren't able to get out and it was all truly devastating every day I was a mental health mess during that time so and the city was exploding the country was exploding so
00:07:19
Speaker
Trauma, trauma, trauma all over the place. And that was not easy to deal with. So I wish I had your chaplaincy work during that time. Did I say the word right, chaplaincy? You did. Okay.
Spiritual Journeys and Personal Growth
00:07:33
Speaker
I'm going to reward myself with an M&M for that. Do it. What color did you choose? Green. Still going with the hope theme. Well done, you. Hope is so good. There's so much there, I think.
00:07:50
Speaker
Whatever it is that keeps us above the ground sometimes, sometimes the standards for hope and the efficacy of hope I feel like are very low. Maybe they don't have to be incredibly high.
00:08:07
Speaker
I feel like they can't be because we're so short on hope these days. So I'll take anything I can get. I believe it's Dr. Cornel West has a quote about, I cannot be an optimist, but I am a prisoner of hope. Tell me how you came to know that quote. Is there a story behind it? There is a story behind it. It was during the summer of 2020 when I was desperate for any hope.
00:08:36
Speaker
and I...
00:08:39
Speaker
Actually, it was in Newcore. There's a group through which Paulie and I met. I found Newcore, the new coalition on race and ethnicity in the summer of 2020 when I was a little short on hope, pretty high on desperation. Didn't know what to do, didn't know what was next for me. I am not a person of God. I guess we're all people of God, but I only recently have begun
00:09:11
Speaker
to have this faith journey and be a little more curious about who this God person is. And that is actually through New Corps, but that was not the reason that I was involved in New Corps. It's not the reason I joined New Corps.
00:09:25
Speaker
being affiliated with Nucor after I had been attending for a few months and felt comfortable enough saying, hey, I don't believe in God. And this is kind of a faith-based group.
00:09:41
Speaker
I have identified as non-religious for decades at this point. But I was raised in the church, so I would just kind of close my eyes during the prayer and meditate for a moment. But after I had been attending for a few months and felt comfortable enough, you know, fearing I would be kicked out of the group, if I admit I don't believe in God, I am not a religious person, I've said I don't and so I don't
00:10:12
Speaker
I don't have any hope. I don't know where, what is this thing? Can you give me some of it? And so a number of folks said some really helpful things and one of them was the Dr. Cornel West quote. I remember somebody put it in the chat and somewhere I have a picture of it. I saved that.
00:10:29
Speaker
Around the same time, I had a conversation with a Temple Law professor. I went to Temple Law, and she gave me a quote that is something to the effect of, we push back against the ocean not to stop the tide, but to keep from drowning. That became
00:10:48
Speaker
really helpful for me as a public defender because public defenders cannot stop the tide and sometimes drown. I kept a picture up on my wall of a wave. It's a picture that I took about 10 years ago with that quote
00:11:03
Speaker
near it and I would put my wins up on Post-its so that I would remember them and incentivize me to keep going. As a public defender, I had wins that I didn't take personal responsibility for. I felt anybody could have done the same thing with that file.
00:11:24
Speaker
I should say with that client. So it's the wins that I felt that I personally did that. I personally contributed to that, that I would put on a little post-it and stick up to remind me why I'm here, why I'm doing this work and that I need to keep going and I need to find a way to keep going. I would even call it that ministry. I think that's right. And it over time became very spiritual work for me.
00:11:49
Speaker
I actually spoke in our most recent new core about the concept of namaste. So I taught yoga years ago. I haven't taught it since I became a lawyer.
00:12:03
Speaker
There's the concept of namaste that describes something along the lines of the true self in me greets and honors that in you. And I felt that with so many of my clients, certainly not every one of my clients, not every one of my clients necessarily wanted their true self to be greeting and honoring a public defender.
00:12:24
Speaker
There were so many clients that I would interview who were recently arrested, and within five minutes, 10 minutes, we had this connection. I punched the mic. I got so excited about the connection. Hey, I'm about it. The zealous advocacy of a public defender in a podcast.
00:12:45
Speaker
So many clients would cry with me, people I never would have expected would ever shed a tear in their entire life. So it broke a lot of my assumptions and biases.
00:12:59
Speaker
I'm still in contact with some former clients. I meant to wear it today. One of them gave me a bracelet. Well, more specifically, his lady gave me a bracelet. I meant to wear it today. So I developed this really incredible professional relationship with a number of my clients and over time started to feel like, I think this is namaste.
00:13:21
Speaker
This is someone who may or may not have done something that society doesn't like. They're pretrial at that point, so they still enjoy the presumption of innocence. And it's not their best moment. It's not their favorite moment in their life. And I get to sit with them and experience
00:13:48
Speaker
what they're going through and nonjudgmentally explain to them what we're going to do to try to help them.
Systemic Issues and Reform in Criminal Justice
00:13:55
Speaker
And that was such a privilege that it was very difficult for me to leave public defense, especially for that reason, because it's an incredible gift that I thought all the time how many people will never get to experience this in their whole life. And I get to do it every day. So that was really, really cool.
00:14:15
Speaker
You, as we were talking, made the distinction between client and file, specifically those words. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean? Part of my training as a public defender was these are not files, these are clients.
00:14:30
Speaker
And part of the reason why that is a specific part of the training, I think, is because it is so easy to get swept into the files. Both of the public defense offices that I practice in are called horizontal as opposed to vertical. So in a vertical office, you get assigned a, I did it again, a client at arraignment.
00:14:54
Speaker
and take that case all the way through to the end. I believe that is somewhat unusual in public defense. I don't know if it is in fact unusual, but it's certainly, I don't know of offices in the area that are structured that way. Where it's a common practice, where it's a default practice. Yes. I believe the default is horizontal and I believe that is
00:15:20
Speaker
mostly because it would be an administrative nightmare to have vertical structuring of an office. It requires the courts to be on board with that because we are scheduled. I probably will never get rid of the we of being a public defender because it's been such a strong part of my identity for years.
00:15:40
Speaker
But public defender offices assign public defenders to courtrooms on days. That is the basis for scheduling, usually, in my experience. And so if you have 60 cases that are scheduled on 60 different days,
00:15:58
Speaker
that as an administrative nightmare, it would cost the city a lot more. One thing that I found is that no matter how committed any office is to ethical practice and reform, they're still receiving their budget from the government. And so they're still bound to what that government is willing to do in terms of supporting those clients, those public defenders,
00:16:25
Speaker
those prosecutors as well, the prosecutors also experience a ton of trauma in this system. And so in Philly, we are really fortunate to have a local government who values ethical practice and just bumped the Philly public defender's budget up quite a bit. And yes, good thing. And here's the thing, it's not
00:16:52
Speaker
Public defense is very unpopular work, right? I would be in an Uber, an Uber driver says, what do you do? Public defender, how do you represent those people? Every public defender gets that question. How do you represent those people? And easily, actually, because, you know, toward the end, I would just say because I was raised Christian and that I think frequently the people who would ask that question
00:17:21
Speaker
either go to church, used to go to church, have a Bible in their house, and it's actually one of the reasons that I left the church. I was raised Christian and began to feel like, we say these things when we're in church, but then that feels harder to apply in practice.
00:17:42
Speaker
I digress. So public defense is very unpopular work, but public defenders are actually in a position to help.
00:17:54
Speaker
the very issues that we are all talking about, we are all touching our pearls about, but it's the only way that we utilize public defender offices and public defenders is go stand in the corner, handle all these files, don't complain about it, don't ask for more money, don't fight too hard, don't file too many motions, don't call too many cases for trial.
00:18:18
Speaker
then we're going to have the same system that we have now, which everyone agrees is not working. Ask any person who has ever set foot in a courtroom in professional capacity. Everyone agrees it's not working. Everyone agrees that it's perpetuating trauma and not... I feel farther from knowing what justice is now, having worked in criminal courtrooms for the last four years. Everybody agrees that that is not justice.
00:18:48
Speaker
People disagree about what to do next, what justice could look like, but rather than coming together and having those conversations together, we cannibalize each other and point the finger and blame, I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with strangers about Larry Krasner. Yeah, he is the district attorney of Philadelphia, somewhat recently reelected. Then I became a public defender, rapidly became very critical of Larry Krasner.
00:19:16
Speaker
along with everyone else. So I'm not president of his fan club. I'm not really sure that he has a fan club. But we have to give credit where credit is due, right? He's trying something. And there has been a fair amount of success associated with that. People don't want to point to the success. It is very easy to point to the ways that reform hasn't come as quickly as everyone would hope. But...
00:19:46
Speaker
He is facing tremendous barriers within the system. The police pretty openly will not fight crime, will tell people this will not get prosecuted when that is clearly incorrect. It's very frustrating to me. So over the years, I have had countless conversations with strangers
00:20:07
Speaker
about Larry Krasner. And I want to say to these people, do you know Larry Krasner? Have you ever met him? Have you ever attended an event where he's speaking? Have you ever set foot in a criminal courtroom? People have such opinions about things that they just don't know. And I have many friends who worked under him who are critical of
00:20:31
Speaker
His policy is the way he runs the office. But I don't think anyone can deny that he has changed countless lives in the city of Philadelphia. I am. I have no doubt that hundreds, if not more people would have died during the pandemic. But for Krasner's agreement that, yes, this person shouldn't be on State Road, this person shouldn't be on State Road. And of course, he didn't do those things individually. Right. That's the people that he tasked with that.
00:21:01
Speaker
But the prior administrations, I don't think that would have been the case. It's very easy and requires significant less emotional bandwidth for a person to be able to be all roses or just all like dog shit. Yeah, and we're all more complicated than that.
00:21:27
Speaker
was there a specific moment that marked the decision? That was like the crystallizing moment to say, it's time to sunset my public defender work. It was a progression for sure. Yeah. When I decided to leave the first office I practiced in
00:21:48
Speaker
I never expected to leave that office. I loved the office. I loved the work, but an accident, among other things, took me out of that office. But I wasn't ready to leave public defense yet. So I went to another public defense office for a year and
00:22:08
Speaker
I was so happy. I just would drive to work so excited, so full of joy, just looking at the sun streaming through the trees, just so grateful to be alive, grateful to be able to practice law still, grateful to have the opportunity to keep going to the jail and interviewing people who had just been arrested and fighting for them in court and finding out what their goals are and pursuing those.
00:22:37
Speaker
I just loved it. I could not have imagined that I would leave just a few months later. But I came to law school because I wanted to fight for change. And that is not what public defenders do, fundamentally. We fight for the individual and what they want in their case and their life, even if we personally disagree.
00:23:04
Speaker
Sometimes, the same person ends up arrested again and ends up back in the cycle. This is something we know about the criminal system. It is in fact, it contributes to incarceration and recidivism. It's criminogenic. It does not rehabilitate. It does not cause everyone to stop coming back into the system the way it is supposed to.
00:23:26
Speaker
So that is hard to see and definitely contributes to burnout and moral injury. And there was a day in April that I felt like it finally clicked for me what the job really was in that office that I was in. And I thought, I can't do this. This is not why I came to the law. This is not how I want to spend
00:23:52
Speaker
the precious few years that I have on this planet in my career. I came to the law because I wanted to contribute to dismantling white supremacy. And that is not what this work is. And so I need to course correct back toward what I wanted to do. I'm very glad that I became a public defender. I'm so honored and privileged to have been able to do that work for as long as I did, which is actually quite a bit longer than many of my friends.
00:24:22
Speaker
because it is such high burnout, high trauma work, but I decided I can't do it anymore. It's really, really hard decision. Yeah. So that's why I went into private practice, not because, you know, people, sometimes people go into private practice for the money. I am very fortunate to not have to make decisions like that.
Transition from Public Defense to Private Practice
00:24:43
Speaker
I actually, as a lawyer, I've only ever made less than I made as a public school teacher.
00:24:50
Speaker
I was a public school teacher for eight years and I left making about $11,000 more than I left public defense making. But I knew that that was going to be the case because I knew I wanted to be a public interest lawyer and we don't pay public interest lawyers. It is generally unpopular work, societally and systemically.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yeah. A friend of mine called Hope, incidentally, says to go towards the good. I wonder if you can describe what the experience has been in making this choice to move towards what I hope is more of what you feel passionate about, perhaps even called to.
00:25:40
Speaker
Um, I think that we as humans are probably always trying to go toward the good and everybody is trying to survive every day. These are things that I have come to believe really deeply. I'm sure plenty of people disagree with.
00:25:55
Speaker
How's that? I'm reminded of a few things. One is when I was a teacher and I would have arguments with some of my students about whether they're bad people or whether they're lazy people. And I actually believe very strongly that there are not
00:26:12
Speaker
I'm also reminded of someone I passed on the street on my way here to film today who was shooting up. It is a, for me, a physically visceral experience to see, even just to see needles on the ground, which we see in Philadelphia pretty regularly, but much less to see someone taking that needle and putting it to their arm. I have opiate addiction in my family. I have system involvement in my family.
00:26:37
Speaker
And that was always a difficult part of public defense for me, but a motivating and inspiring part as well, because I know what my family member has gone through, at least from my experience as the family member, right? I don't know what that person has gone through in terms of lived experience every day.
00:26:59
Speaker
you know how their experience impacted you. Yeah, I know how it impacted me and I've watched some of the effects of how it has impacted that person. But I haven't lived it and that is a major privilege that I have. So I think that the person who I saw on the way here is trying to survive and trying to go toward the good. And for that person, survival and good means something to numb the pain for a little while.
00:27:27
Speaker
And I suspect, I don't understand addiction. I suspect I understand it quite a bit more than many because I have it in my family. I've been very curious about it for a very long time since I was little. And I, over time, especially as a public defender, I came to see it as that person's way to go toward the good because
00:27:57
Speaker
You know, I have an incredibly supportive husband and a great support system and a couple college degrees and things I can lean on when I'm having a really rough time period. That is not the case for everyone. And so when I encounter someone professionally who doesn't seem to understand addiction, which unfortunately is all the time, especially the judges.
00:28:27
Speaker
Some judges do, a lot of judges don't. And I always think to myself, on one hand, be glad that you don't, but also why are you yelling at this person?
00:28:40
Speaker
literally yelling at this person for relapsing. When we know that addiction is a disease, it is a condition that people don't want to be experiencing. People would love to get out of. And in fact, you, Judge, are in a position to maybe help them. But it was brutal to watch my clients who were just trying to survive every day. Yeah.
00:29:04
Speaker
crumble under the pressure of trying to provide for families and make up for past mistakes and then relapse and then get screamed at by a judge and thrown in jail for relapsing. It happened all the time. It's exhausting. That feels like such an incredible burden to Carrie.
00:29:27
Speaker
I'm not done healing from it for sure. I don't think people see the full cost of the system on public defenders, on judges, on prosecutors, on probation officers, state parole agents. It really weighs heavily on everyone.
00:29:47
Speaker
Please tell me more. And the police officers. This is actually this was a really interesting thing for me. So when I practice in Philly, I had almost no contact with the police officers. They mostly would not speak to me even when I tried. I don't know if they were trained not to or just culturally was unpopular in the CJC, but I had very few conversations with police officers about the cases. Then when I went to the counties, the counties operate very differently. There are a ton of unrepresented criminal defendants
00:30:16
Speaker
People plead guilty without ever speaking to a lawyer about their case. They plead guilty to felonies and get taken in handcuffs to the jail without ever speaking to a lawyer about the case. And part of that is the structure of the county is that sometimes is unrepresented criminal defendant versus police officer. No defense counsel, no prosecutor. In the county I practiced in, the police officers are the ones who have requested the prosecutor or didn't.
00:30:46
Speaker
And so I had countless conversations with police officers and I learned a ton. I saw a very different side of law enforcement than I ever thought I would see people develop a certain attitude about law enforcement.
00:31:06
Speaker
which is earned, right, systemically and individually, frequently. Sure. But there are people who have chosen to go into law enforcement because they want to do the right thing. They want to help keep society safe. And sometimes they want to fight for change internally and have very limited ability to do so, but they keep trying every day.
00:31:32
Speaker
And so my empathy grew even for law enforcement, which is a weird thing for a public defender to say. But because everyone who is associated with the criminal system, it weighs very heavily and we see a ton of trauma and then keep showing up every day. Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:57
Speaker
It's a very, very heavy thing. And the cool flip side of that is I had really incredible conversations with countless people about hope and optimism and justice. And we can all agree that this is not what this is supposed to look like, right? Or maybe it is, in fact, what it's supposed to look like, but it's not what any of us want it to look like
Finding Hope in Challenging Systems
00:32:18
Speaker
anymore. This is actually what it was designed to be, but we're
00:32:23
Speaker
building agreement that maybe it shouldn't look like this anymore. Even police officers share that mentality. And so through the course of my work,
00:32:34
Speaker
I found the term reckless optimist. I first read it in a book written by Shannon Chakraborty. The trilogy is called the Daveabad trilogy. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but it's really, really cool. I highly recommend. I've actually read it twice all the way through, and they're very long books. Toward the end of the third of three books, the term reckless optimist appears.
00:33:02
Speaker
Love it, love it, love it, love it. I actually recently made myself a shirt that says it because in the law, recklessness has a definition of something along the lines of being aware of a substantial risk and consciously disregarding it.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah. And so Cornel West's quote about I cannot be an optimist, I understand that many of us cannot be optimists. I have to be. Yeah. Because what else is there?
00:33:36
Speaker
And but I get the risk associated with it. I am definitely accused of being naive sometimes. But what else is there? So I'll at least be a reckless optimist aware of the risk that none of this is going to go anywhere, that my departure from public defense to try to fight for liberation.
00:33:56
Speaker
may not go anywhere, but I gotta try, because I know that I can't do that anymore. And that has, I'm now seeing, been guiding my decisions for a long time in my life. It's a lot of the decisions that I've made that confused people came from a place of, I can't do this anymore. What does it feel like to have a greater level of awareness of what's driving you?
00:34:28
Speaker
Scary, exciting, amazing, weird. Yeah. Yeah, because I am, you're spot on. I am developing an awareness about what's driving me and it is very empowering. It feels like a huge privilege because I know that people don't always get that. Yeah. But I have fought for it. In fact, one of the ways that I
00:34:57
Speaker
tried to cope with public defense is by getting a therapist specific to public defense. During the summer of 2020, I decided that it would be helpful to me as a public defender to have some support outside of my office. And so I specifically sought a therapist to help me as a public defender. Because here's an interesting thing. My experience in public defense is that we don't talk about trauma.
00:35:28
Speaker
or burnout, or self-care, wellness. And I mentioned the toll is great to many public defenders. People drop dead, literally. People have heart attacks, marriages wither away, people turn to substance use. I've come to see
00:35:49
Speaker
you know, just a handful of years out of law school, how many of my friends and classmates had ideas about what we wanted to do in the law. And now that we've been here for a few years, we see
00:36:06
Speaker
It's going to be much harder than we thought. So there is a great personal cost to all of that. I learned of the concept of moral injury as a result of all of this. Talking about trauma, the sense of survivor's guilt.
00:36:23
Speaker
you know, as public defenders and I think substantially the same for my colleagues across the aisle or my adversaries, the prosecutors, you know, we thought that we were going to be able to do justice, whatever that means, whatever that looks like. And then pretty quickly we see, I don't know what justice is, but this ain't it. So it takes a huge, huge toll when you're you have to go to work every day and do something that
00:36:52
Speaker
you start to have questions about and then wonder, am I actually contributing to this? I was a teacher for eight years, a high school Spanish teacher in a public school in New Jersey.
Education, Awareness, and Systemic Change
00:37:06
Speaker
And over the years, I started to see some things playing out of my classroom that I didn't understand.
00:37:13
Speaker
And I had questions about why I felt I was able to predict student outcomes when I thought that I was doing a good job doing everything I was supposed to be doing. I was doing what I was trained in my master's program to do, what all my colleagues were doing. But I was like, this doesn't feel right.
00:37:33
Speaker
And so I started to ask questions about that and notice the predictability of student outcomes was systemic. It wasn't just in my classroom. After we've talked about how we've come to notice things and we can certainly circle back. But I'm noticing that there are there are these systems that are
00:37:55
Speaker
designed, that are at least theorized to be social good, that you have experienced that are just woefully unequipped to do so.
00:38:08
Speaker
and in fact equipped to do quite the opposite. There's been a lot of attention on the criminal system for the last few years. I haven't seen very much attention on the educational system, but I've been waiting for that. Because the spoiler alert, the educational system sometimes leads to the criminal system. Wait, what?
00:38:28
Speaker
You mean this whole school to prison pipeline thing that I've heard on the interwebs, like is not just some sort of weird liberal propaganda bullshit? I mean, I'm sure it is liberal propaganda, but all the best ideas are.
00:38:51
Speaker
I got a little fizzy water up in the nose. One of the things that we talked about as we were getting, as we were preparing to tape as well, is that both of us have a bent of anti-polarization to our work at the same time.
00:39:07
Speaker
And I suspect one of the principal hypotheses of the program is that the big questions, what makes us human? What do we owe to each other? What do we owe to our planet, which we're slowly killing? And how do we deal with the unanswerable questions about who we are? And the urges, which some might call divine urges towards
00:39:32
Speaker
a greater life, a better way of being, of living. I suspect our common humanity is found in those things.
00:39:45
Speaker
And one of the challenges is that I'm not so sure that there exists the forum to have those difficult conversations in the media scape right now, or at least if it does, it's not something that at least these capitalism has found a way to make profitable.
00:40:05
Speaker
many, many people misunderstand what freedom of speech is. Freedom of speech really only refers to the government's ability to penalize you for your speech. People use the term a lot more casually than that. This would be a good time to mention that I am vice president of the local chapter of the ACLU.
00:40:24
Speaker
the ACLU of Pennsylvania Philly chapter. So we have a lot of conversations about free speech and free flowing up ideas and things like that. So Ira Glasser is a free speech devotee, but he also speaks about the importance of
00:40:43
Speaker
an open forum of conversation and ideas that does not come when we shut down other people's speech. And I personally have seen a lot of that over the last several years in particular, shutting down silencing people whose speech you don't like. That is not a freedom of speech issue by definition, but it is a huge issue.
00:41:12
Speaker
opinion because, as you said, we've got some issues on our hands as a society that are not going to be fixed by waiting for the perfect idea to come along that we will suddenly all get behind. It's not going to happen that way. I think that we have to create space for imperfection, for people to kind of bumble through a new concept, try on a new idea.
00:41:39
Speaker
That fuels creativity and we're going to need some creative solutions to problems. But what I see a lot of is silencing people who have different ideas than you and a different approach to a problem and that is not conducive to creativity.
00:41:58
Speaker
There is this question that we all need to be, there needs to be a free exchange of ideas. And I hear what you're saying and that there is so much suppression of idea. I'm wondering about the work of creating space where everyone is safe to express those ideas in a way that is authentic to their experience.
00:42:24
Speaker
but still safe for people to hear them that may be impacted. The example I'll give is some of the work that you've talked about around undoing racism. How do we create the safe spaces where those conversations can happen? I have tried to create a few affinity spaces, sometimes they are called, with varying degrees of success.
00:42:56
Speaker
And as I said, it is pretty unpopular work to be like, hey, would you like to join a white affinity space? A group of white people talking about race and racism? What could go wrong there? Yeah. So, you know, still figuring all of that out. But I am from upstate New York, which I refer to as white bread New York.
00:43:20
Speaker
The high school that I attended was 98% white at the time that I went there. And I now suspect it was actually probably a little bit less than that, but people didn't really probably feel the space to identify as anything other than white.
00:43:36
Speaker
there. And so over time, I came to see how much identity suppression was probably going on at the high school I attended. But these are not things that high school kids, at least in the 90s, early 2000s,
00:43:53
Speaker
noticed, knew about, at least for myself. Yeah. But one of the things that I learned, this work needs to be personal to all of us because you can't do it for them. You have to do it for us because this system harms all of us in so many ways, way too many ways to name in this podcast right now. Yeah.
00:44:15
Speaker
unequal oppressive system absolutely harms all of us in our everyday life in ways that we have learned not to see. And all the systems, healthcare, education, criminal, this is a country founded on white supremacy and it is very far from gone from our consciousness. And so of course I didn't see any of that growing up.
00:44:40
Speaker
Because why would I have? But thankfully, we've all started to see some things, even if we don't know what we're seeing. You've seen an incredible amount of disparity, human life and suffering. It's so important to have things that are runes, things that we can gravitate towards, that radiate the good, that radiate the inspiration.
Spiritual Practice and Personal Resilience
00:45:08
Speaker
I think of compasses. I have a tattoo that's a little compass-like. I think that's one of the reasons that I have become more drawn to spiritual practice. In yoga, we talk about physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
00:45:25
Speaker
And I think to seldom do we break things down that way in American society, but those are four different things that all deserve attention. Especially as a lawyer, we tend to our intellect and our mental, but definitely not the physical. Recall, I forgot to eat breakfast today.
00:45:48
Speaker
We definitely don't attend to the emotional because that would be really inconvenient. And it occurred to me recently that I almost never talk about spirituality with my friends, my colleagues, anybody. And when I noticed that, I thought that's really interesting. So I actually mentioned Buddhism
00:46:09
Speaker
to one of my best friends from law school. So at this point, we've been very, very close for almost a decade. And she said, I didn't know you were interested in Buddhism.
00:46:23
Speaker
And that was so funny to me because it's so central to my identity at this point, but I don't talk about it. Partly because I don't feel entitled to like I've never been to a Buddhist temple. I've never met a Buddhist monk. I don't chant. So like what entitles anyone to any thing. But I started to study Buddhism maybe 10 years ago.
00:46:46
Speaker
And I sort of subconsciously reached for it during difficult times. I should probably mention my major accident last year, if I haven't done that already. That was definitely transformative and taught me new things about systems of oppression that I didn't really see before. I had certainly heard of ableism before my accident, but I didn't pay too much attention to it. And then I became disabled and that was quite a journey.
00:47:16
Speaker
Yes. But really started to lean in to the Four Noble Truths. Life is suffering or life contains suffering. We further that suffering in ourselves by not accepting reality, by grasping. There is an end to that suffering.
00:47:34
Speaker
But that suffering can be stopped. And the way that you stop it is or one way is by following the Eightfold Path, which is things like right mindset, right livelihood, right action. And having been raised in the church, I rejected Christianity.
00:47:56
Speaker
and became curious about Buddhism in my early 20s. Early 20s? I don't know. The years are rolling together. Having been raised Lutheran, it's probably maybe the most vanilla of the religions. And my experience in the church was not one of connecting with God, connecting with my church community, connecting with the service on Sunday. It was just going and sitting and listening to our Father, who art in heaven,
00:48:25
Speaker
And as a teenager, I looked, I would look around the room and think like, do you feel anything right now? I don't feel anything other than discomfort. I want to get out of here. But Buddhism is something that makes sense to me. If you're like me, you love it when it's easy and uncomplicated to put good out into the world and nothing helps you do those things more than a strong cup of coffee. Enter today's sponsor.
00:48:52
Speaker
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00:49:19
Speaker
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00:49:38
Speaker
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00:50:04
Speaker
I am just deeply, deeply inspired by the misfits is a term that I started using recently. Yeah. I think it's Steve Jobs has this quote about the misfits here. It's something like here's to the misfits, the rebels, the ones who think differently.
00:50:21
Speaker
And I think that's where the change is going to come from, the creative approach to the systems that we're going to need if we're going to make any headway in bridging as a society and finding a solution and moving forward together. And so I made the shirt. I didn't make the story night part. That is courtesy of Five Below.
00:50:54
Speaker
But I put the text on it. And so it says, Jesus would have lived at PIC. PIC is Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center. And last I heard, it is the highest security of the jails on State Road. The people get sent there who it's not their first time in jail usually. And it is a horrible, God forsaken place.
00:51:21
Speaker
If people haven't heard anything about Philly jails during the pandemic, there have been multiple riots, multiple homicides. There were no homicides in Philly jails for I think six years before the pandemic. And last I heard, I think there had been like six homicides and there's probably been more than that. And sometimes it's just a celly killing his celly because of the conflicts between them and they were strangers before that moment.
00:51:45
Speaker
So, deeply unsafe place for my clients, also an unsafe place for the COs who stopped showing up to work, many of them. I probably would do the same thing. And so then they're under staffing, forced overtime, has
00:52:05
Speaker
not come together well, come together in homicides and riots. But Jesus was a misfit man. And so when I made this shirt, my husband, his eyes got a little wide because he I think was afraid of like a Christian zealot coming up to me on the street.
00:52:24
Speaker
Not appreciating the content of it, but I believe very strongly that Jesus would have lived at pick. And I chose the word lived because people live at pick. And I once had a Philly judge who I was trying to get.
00:52:42
Speaker
to sign a court order to release my client one day before his next court date. And she looked at me and said, what's another day? Why would I sign this? And I thought, how much time have you spent in Philly jails?
00:52:57
Speaker
I bet if you'd spend any time there, you might see what a difference one day could make. So I think it's important to remember that Jesus, this person who we've fought wars to try to get other people to believe in, some would say still do, would have been a pick.
00:53:18
Speaker
And what would we be doing about that? And Uber drivers are asking me how I could represent those people. I could rage about that for the next three hours. How long we got? Law school made me oddly patriotic.
00:53:34
Speaker
I never expected patriotism to be a consequence of law school, but my professors showed me that not everybody has what we have. We have a system that does allow for checks and balances, however imperfect it may be. It allows for progress and change and democracy, and that doesn't only come
00:54:03
Speaker
from having wealth and power. Unfortunately, it comes a little too much. From having wealth and power, we are not a true and clear democracy the way we would like to be, but we have so much more of a voice here than many people do around the world. And we
00:54:25
Speaker
There's a quote, I think it's from Alice Walker, that the best way of giving up your power is by, no, let me try it again. There's a quote, I think it's from Alice Walker, the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. And we have a ton.
00:54:48
Speaker
Every day, we choose how we're going to use it. And many of us choose not to use it. And we all need some days to not use it, right? We all need some days to just watch Netflix or whatever it is, but don't ever forget how much power you have.
00:55:09
Speaker
but also just a streaming service besides Netflix, like anything besides Netflix. Some days I might, some days I might include Prime Video in that, but yeah, just saying anything besides Netflix. Frank Warren founded Post Secret. Have you ever heard of Post Secret? It's kind of dated maybe at this point. Sorry, Frank Warren.
00:55:30
Speaker
But it's a really cool concept, would recommend Googling it. But he actually had a post secret published random fun fact about Liz Schultz. But Frank Warren has a quote, something to the effect of the children almost broken by the world become the adults most likely to change it. I kept that up in my classroom. I was a high school kid who needed that reminder.
00:55:55
Speaker
Yeah. And I taught many who did as well, so. You've had some experience doing some high profile casework in the course of your career. I'm very mindful that we need to tread lightly around details, but I wonder if there are any stories that come to mind.
00:56:20
Speaker
Public defense offices typically have certain attorneys who handle higher profile cases for a number of reasons. I was not one of them.
00:56:35
Speaker
Maybe I would have been if I stuck around longer. Sure. But I ended up handling a number of cases for high profile folks who I will of course not name here. But some were local high profile news. Some ended up national high profile news. One of them in particular
00:57:03
Speaker
I was on vacation and I received a text from a supervisor saying, I see that you represent so and so, please let me know if you need anything or if there's anything that I can do. And I had not seen the news that day.
00:57:23
Speaker
So I did not know what she was talking about. I just was annoyed that I was getting a text on my vacation about one of my cases that, OK, now I'm going to have to worry about a supervisor breathing down my neck. It's so awful. I. I'll try not to judge my reaction because that is just what what my reaction was. And then I saw the news. No.
00:57:48
Speaker
And I actually never met that individual. It just was a case that was assigned to me. Yeah. And that the court date hadn't come up yet. So I obviously didn't know any about the gates when I got that text message, much less what had happened. So these are
00:58:09
Speaker
moments that come up for public defenders. Another high-profile client I represented, I didn't know who this person was. I wouldn't have recognized the name once somebody else in the courtroom informed me who it was. I certainly knew exactly
00:58:27
Speaker
the group that this person was associated with. It's a group I'm a huge fan of actually, but it's public defense is such interesting work. You just meet so many different people from so many different walks of life. There are certainly
00:58:48
Speaker
not everybody is represented in public defender clients, right? No question about that. I could have told you that before I started as a public defender, but it became all the more clear to me after years of practice that I tended to represent some of the same populations and I already had an understanding of why systemically, but not everybody in the criminal system does.
00:59:15
Speaker
People think that those clients become public defender clients because of character flaws, because of poor choices. I am grateful to know that it's not that simple because that means that the solution is going to look a little different, right? We can't just actually blame individuals.
00:59:33
Speaker
of entire populations for that. But we do. We will continue to do so for probably quite some time, unfortunately, but at least we have this growing consciousness that it's not that simple. And systemic failures are going to require systemic solutions.
00:59:52
Speaker
I want to pivot a little bit. One of the things that you and I have talked about is that we've both grown more adept at noticing things in our lives. And I suspect it's because it's at least impacted partially by another shared experience that we have, and that is disability from car accident. Yes.
01:00:19
Speaker
I'm wondering what feels like in this sort of like very vulnerable space, like I'm wondering what, what, what, what feels safe to share.
01:00:35
Speaker
Thank you for the question. I have learned through my healing journey, how personal it is to ask someone about their health. Because following my accident, that was the first time I ever, I think really felt uncomfortable with being asked that because I was out on medical leave from work and people wanted to check in on me and see that I was doing okay and I was not doing okay. And so, and I didn't want to tell them that.
01:01:05
Speaker
Absolutely. I lost a fight with a car in May of last year. I was on my way home from work, commuting home on my electric scooter. So may this be a cautionary tale about those electric scooters because I absolutely loved mine. I was a huge advocate of go get an electric scooter. It's eight minutes for me to commute door to door.
01:01:30
Speaker
And I see them all over the city right now. And I see many people everywhere. Yeah, they're everywhere because they're a super convenient form of transportation. But this is not a bike safe city. This is not a scooter safe city. And I learned that the hard way. I was in the quote unquote protected bike lane on Pine Street, which is not actually protected. And I it even had those little I don't know what they're called, but the plastic things that stick up to signal
01:01:59
Speaker
the tiny wobbly plastic barriers that actually fall over as soon as you even back into them slowly. And yet this car didn't see them. And I had the light, I had a green light, I had the right of way. I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to be doing to stay safe. Thankfully I was wearing a helmet because I, and I didn't even hit my head that hard.
01:02:26
Speaker
I didn't, we didn't call the police, we didn't call an ambulance. I thought I was gonna be fine, fine, fine. And I ended up on medical leave for way longer than I expected. It was about two months. And that was quite an experience that if you've never been through it, you can't possibly understand.
01:02:44
Speaker
what that's like, and I hope that you never have to go through it. There have been some gifts of the experience, but it's a nightmare. My medical bills are still an issue. I'm very fortunate to have recovered cognitively, which is not the case for everyone.
01:03:05
Speaker
My accident attorney, a few months after we started working together, had an accident, was not wearing a helmet, had to be airlifted, had a brain bleed. These are really, really devastating experiences that as a driver of a car,
01:03:27
Speaker
I had no clue how dangerous they are for people. I was always just in a rush to get to my destination and annoyed by the two wheeled transportation folks who are interfering with my ability to do so. And after that accident, my goal instead became everyone gets home safe and maybe I don't need to make this light because actually making this light
01:03:50
Speaker
isn't even going to get me to my destination any faster. Like, what is everybody in such a frigging rush for? Oh, you made one light. You're going to wait at the next one behind the same person. So I am still in physical therapy now for the third time. Yeah. Since my accident. So I'm still learning my new body. Yes.
01:04:11
Speaker
And I learned a lot about disability rights with employers. It's been a really interesting journey, but I don't wish on anyone. But I'm glad to have that knowledge now. Zero stars on Yelp definitely would not recommend. Zero stars. So I understand your accident was a little bit before mine, right?
01:04:35
Speaker
Yeah, mine was in February of 2021. Also lost a battle with the car for me while riding a bicycle while also on my way home from work.
01:04:51
Speaker
had a 10-day all-inclusive vacation in Jefferson Hospital. Yeah, no, it was, and I got very lucky on multiple occasions that I was not at one wearing a helmet, which shattered into pieces. I still have some- Your helmet shattered?
01:05:21
Speaker
Yeah, like it did the work. Full body chills. Yeah. Content warning for people who have experienced profound physical trauma. We'll add that in and post a little bit earlier in this segment.
01:05:40
Speaker
but I still have some of the clothing that was cut off of me in the accident so that lifesaving surgeries, emergency surgeries could be performed and was not working
01:06:04
Speaker
in an even remotely stable way during the pandemic. So somehow was lucky to have state healthcare, which I mean, otherwise I would have, I'd need to have like a 15 day stint on Jeopardy to pay what the bills would have been after like all of the incredible
01:06:27
Speaker
costs and charity subsidies would have been. And it's the same thing for me, even now in relearning what physical and cognitive abilities I have and
01:06:45
Speaker
and disability is a thing. It is a world that I'm still very new to a year removed and learning what my new normal will be, given that
01:07:02
Speaker
the cognitive and physical recovery is probably about where the new normal is. What we can reasonably expect is this incredible journey, this incredible sense of
01:07:18
Speaker
what comes next, what can come next, and how it goes back to the big questions like what does it mean to be human in that context and how do we live a good life and what is a good life in that space.
01:07:36
Speaker
It brings up a lot of questions that I didn't know I wasn't asking. In SEED, there's a construct called the DKDK. It's a thing that you don't know and you don't know that you don't know it. Yeah. Lots of DKDKs associated with an accident. I'm the proud recipient of a handicap parking permit or a person with disability parking permit. I'm still learning language.
01:08:04
Speaker
Health insurance denied my claims. It's auto insurance denied my claims. There's a motorized scooter exception that I did not know existed. Of course there is. Of course there is, right? And so it picks up a lot about systems, systems of power, because what individual is going to think, I need a policy with a motorized scooter
01:08:29
Speaker
Without a motorized scooter exception, it's not something that you think about in advance. It's a wild area, and I hope that you didn't have the experience that I did, which is that I saw how few people really understand what it is, what accident recovery looks like, how long healing takes, how
01:08:57
Speaker
to leave the person alone. What was just trying to heal and figure out what's going on with their body. It was a really, really hard journey that I'm still learning what it all looks like. Yeah.
01:09:14
Speaker
In some ways, I'm sure it pushed me professionally because there was a time that I didn't know if I would be able to practice law. And that was terrifying and really deep identity stuff. And that was so, so hard. And so probably part of the reason I was so joyful when I started in the second public defense office because I
01:09:41
Speaker
There I was practicing law, getting people out of jail, winning motions, calling ready in a jury trial. That happened for the first time after my accident. I argued in the Superior Court or argued an appeal in front of the Pennsylvania Superior Court, wrote several appeals to the Superior Court and the Supreme Court. So those were amazing, amazing, amazing moments that would not have happened but for the accident changing what my life looked like.
01:10:11
Speaker
Yeah. There is... I think for me the language is...
01:10:20
Speaker
certainly that like profound body trauma like that, an accident, it goes back to some of the principles of Buddhism that you were talking about earlier is that these things happen to us.
Aspirations for Justice and Liberation
01:10:34
Speaker
The part of it, of the experience that we have control over is how we respond to it, how we are affected by it. And my accident recovery was my first,
01:10:48
Speaker
really serious introduction to Buddhism because it was prescribed to me by my therapist. In particular, practices of Tonglen and transformation of energy and choosing
01:11:06
Speaker
among other things, choosing gratitude and acknowledging that gratitude can very much easily be a choice. It's very nice when gratitude is easy and there are a lot of obvious and apparent things to be grateful for. But how much sweeter gratitude is when you have to choose it and when you have to work a little harder for it. And I think gratitude's power is in those moments.
01:11:34
Speaker
That's something I learned over the last year for sure. And the gratitude is a choice. Joy is a choice. Positivity is a choice. Things that I saw in HomeGoods pillows and never bought them.
01:11:50
Speaker
But they started to mean a lot more to me after my accident because it's such an opportunity to wither away and just sit in the puddle of despair alone because what do you say to people? Yeah. So it's in those moments when you got to find something to lean on and move forward. And it's powerful. It's really, really powerful.
01:12:17
Speaker
Absolutely true. This is the one sort of space in the show where we have a specific question and that would be, what would you like the world to look like when you're done with it?
01:12:31
Speaker
I'm going to do the lawyer thing and buy time by telling a brief story before I answer the question so that I can think. Carla Cruell is an amazing local advocate, lawyer, badass extraordinaire who I met in law school because she gives presentations entitled hero versus partner. The idea being
01:12:59
Speaker
law students are really hyped up to go save the world. And in some ways, as they should be, because you're going to need energy to up over some barriers in your quest to do that. But the general message of her presentation is you're not here to save anybody. You should partner with your clients.
01:13:27
Speaker
partnering looks very different from saving. And that really, really spoke to me, especially as a white lady trying to do racial justice work, because I'm very familiar with the concept of white saviorism. And hard as I try to not be a white savior, especially as a public defender, that was difficult. She encouraged me to think about what I want in my garden.
01:13:55
Speaker
And she said, your garden need not end with you because if it did, then we would never see substantial societal change. And she told me a little bit about Afrofuturism and that, you know, not everybody has the luxury of
01:14:11
Speaker
looking at what change they want to accomplish in their own lifetime. So you have to look forward into other lifetimes as well. So she said, think big about what you want in your garden and what you need to plant to grow it. I am still thinking about what I want in my garden. I would love to say that by the end of my career, when I retire in
01:14:39
Speaker
16 years. I don't know. I just made that up. We will have ended white supremacy. The criminal system as it is now, the carceral system as it is now, which includes not only people who are incarcerated, but also people who are then under state supervision for the rest of their fucking lives.
01:15:06
Speaker
people who get sent to school disciplinary placements that are also deeply unsafe and harmful and further trauma rather than rehabilitate them. The financial system, people who are in multi-generational poverty, a friend of mine,
01:15:30
Speaker
who works in government in Philly. She is another badass who I will not name because I did not ask her if I could share that she, I believe coined the term racially engineered poverty in Philadelphia. Yep. Yep. So I'd love to see the end to all of these things and before my retirement. I think that none of those things will end before my retirement or my lifetime. So,
01:15:58
Speaker
I have not yet figured out an actual answer to your question. I have not bought myself enough time. But what a great dream still of those things, even if they are just dreams. Yeah. And this is why I left public defense, right? To give myself the space to figure it out. Because I know damn well that I need to fight for liberation, be it my own and other folks.
01:16:27
Speaker
And I honestly, I'm not really sure how. I have some ideas about how. I know what my first steps are. I know what my next year is going to look like, but not beyond that. And I am anxious to get going. So it is really hard.
01:16:44
Speaker
to not be able to move things along faster. I am in a space of I have planted seeds. There are other seeds that need planting. And now I need to let them germinate and grow if they're going to grow and root if they're going to root. And if not, then welcome that and figure out what's next from there. I wish I had a more concrete answer for you.
01:17:10
Speaker
I do not. So if you have any ideas, please hit me up. You can email me at LadyLawyerLiz at gmail.com. My website is GreenShultzLaw.com. But what a great place to start. And what an unknown and I hope brave and exciting space to be building. It doesn't feel very exciting right now.
01:17:40
Speaker
It feels very scary right now, walking away from a salary and good health insurance. I'm fortunate to still have health insurance, but not as good as I had when I worked for the government.
01:17:56
Speaker
you know, walking away from a lot of certainty. I had certainty about what my day would look like, what my week would look like. I don't have that right now. Yeah. So it's an interesting ride. And I'm just trying to ride the roller coaster, see where it takes me. Hopefully there's a station in your future someday. I think so. I have no idea where it will be or what it'll look like, but
01:18:25
Speaker
I can't wait to see what your practice does. I can't wait to see the change that you make in the world. You and me both. I hope it's something. I hope I'm able to do something. Stay tuned for the next episode. But thank you. Thank you for having me on. This has been amazing. I'm so grateful just to be asked.
01:18:46
Speaker
My thanks to my guest, Liz G. Schulz. You can find out more about her work or engage her as an attorney in the state of Pennsylvania by going to her website, GreenSchulzLaw.com. Thank you so much for tuning in to Uncommon Good with Paulie Rees. This program is produced in southwest Philadelphia in the unceded neighborhood of the Black Bottom community and on the ancestral land of the Lenape Nation, who remain here in the era of the Fourth Crow
01:19:12
Speaker
and fight for official recognition by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to this day. You can find out more about the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania and how you can support the revitalization of their culture by going to lenape-nation.org. Our associate producers are Willa Jaffe and Kia Watkins.
01:19:30
Speaker
If you enjoyed listening to the show, please support us by leaving us a five-star review and a comment and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help people find us. Uncommon Good is also available on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram at uncommongoodpod. Follow us there for closed caption video content and more goodies. We love questions and feedback. You can send us a DM on social media or an email at uncommongoodpod at gmail.com. Thank you so much for listening.
01:19:57
Speaker
Until next time, wishing you every uncommon good to do your uncommon good to be the uncommon good.