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[APPLAUSE]

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Hi, guys.

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My name is Amy.

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I'm a junior here.

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In the summer I worked at
Bayview/Hunters Point Community

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Legal, which is a Legal
Aid in San Francisco.

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So probably the most interesting
part of my internship

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was actually how I got it.

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I'm an Econ major,
so I was looking

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into doing finance and banking.

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This time last
year I had applied

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for Merril Lynch, Goldman,
Citi-- you name it,

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I probably applied for it.

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But at this time I
was feeling really

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overwhelmed with swimming, with
the applications, midterms.

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So I was like-- I need a break.

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I go on Facebook.

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And I come across the Mount
Holyoke Facebook page.

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And it says, Virginia
Taylor co-founded

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Bayview/Hunters Point Community
Legal three years ago.

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And Google declared
them one of the 10 most

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innovative non-profits
in San Francisco.

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And I had completely
lost my mind,

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because I read, Bayview/Hunters
Point on the same page as Mount

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Holyoke.

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And the Hunters
Point is actually

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one of the most dangerous, the
most impoverished neighborhoods

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in San Francisco.

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It's actually where I grew up.

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It's a place that I call home.

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And it's the hood.

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It's the ghetto.

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And it's a place that you
would not think a Mount Holyoke

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alum would start a Legal Aid.

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And so I right away looked them
up, read what they were about,

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fell in love with their mission,
and applied to be a volunteer

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translator right away.

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I followed up with an
email along the lines of,

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hi my name is Amy.

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I'm a sophomore
at Mount Holyoke.

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Can I have an internship?

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[LAUGHTER]

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And so very, very bold--
and I knew that they

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weren't giving them out.

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But I took my chance.

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And I was like, let's
see where this goes.

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And Virginia and I
exchanged a few emails.

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Once she asked for my resume.

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She emailed me back
saying, oh, by the way,

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say hi to Dave-- Dave
who is my swim coach--

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Dave who was her swim coach!

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Oh!

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[LAUGHTER]

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That's when I
really lost my mind.

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And I was like, if I don't
get this internship I

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would be devastated.

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But I got it.

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And it was really cool.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So what BHPCL does
is that they're

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a Legal Aid in the
Hunter's Point.

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And they offer direct legal
services in these areas of law.

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As you can see, we
cover quite a scope.

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And therefore,
we're able to help

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a lot of the people
in the community

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with any real, viable,
legal issue that they have

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and at almost free to no
cost-- which is really cool.

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So just a background
on the neighborhood--

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it's predominantly
African American, Asian,

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Latino-- so the marginalized
and disenfranchised-- people

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who are constantly being
discriminated against.

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A large portion
of the population

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doesn't speak English.

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And this is where I really
excelled at my internship,

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because I speak
fluent Cantonese.

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And I was able to translate
documents, translate at intake

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meetings, take phone calls.

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And that was a
majority of the work

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that I did besides the standard
intern scanning, stapling--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--sending.

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So that was a cool thing
for me, because a majority

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of the interns, they
were law students.

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And they had a lot
of the legal tasks,

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whereas this was my way to
get to do those legal tasks.

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Very low income-- the median
income in San Francisco

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is about 50-- about-- I think
60 something thousand dollars,

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and only about 37
here-- high rates

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of unemployment, most
public housing per capita--

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and so this is just
a very high need

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area for a Legal Aid
like BHPCL to be here.

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This little heart there
is actually not where

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the Legal Aid was located.

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It's actually where I live.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So it's pretty sick.

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So why Legal Aid?

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I don't think I intended on
ever doing a legal internship

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this early in my lifetime.

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At 19, I definitely
wasn't like, oh, I really

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want to be a lawyer.

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[LAUGHTER]

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All I was thinking of
was, what am I going

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to have for dinner tonight?

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[LAUGHTER]

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But what really appealed to me
was just what Legal Aid could

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do for people and how this was
actually alleviating poverty,

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and how the simple act of
offering legal services

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to people who can't
afford it and what

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it can really do for them.

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Because the law
belongs to everyone.

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A person's ability to
enforce their civil rights

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shouldn't be dependent
on their income.

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One of the cases that I
got to work on this summer

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was a torts and small claims
case that was really cool.

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The client was elderly
and only spoke Chinese.

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So I was really able to be
a huge part of that case.

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I wrote the demand
letter, the claims.

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Oh-- it was a car accident.

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So she was in the road
and a truck had hit her.

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But she was completely
not at fault.

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I did a little bit
of the investigation.

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I wrote the demand letter.

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Through all the legal
things that happened,

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I was like, they wrote this law.

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And it was really
cool, because I'm not

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the most-- I'm definitely
not the most academic person.

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And I think I
really came to find

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a career that I could actually
do with my life-- doing that.

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And it was really cool,
because as hard as it was,

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and as taxing as it was,
as exhausting as it was

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to write, to read, to
organize, to contact my client,

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to contact their social
service provider,

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to be in contact with
the San Francisco Housing

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Authority-- which is a
nightmare-- it felt really

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good at the end of the day.

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And it was something-- I think
of lawyers as being bad people.

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I don't know if you
guys think that too.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But that's what scared
me about being a lawyer.

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But another thing
that I got to work on

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was the SRI report, which is the
Strategic Return on Investment.

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And we really just calculated
for every dollar we spent,

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how much social
revenue do we create?

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And in our research
project-- I got

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to do this because I had studied
econometrics, and I did stats.

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So they were like--
you can do this.

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And I'm like, yes I can.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And we found out
that Legal Aid should

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be funded like every other
anti-poverty mechanism--

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like Medicaid, like SNAP, TANF--
all these public assistance

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programs.

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Because currently, the
US ranks 64th worldwide

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in terms of access to
justice for the poor.

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We're behind Ghana, El
Salvador, Bulgaria, Serbia.

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And it's currently being
funded at $380 million,

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which it seems like a lot.

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But education is being
funded at 400-- at-- no,

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not 400-- at $84
billion dollars.

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So there's a huge gap.

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And in the report we found
out that Legal Aid's dollar

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for dollar is more effective
than any other anti-poverty

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interventions.

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So this internship
has definitely

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given me insight to-- yeah!

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I can proudly say I
want to be a lawyer.

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And I want to go to law school.

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Before I was just like, I think
I want to go to law school.

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I think I want to be a lawyer.

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But now I feel through
this internship

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I gained a lot of confidence.

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Just like the Call
211 experience

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has taught me a lot to
just be very thankful,

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and it has really
reminded me who

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has helped me to engage here.

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So I really would like to thank
the Lynk Foundation and anyone

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and everyone who has
ever donated $1 to it.

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Just because without the money
that I received this summer,

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I would have never taken
up this internship;

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Virgina Taylor--
for taking a chance

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on this kid from the hood;

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[LAUGHTER]

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the other people at BHPCL,
Adrian [? and ?] [? Rose ?]

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for being such amazing human
beings and thinking that this

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is the right place
to be right now.

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Thank you for all my
teammates and friends

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for coming out today.

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It means a whole lot.

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The attorneys that
Bayview/Hunters Point,

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every single attorney
that I worked with

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was a strong female who
was like, this is justice!

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[LAUGHTER]

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So that was really cool--
my mom for showing me

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that hard work can
get you anywhere.

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It doesn't matter
where you come from.

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So thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]