31. Serving and Empowering Domestic Violence Survivors in LA – A Conversation with Carmen McDonald, ED from Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice (LACLJ)

On the 31st episode of Immigration Today! Angeline Chen interviews Carmen McDonald. Carmen McDonald is the new Executive Director for Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice (LACLJ) as of March 2023. LACLJ was founded in 1973 and has provided legal advocacy to low-income and primarily immigrant and Latino populations in Los Angeles for over 40 years. Their goal is to secure justice for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault and empower them to create their own futures. Carmen was previously the Director of legal services at LACLJ. In her role, she oversaw LACLJ’s domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking projects and LACLJ’s pro bono program, which pairs attorneys with survivors of domestic violence seeking representation at their restraining order hearings. Driven by her passion to help others, she has led representation for hundreds of domestic violence survivors in family court and immigration proceedings and overseen precedent-setting appeals.

Prior to working at LACLJ, Carmen was an attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County where she represented survivors of domestic violence in family law and immigration matters and worked in the Shriver Access to Justice Project assisting tenants with unlawful detainer proceedings. Carmen also previously worked at Break the Cycle where she represented teen survivors of domestic violence in family law matters. Prior to becoming an attorney, Carmen interned at the YWCA of San Diego County assisting survivors of domestic violence in family law matters and at the Gay and Lesbian Center of San Diego County assisting clients living with HIV/AIDS with accessing benefits.

Carmen is the daughter of Cuban immigrants. Carmen received her bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Central Florida with a minor in Women’s Studies before graduating from California Western School of Law. Carmen was awarded the 2020 Los Angeles Domestic Violence Council Betty Fisher award for her service to survivors of domestic violence.

If you want to apply for services with LACLJ use this link. If you need crisis support, immediate assistance, or shelter 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week, please reach out to:

• the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
• the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
• the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or by texting 233733

You can volunteer with LACLJ by signing up here. Follow LACLJ on Instagram, Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter. Please consider donating so that they can continue doing amazing work via this link. Immigration Today! is always releasing new content.

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DISCLAIMER – This podcast is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or a solicitation to provide legal services. The information in this podcast is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, a lawyer-client relationship. Listeners should not act upon this information without seeking professional legal counsel. The views and opinions expressed in the podcast represent those of the individual speaker only and are not necessarily the views of Clark Hill PLC.

Transcript

0:15

Hello, everyone. It's Angeline Chen. Welcome to Immigration Today, where I interview leaders, advocates, experts, and volunteers in immigration and immigrant rights on the issues, their experiences, and how you can make a difference. Today we have Carmen MacDonald. Carmen MacDonald is the new Executive Director for the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, also known as LACLJ, as of March 2023. LACLJ was founded in 1973 and has provided legal advocacy to low income and primarily immigrant and Latinx populations in Los Angeles for over 40 years. Their goal is to secure justice for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault and empower them to create their own future. Carmen was previously the director of legal services at LACLJ. In her role, she oversaw LACLJ's domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking projects and their pro bono program, which pairs attorneys with survivors of domestic violence seeking representation at their restraining order hearings. Driven by her passion to help others, she has led representation for hundreds of domestic violence survivors in family court and immigration proceedings and overseen precedent setting appeals. Prior to working at LACLJ, Carmen was in a Attorney and neighborhood legal services of Los Angeles County, where she represented survivors of domestic violence in family law and immigration matters and worked in the Shriver access to justice project, assisting tenants with unlawful detainer proceedings. Carmen also previously worked at Break the Cycle, where she represented teen survivors of domestic violence in family law matters, and prior to becoming an attorney, Carmen interned at the YWCA of San Diego County, assisting survivors of domestic violence in family law matters, and at the Gay and Lesbian Center of San Diego County, assisting clients living with HIV AIDS with accessing benefits. Carmen is the daughter of Cuban immigrants. She received her bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Central Florida with a minor in women's studies before graduating from California Western School of Law. Carmen was awarded the 2020 Los Angeles Domestic Violence Council Betty Fisher Award for her service to survivors of domestic violence. Carmen, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here today. What an amazing resume. Honestly, I love reading it amazing experience and thank you for all the work that you're doing for the community. What I want to do is just kind of get into some questions to get to know you better. Can we do that. Yes, that'd be great. Awesome. Thank you. So we mentioned that you are daughter Cuban immigrants, we'd love to hear a little bit about your family's immigration story, would you, would you be able to share that for us please. Sure. Um, so as most folks know, uh, Cuba was taken over in 1959 by a dictator, Fidel Castro. And my father was a 12 year old. At that time, and was, um, um, being recruited to be in the military to support Castro. And so a year later, his parents made the decision to come to the United States. And originally, they thought they would just be here for a little bit until, you know, the revolution ended. And as we know, that never. Happened and he, um, stayed in the United States. My mom's family left 10 years later in 1970, and her parents had to essentially indenture themselves and serve for the. Government in the fields and her father was taken out to sugar cane fields and worked until he essentially was able to earn a visa for them to leave to come to the United States. So I feel like, yeah, from my parents, I have 2 very different stories of 1 who sort of left right away and 1 who endured about 10 years of living under Castro's government. And they both, um, came in the early days when Cubans were given refugee status when they came to the United States. And so, you know, that is the backstory to me and why so much around immigration and rights became an important part of who I became because that was the story I grew up with. Knowing their history. Yeah. What a, what, what a path. Oh my goodness. So they met, but did they meet here? Yeah, they did in Miami. And so, um, my parent, my father's family originally moved right to Miami and my mother's family went 1st to Puerto Rico and then about a year later came to Miami. And so my parents story is really amazing. Because they met organizing to, um, sort of fight for rights for, um, the Cuban people. And, uh, their story is, you know, my dad was like the president of the young Cuban group. And my mom was very organized through her church group. And they met and their sort of first early. Hours of them knowing each other and days of knowing each other was this, uh, caravan up to Washington, D. C. To, um, sort of just fight for the rights and awareness of what was happening in Cuba. And so I very much was raised with this sort of like political understanding about systems and governments and laws that absolutely helped, you know, define. What I, and who I became and the service work that I had been called to, you know, my dad's came during the first group called the golden exile. And my mom was soon after in a group of people coming over called the freedom flights. And so they. You know, very much have these like moments of time of, of how the, the governmental systems impacted them, but they, um, you know, so their love story is very amazing too, that they met sort of driven by the same sort of passions of, you know, fighting for people's rights. Yeah. So, so were they still doing that while you were a child and were you going to movements and helping them out and like how upbringing. Yeah. So not so much in that way. Let's see. So by the time I came around, they met in 72. Um, they, my dad was, um, soon after going to college for engineering and got a job in northern Florida and a town called Panama city, Florida. And if anyone knows Panama city, Florida, it's about an hour away from Alabama. Very deep South. And we were like, one of the only immigrant families in the town. And, um, I don't remember there being any sort of political demonstrations or anything that said, I remember my mom coming to my schools and telling her story and everything. There was a history class on communism or. Um, any sort of, uh, political, um, refugee issues. It was just a very, it was a current present issue in everyday life. Like, there was no way to really bifurcate it. So we were sort of this foreign family in, well, I don't have an accent. My parents. My mom has a very thick accent. My dad did. He sounds a little bit like Ricky Ricardo. People would say, so we were sort of this Cuban refugee family living in the deep South is sort of how I would say it, but it was, um, it was tied to every single. You know, moment of my childhood to know that this was this issue and this story, and we were always. Watching the news and very aware of what was going on in the world. Wow, I can't even imagine being, yeah, I mean, it's, it's really all around you ends up being an everyday environment, right? That's right. And then how did you kind of have an interest in, in assisting people, you know, people who are victims of domestic violence and how did that come through, you know, for me, that came through with my, um, women's studies work and just through. Also the cultural norms of just my, I would just say my early feminist values that, um, I would say my big belief right now is that if everyone has economic equality, then people can maybe make different choices if they're in a situation where they're suffering abuse. And I think it just meant a lot to me growing up to see that when folks had that sort of education and economic stability, they could Make different decisions and so I, I do remember a situation where I was going somewhere off by myself and I had a grandfather who's like, you can't do that. And I said, well, why? So I sort of grew up in a more traditional household, but very. Americanized and independent. And, uh, so some of that, um, not that that's a story about domestic violence, but just more about like women's empowerment. And when I started taking women's studies classes, I really started to understand the feminist theory behind this idea about, you know, women just having their own voice and their own space and their own. Employment opportunities and then when I had that internship in law school at the woman's shelter at the YWCA, it just really all came full circle to me. I thought I was going to be a public defender. I was always interested in fighting for people's rights, but the domestic violence piece came. Later when I saw that, you know, um, women were afraid that if they called the police, their abuser would lose their job and how would they feed their kids? They were afraid that if they called the police, they wouldn't have a place to live. And so the whole part about the, you know, women's issues and rights and domestic violence just all kind of came like full circle and things that I had thought as a young person and then saw once I started working with people directly. I'm glad you mentioned the YWCA because that's something you and I have in common. So I was actually president of the board of the YWCA in Pasadena. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And we went through a merger with the YWCA Glendale. So now it's YWCA Glendale and Pasadena. Yeah. Yeah. And they have a domestic violence shelter too. So that's, that's amazing. It's a wonderful, wonderful organization. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Shout out to the YWCA. They were my early teachers in San Diego. And I do, we do collaborate with that organization here. And in my 1st job, or my 2nd job at Neighborhood Legal Services in L. A., the advocates from the YWCA in Glendale would co staff the Domestic Violence Clinic in the court. So they just continue to do that important work. Oh, really? That's so awesome. I want to know that. That's great. And that really fuels into things. I know we're going to keep talking about why my organization has the focus. It does because of understanding. How so many things are connected when you're looking at domestic violence and legal issues and other barriers that survivors face. Yeah, yeah. No, let's get, let's get into your organization. So tell us a little bit about the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice. And I did get the acronym right. So L. A. L. C. J. Oops. Nope. Wait, hold on. Hold on. Don't correct me. Yeah. L. A. C. L. J. L. A. C. L. J. Okay. Got it. Good job. Yeah. And it's of course it's on your screen too. So that. Yes, there's a little yeah. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, I would love to. So I've been with the organization for 10 years, but we've been around for 50 years. A little bit of our history that I've recently learned that's really. Interesting to me, and to my whole connection to this work is that we were 1st called model cities and we were an element of President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty effort. And I guess he funded a bunch of model cities throughout the country. And in, like, 1966, and so I love knowing, like, the bigger connection to, like, all this work that we. Do, and it looks like a lot of the model cities fail, but LA Center for Law and Justice continued. And back then we did a lot of work with, um, the, um, the sheriffs who were targeting. People of color, as they were like, cruising the strip in East LA, and we have some published appellate decisions around in criminal protections. We. Uh, we're part of a big lawsuit against county hospital that we're forcing sterilization of women of color or women with mental health issues. And so we have a deep. History of sort of civil rights and just fighting for injustices and over the years, we've really merged into. We still have that, that goal, but now we've sort of solidified our work into helping survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. And we also work with human trafficking survivors, and we have sort of an integrated model where we have social workers who we refer to as community advocates who work part of the legal team to provide services. So our primary bread and butter is family law and immigration for survivors. And then we also do other areas of law as needed. Wow. How big is it? How many people do you have? We have 45 staff and we've really grown when I started 10 years ago, I think we had about 15 and so we're really proud of, you know, where we, where we're going. Oh, that's amazing. That's a lot of people. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, it is. Did you ever think you're going to be an executive director of a non profit when you were younger? No, never. Right? Yeah. I never. No, it's even like, I went to law school because of how important it was knowing legal rights and like, how laws so directly impact people's lives. And then I, like, I told you, I thought I was going to be a public defender. I was just really passionate as an advocate and then. No, I thought, you know, I became a supervising attorney and then I became the director of legal services. And then, um, no, I never, I never saw it, but I love it. I love every minute of it. It's wonderful to lead the work you have a vision in, but I very much. Don't feel like I practice law anymore. It's a whole other. Totally. Totally. So tell us a little bit more about what it means to be executive director for LACLJ. Yeah. So I now shifted from overseeing our program team when I was the director of legal services, um, to, you know, you start to oversee multiple departments instead of just one. So in addition to the program department, I also. Um, work closely with our director of finance, our director of grants, our director of development, which for us is fundraising and oversee our operations and human resources. And so it's I've just shifted into lots of multiple hats. What's exciting about it is having sort of the big picture vision because I've done the work. So I feel very connected to the staff and the mission and knowing the needs of what our team is and our, what of our, our clients are. So I carry that with me and everything I do. I'm always thinking, like, how does this improve services? How does this help us deliver services better? And so I spend a lot of my time talking with funders and donors and grantors and talking about the work and the importance of the work. That brings me a lot of pride to talk about the work and I'm always just trying to like, problem solve how to do the work better and have a bigger impact. Yeah, no, it's amazing. It's a really hard job. I know a lot of executive directors and there's never enough time. There's never enough time for everything you want to do. Right? No, not at all. That's right. Yeah. But, I mean, you have a big smile on your face and you really do look like you don't look as stressed out as some other executive directors I've met. I'm glad to hear that. So it's great to love what you do is what I would say to that. Like, I'm lucky every day that I love my job and I thought I loved it. And all my other roles, um, and it is, it can be stressful, but I am learning. I meet with a lot of executive directors. There's a cohort in Southern California, which is super important for me there. Amazing mentors, so I feel very supported and also they keep reminding me, like, you can't accomplish everything now. Like, you said, I've been the executive director since March. And so I working on planning out. Strategies and goals and knowing that it doesn't all have to be today. Right, right. That part is really important. You know, creating the strategy is not something we learned in law school or doing legal work. We just have to do the case right now as fast as I as fast as we can. But, yeah, as executive director, you have to strategize and plan now, but I think it's fun, right? It's, it's so different using a different part of your brain. That's right. I so absolutely about that pace because I think I bring that I'm like, oh, there's a deadline. I'm going to solve it. I'm going to go to court. I'm going to argue or I'm going to settle right and be done and move on to the next 1. and it no, this is more like. 5 moving targets all at the same time, but I don't do it in a bubble. I have amazing directors and so I'm learning to be that link and that facilitator in between. And it is fun. It's fun to pull yourself out of the weeds and have that big picture view. Um, I'm really mindful to stay very connected to the staff because now I went so external. I used to see them all the time. And so I have like a monthly just drop in time to just connect to what the needs are of the team. That's really important to me. I tell them like, keep me connected to what you're doing. The more than I'm external. I keep me in the loop so I know what I'm talking about and that it's, it's, it's, um, it's connected right that I'm not thinking something that isn't a real thing. Um, the director is all we work together really collaboratively and everyone really just owns their role. And then, yeah, to be able to. Think spend that time thinking about leadership and vision is, is a important thing to like slow down so you can speed up. Someone told me. So think about that a lot. Um, and yeah, I'm excited to, yeah, I'm excited. And I think it's important to bring people up that do the work into leadership roles so they can, you know, have this sort of time. Like you said, it's not something we were taught in law school. Right. Right, and it's nice that you didn't come from the outside right of the organization, like you've already worked here. So, you know, you already had ideas probably even before and so that that's really helpful. Um, so can you, can you get into a little bit of the communities that you serve. Yes, absolutely. So we serve LA County. Survivors and we try to make it very clear who we can help. So survivors who live in LA County who are low income and the income thresholds are set by the federal poverty limit and we can go up to double of what the. The poverty rate is usually I say, I think for like a household of 1, it might be 2000 a month, just really roughly. It was important for me to make sure that folks could just get to us because I think 1 struggle that happens in our world is there's a lot of bureaucracy. There's weightless. There's yes. Procedures to get through. And you know, when you're already a survivor, like I can't say enough, like you survived something horrible and probably multiple horrible things, but then you have to call the police and you have to tell your employer and you have to move your kids out of school and you have to find a lawyer, like the whole onus shifts to you to sort of. Unvictimize yourself, so I wanted it to be really easy to get in. So we have folks who screen applicants and those are the 3 questions they're going to check for. A lot of people don't even know they're a survivor. So I understand that's not a perfect. Quick system, but it's the way we want to get people in and let them talk to a lawyer and let the lawyer really dig deep and assess because I'm sure, you know, this, like, clients don't they'll say, oh, I wasn't abused. He just pushed or oh, I. You know, I'm not trafficked, but they said they won't give me back my passport. I mean, the things that clients don't know we're identifying and we try to do that with a lawyer. And then for our communities, you know, we're very proud to represent whoever we can that fits in the door. Of those 3 criteria, so we don't take any funding that restricts us from helping, for example, undocumented folks. So, a high number of our clients, way more than 50 percent are folks that are immigrants or currently undocumented we help. We have a, um, sort of a history of being located in East LA, but our services are for LA County. So we do have a high Latino population, Latin population, but it's not exclusive to that at all. Just feels like the history of where we've been, because I do have people ask me, like, do we only help people that are Hispanic? I'm like, no, absolutely not. Um, and we have. You know, folks with mental health issues, folks with developmental issues, the LGBTQ plus community. I mean, there's all communities are welcome and open to get services from us. I have said women some about. People who are abused, but it's not just women. You know, we do help young people. We help all genders. So generally to get services. We don't help youth. There are places that help children folks age 12 and up. Have the right to go to court and petition on their own in the family court for a restraining order. So, that definition for us starts as early as, like, a 12 year old. Wow. So, can you give us 1 example of somebody that you've helped, um, into, you know, the, the organization kind of, they give you a call, you know, this person had this history gave you a call and then the kind of what happened and how this person was helped. Can you kind of. Give us an example. Yes. So, um, we are partnered with over like 20 organizations in the community and informally partner with many others for like the YWCA, for example, has a legal department, but they can send folks to us. So we might have a client who's called into a rape crisis line and disclosed, you know, a sexual assault, and then they're referred to us for legal services. And then we do a comprehensive legal screening where we ask. Whether they have issues around several legal issues, and we're asking the questions to find out. So, are they do they have legal status? Um, you know, do they have a child with the person who hurt them? Do they have access to public benefits? Like, we kind of ask broad questions and we try to filter out what the issues are. But then we also have a social work intern who comes in and does a client background screening where we screen around areas of homelessness, disability, food, and security, um, health insurance access. And so we really try to get a picture of what the. Client needs are at intake, and then we can filter them off and like, assign them to maybe an immigration team consult or a family law, um, interview. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah, no, totally. And then it, let's say they need. And then what happens if they do need help with, like, housing, they need to get out, they, um. You know, they don't work at all, then kind of what happens. Yeah, so, um, we, the, if they need housing and, um, help with, let's say employment, we will work with our community advocate. And for the public, they're a social work intern, but we call them community advocates. And there's a specific reason for this. If I can just add that our community advocates are part of our legal team. We have. Elite, we think of our model as having a legal team that includes the social worker. A paralegal, a legal assistant, an intern, um, the reason they're part of the team and we call them community advocates is because of mandated reporter laws. So there are things, um, laws out there that if someone has exposed a child, a minor to domestic violence that that. Is considered child abuse and a report might get made to the department of children and family services. But, you know, as lawyers, everything that's told to us is confidential. Like, imagine having disclosing abuse to your lawyer and your lawyer, putting you in a system that might remove your child from your home that we want to send that message to our clients ever. So this model protects everything is a privilege in a privileged relationship. Our clients are coming to us to try to protect their children too, and we know that, and we see that, and so we're trying to help them. So the social work intern may get on the phone and start calling shelter partners. We have a homelessness prevention grant, and we have a legal advocate and a social worker on that team that know how to get hotel vouchers for that person, that know how to get people into the homelessness system to try to get them housed. L. A. has seen a lot of funding around homelessness prevention. But it needs resources, there's paperwork and bureaucracy on all of that too. So we work on that. So we might start helping you with your immigration case and your family law case, but we're also going to try to help you get housed and the same thing for your job. So, if you're undocumented, don't have your work permit, we might need to look at if there's any remedies there. And if it's just that now you're looking for employment. Um, we will start connecting folks to those like work source group. So we will try to do like warm referrals to other community agencies. Okay, great. Great. And then when does that relationship and it's just basically when the legal part ends when they're housed somewhere. Because of the model of the legal team, it does end at the end of the legal case, but that's determined by the attorney. So we do open a, we do a retainer at consult, usually for counsel and advice, just to keep that really, you know, that attorney client privilege, and then it'll end when the case ends. So let's say though, they filed a U visa and it takes, you know, 35 years. When does that case end? I know, right? Never ending. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Um, so you mentioned the, the rape hotline. Is that the California rape hotline or is it Los Angeles County rape hotline? And then it goes to you. Um, I was thinking about our partner, which is actually the, um, YWCA of greater Los Angeles. They have a great crisis line and other partner agencies. So, um, Whether those are connected somehow, I'm actually not sure, but we have a, uh, a contract with the YWCA for a sexual assault grant that we have and we cross refer. Okay, 1 thing we've done is targeted funding to get those relationships to do their cross referring. So we have it with the YWCA. Um, we have 1 for homelessness prevention, and we go out and try to intentionally partner with the people that are getting the clients and can send them to us. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So that's how people are getting to you. They, they need to find the hotlines. Right through the other organizations. I'm curious how people find you, but it's through these other organizations, but they're pretty well known though. Yes, I mean, they're the court we're partnered with the court. So anyone who's going for a restraining order can get referred to us. By the way, folks can just apply for us and I'll provide that information, but you're right. How do people actually know who they can call? Even my friends that all work at the different nonprofits. We struggle with knowing where to send people to so. It's that's why I'm trying to make it so people can just get an appointment and we have it through our website that they can answer like 7 questions and get an appointment. We found during coven that while we were very worried about a digital divide, this sort of electronic. System and getting a zoom intake was working and was successful. And so we have also kept that model where we've removed the barrier of having to take multiple buses to East LA to see a lawyer. Um, and that's been really, really successful for us because at first there was a lot of talk of like people are closed and you're not open I'm like we're. We're open in the way that you need to meet with us so we can meet in the office or we can meet via zoom and that's really helped us. Um, but yeah, I think 211 would link folks to us. There's plenty of websites that would link folks to us, but how they're actually finding us. I mean, that's something that's one of those, like, keep me up at night things like, yeah, do survivors know that we're here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, it is, it is something I think about too because we, we sometimes get calls. I'm like, okay, who should I send this to now I have, you know, you all but not, not everybody has those types of resources right. Right. Um, did you see an, a, an increase in domestic violence phone calls and services during COVID. So, we initially had a significant reduction, but I was on a monthly call with the shelters, like the YWCA, and they saw an uptick, a threefold uptick in calls. So, then I knew there was a gap and, um, that's when we worked really hard on our messaging and outreach about how to access us. We are one of those organizations that actually went remote And stayed remote, but our remote is that idea that we're where you need us to be. So I might be at the courthouse to a police station to a DPSS office. Um, and we kind of just remove that barrier. I said that sort of, like, we used to force clients to come to the office. Like, I think about this now, post COVID to see your lawyer and like, if you couldn't meet that hurdle, Then you don't get a lawyer and we've been trained on this like power with versus power over language. Like this is the ticket to get your lawyer. Like, you have to, you know, often you have no child care. You're traveling, you know, we'd have clients from Lancaster to Long Beach and we are located in East LA and I think about how much like now I can video zoom my doctor's appointments and my kids appointments and how much it helps me. And we, um. Yeah. So we're sort of proud of our model that we tried to say, like, we're here and the way you need us to be like, what works for you. Yeah. I think that helps. Um, because there was a lot of like, Oh, but they're closed talk that I would hear. I'm like, we've never closed. We've modified our operations because the courts did shut down a little bit. So yeah, it's a telephonic. And so that, you know, those messages spread far, but we, um, we did something else because we heard of the hotline numbers, tripling. Got a virtual assistant at the time to just always answer our phone. Yeah, we were having problems with our phone system. Um, like, it was forward to people's personal phones and ring once or twice and go to voicemail and, you know, that's not. That's not helpful. And then we budgeted for a receptionist. Now we have someone always answering our phones. Yeah. Yes. TV numbers went way up, but getting to us was another 1 of those issues that we are still, you know, trying to make sure isn't a problem. Yeah, no, it's good that you made all those changes. Now you're always always available. Yeah. So, um, where are you getting your funding from? You mentioned some grants. Are you also like, getting individual donors? Like, where is the funding coming from? Yeah, about 90 percent of our funding is from, uh, federal, uh, sorry, public funding. So we have county funding, state funding, and federal funding. They're all different sources. So some of our federal funding is our victims, um, uh, like, sexual assault funding and our human trafficking funding. Some of our state funding is around, like, homelessness and disability prevention and support. And then we do very much rely on private foundations and private donors also, because the grants fund a piece of the work, but not all of it. And so it all sort of gets cobbled together to try to provide these critical services. Right, right. And if people wanted to volunteer, how would they do that? And do you take volunteers? We do. We do. We, you know, we can't do this work without volunteers. Our social work interns that I mentioned are volunteers. So, if you're in social work or any kind of community work, we, we do take support. From that, but we, um, on our website, uh, at L. A. C. L. J. dot O. R. G. slash volunteer. You can apply. You can also email volunteer at L. A. C. L. J. dot O. R. G. Um, it's very easy. We just asked that we get a resume. If you have another language capability, that's critical, especially with our immigrant clients. And it's not just Spanish, you know. We recently had an Indonesian speaker. I mean, we have folks from all over the world and so we are always looking for folks that can help with that. Um, and we absolutely, um, have from interns to pro bono attorneys who will take a case and they're the folks that sometimes will come in and help us with the title 9 case or an employment case, or be able to really help us meet all of a client's needs, um, and help support. Our work, so absolutely we would love if you're interested to reach out and my email is Carmen at LACLJ. org. We kind of are proud, even though our acronyms hard, our emails are simple. Yeah, no, you get used to it. I now it rolls off my tongue. Yes, yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all the work that you do. It's so, so necessary, especially in LA County. I mean, it does happen everywhere, but we do have a lot of people here, a lot of immigrants, a lot of victims. Um, so thank you so much for helping and everything you do. Thank you for, you know, giving me the opportunity to talk about it and for sharing the information. This podcast is intended for general education and informational purposes only, and should not be regarded as either legal advice or a legal opinion. You should not act upon or use this publication or any of its contents for any specific situation. Recipients are cautioned to obtain legal advice from their legal counsel with respect to any decision or course of action contemplated in a specific situation. Clark Hill PLC and its attorneys provide legal advice only after establishing an attorney client relationship through a written attorney client engagement agreement. 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