This entry is going to be considerably shorter, since this last week was the last week of my internship, and I spent most of it wrapping up a giant writing assignment. I figured this week, I should talk a little about what I've been up to when not adventuring around South America!
These past fifteen weeks, I worked remotely as a legal intern for Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum. The name is long and hyphenated, and the organization has two websites, because it's two orgs that merged in 2020. My internship was funded by the Peggy Browning Fund, which funds summer work experiences for law students who want to work in workers' rights. I actually first applied to this org through the same fellowship my first year of law school, but didn't get it; I figured I should try again when I had more law school experience under my belt, and it worked out! (If at first you don't succeed...)
To the extent that one can have a dream job, this was pretty much it for me. I felt really lucky to be able to be part of such a globally-minded and explicitly anticapitalist team, contributing to such important work. Although the org has an office in Washington DC, most of its staff lives scattered around the world. Even if some of my colleagues were based in the US, they also travelled regularly for work. One of my supervisors lives in Delhi, and another one traveled to Zambia, Guinea, and Switzerland all in the span of my internship. I figured that since I was allowed to work remotely, I might as well take the opportunity to travel too. When I received the internship offer I immediately knew that I wanted to spend part of my summer in South America–it was convenient time zone wise, I really wanted to go back to Bolivia, and I wanted to see countries I had never gone to before. I'm so grateful that everything went according to plan, the usual travel-related challenges aside.
While it was more tiring than I anticipated trying to work a 9 to 5 and explore on extended lunch breaks, evenings, and weekends, I am still really glad that I did it. Part of me wishes my work could have had more of a connection to the places I traveled to, but the likelihood of that happening for a short 15-week internship with predetermined assignments was pretty low. I was content enough to work on projects that spanned different geographies and subject areas, all within the field of international workers' rights. I learned so much about how lawyers work with labor organizers on union campaigns, how they can advocate for corporate accountability, the machinations of the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the intersections between international trade and labor rights. I spent the most time on these latter two subjects, considering the giant writing assignment I just finished.
When I learned that GLJ-ILRF worked on issues relating to the Philippines, I was really excited. In the past, ILRF has submitted a petition to the US Trade Representative to request that the US revoke preferential trade benefits from the Philippines. Under the Generalized System of Preferences, the US grants benefits to certain developing countries, subject to specific conditions. One of the conditions is guaranteeing workers in the country internationally recognized labor rights. In the petition, ILRF argued that because the Philippine government is not complying with these conditions, its trade benefits should be revoked. Now, considering the situation has worsened, we are working to update the petition. My assignment was to research historical ILO activity in the Philippines, what it has recommended (as the arbiter of international labor standards), and how the Philippine government has failed to implement its recommendations. Then I had to write a memo synthesizing my findings in order to argue that the situation for workers exercising their rights in the Philippines has gotten worse.
I turned in the first draft two weeks ago and have spent the last two weeks revising and making it as persuasive and easy-to-follow as possible. On my last day, I went back and added citations to the dozens of documents I consulted. It turned out to be no easy feat! But it ended up being the most fulfilling writing assignment I had ever been assigned in my law school career. (How I managed to find motivation to write in my blog while also working on this astonishes me. I guess I really like writing.) My work is going to be added to the petition update and hopefully submitted to the US Trade Representative. Now that I'm done, I feel so proud to have been able to contribute to this kind of advocacy in a small way. Not only that, but I learned so much about international solidarity and gained a deeper appreciation for my fellow Filipinos in the labor movement. While I'm not sure I'll be able to have as international of a job as I start out in my legal career, I am still so grateful to my summer at GLJ-ILRF, gallivanting around South America. I will be sure to apply what I have learned however I can, so I can continue being the internationally-minded person I am no matter the substance of my day job.
Anyway! You can understand why I spent most of this week shut in my Santiago apartment staring intently at my laptop, living one groundhog day after another. But when I wasn't doing that, here are some highlights of my week.
On Monday evening, I met up with two lovely Chileans, Fran and her partner Sebastián. One of my roommates in Boston, Meiry, studied abroad in Santiago in college. While here, her program connected her to a local Chilean university student as a sort of guaranteed friend. Fran was Meiry's guaranteed friend, and in a way, she became mine too thanks to Meiry! It was so much fun to hang out with them, and our dinner of waffle fries, empanadas, and ceviche was scrumptious.
On Tuesday, I spent some time catching up with my dear friend William over Zoom. William and I met while studying anthropology at Harvard, and he is another anthro major turned law student. William has been replying to every single one of my blog emails, and I can't thank him enough for following along so diligently. I loved commiserating about our law school gripes and hearing how his summer internship went. It was so cool learning about how he weaves issues of systemic oppression into his legal briefs and narratives as he advocates for clients. Go anthro!!
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| Took this screenshot because William has to feature in this blog after being such a loyal reader! |
On Wednesday night, I experienced an earthquake. It was freaky feeling the building shake! Thankfully I wasn't as alone as I could have been, since I had James on FaceTime.
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| The blue dot is my location, a little too close for comfort to the epicenter. |
And finally, on Friday, I met up with my friend Pablo for lunch. Pablo is another friend from Harvard, and we met our first semester there, way back in 2014. Eventually he became part of my blocking group, which is a group of people who all decide to be sorted into the same upperclassman house together. One of our unofficial names was Six Flags, since all six of us were from different countries (Philippines - Chile - Nepal - Mexico - Greece - Brazil). He was an international student from Chile and, like me, took advantage of our Harvard education to travel the world. He has been to more countries around Southeast Asia than I have!
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