Mika Fernandez is nothing if not passionate. The way she speaks about her work as Lawyers for Good Government’s Vice President of Policy and Strategic Engagement is not just from a place of experience and skill but from one of deep intensity and conviction, with a little metaphor sprinkled in.

For Mika, this work is about building a better world for all marginalized people.

“This work is personal for me,” says Mika. “This is my life.”

L4GG asked Mika to share some of her thoughts on her role in the organization, what she thinks are the key issues of 2022, and more. 

Check it out below. 

Mika, can you tell me about your role in L4GG? What drew you to this work?

I’ve worked in the DC area as a legislative/policy attorney for a decade, more if you count my early volunteer work. There are so many amazing people I've worked with, who work so hard for so many different issues I care about — racial justice, LGBTQ issues, reproductive rights and more. In my time working on these issues, I’ve become convinced that we as the progressive community are not focusing on the right thing. 

A fatal flaw in the progressive community is that the progressive community believes in the federal government, and the conservative community doesn’t.

Let me explain. 

As a transgender person, it was devastating to me to see the onslaught of anti-trans bills across the country this year, just as last year it was horrible to see the anti-voting bills as a person of color. Both of these waves came at the state level, not the federal level. 

The traditional response is to fight for the federal bills that would combat these statewide bills but the truth is, many of them won’t pass, at least not yet. Meanwhile the conservatives continue their attack on civil rights at the state level, and frankly they’re winning. 

Are we going to keep doing something that we believe will fail, or are we going to try something new that has a chance to succeed?  For many of us, these aren’t abstract concepts, these are our lives.  And we can’t afford to fail.

When I had this conversation with L4GG’s executive director, Traci Feit Love, we agreed that lawyers have the unique skill of analyzing the law. Conservative groups have the resources to support a bill 52 times at the state level. We asked ourselves, what if there was a network of 125,000 legal professionals that could fill in that gap and do that work? This is a particular need that isn’t being addressed that can be filled by our network of pro bono lawyers, but there are a lot of national organizations that would love to support that work, because it aligns with their own work. 

Let’s take L4GG’s child farmworker report for example. There’s a problem, federal law allows children to work full-time in the fields at 12, where it requires that kids be 16 to work full-time in other industries. Roughly 90% of them are children of color.  So, we partnered with the Child Labor Coalition who organized almost 200 groups that support a federal bill to increase the working age of child farmworkers equal to other industries, it’s policy that’s widely agreed upon. However, these groups didn’t have the resources to push policy at the state level. With and thanks to our amazing volunteers, we were able to do the research in 52 states, and offer suggestions to what could become policy based on the popular federal bill. 

My role in L4GG is to see this process recreated multiple times for issues with large support that impact marginalized communities. Through our partners and other coalition work, we’re finding new ways for our network to plug into this work and make a real difference. 

In your role as VP of Policy and Strategic Engagement, what are you most proud of?

Actually, there are two things I’m equally proud of working on in my time with L4GG. 

The first is the mobilization around our January 6th letter. We penned a letter in response to the horrific events that happened at our nation’s capital, and called for the impeachment of then-president Trump. Within 24 hours, almost 7,000 attorneys, and over 12,000 total signers within all 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico added their names. It’s so powerful that so many people stood up in unison and demanded something. I can't wait to see us all mobilize in a way that will have even greater impact, especially as we continue creating reports about issues that impact us all at the state level. I love knowing that if we have a call to action in Massachusetts for example, there are at least 350 attorneys who stepped up within 24 hours, and we have similar and often even greater potential in every state.

The second thing I’m proud of is our child farmworker report that we discussed earlier  It’s exciting to me not just as a report, but as a model for what we can do going forward.  We continue to work with our partners to find new ways to support the state level effort to protect kids from dangerous child labor, to scale that pilot to even more important issues, and to get L4GG members involved in the enactment of state-level bills.  But honestly, our ability to get our members involved supporting these bills depends on our L4GG Action Fund being better funded.  

There are significant limits on what a 501(c)(3) nonprofit like Lawyers for Good Government can do as advocacy. Our affiliated 501(c)(4) L4GG Action Fund can do so much more on the advocacy-front, but we haven’t used it historically as much as we could because most of our donations go to the (c)(3). I believe as we scale our policy work into more and more important issues, our members and donors will step up. And one of the easiest ways is to support the L4GG Action Fund is by becoming an L4GG Sustaining Member, or a monthly donor supporting our 501(c)(4). While donations to the L4GG Action Fund are not tax deductible, they are incredibly impactful in terms of how we can effectuate systemic change. 

 What do you see in 2022 as the key issues to watch?

This year, I really think we need to watch out for voting rights, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, and laws threatening banning the education of children about racial injustice. If there’s anything I’ve learned from my decade working in policy, it is that we’ll need to keep a close eye on how things develop on the state level, and as they progress, we’ll need to act quickly. If you’re an attorney, work with us on LRJ projects! We’ll need your support.

How will L4GG tackle these issues?

The first step is to do the critical research on these issues. Once we do that work, we’ll have a better idea of how to address the issues that impact our communities. 

How can L4GG supporters get involved? 

If you work at a law firm or corporate legal department that is seeking pro bono opportunities, reach out to us at probono@L4GG.org and we can get you more information. If you’d like to give back in your individual capacity, we hope to have new opportunities soon. Sign up for L4GG’s email list to make sure you’re first to get updates and news about future opportunities. 

You can follow Mika on Twitter at @MikaEsq. Follow L4GG at @Lawyers4GoodGov and check out our Take Action page for more ways to support L4GG.