Dear Beyond Community,
After much deep reflection over the past few months, I have made the decision to step down as Co-Director of Beyond. For nearly a year, I have had the great honor to co-lead this incredible organization with my dear friend and brilliant colleague, Bindhu Vijayan. During this period of impressive growth and responsiveness to community needs at Beyond, I have been able to witness her incredible talent, commitment, and compassion as she oversaw our continued expansion into the Western suburbs, developed and implemented our response plans to support newly-arrived migrant families, and the launch of our new partnership with CIWOC (Chicago Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee)—Beyond’s first program to provide desperately-needed legal services and empowerment to prisoners.
Thus, it was with both sadness for leaving the organization I founded and love enormously after over ten amazing, invaluable, and utterly incomparable years; and also incredible excitement that Bindhu will have the opportunity, recognition, and capacity to lead the organization. I am filled with immense satisfaction, pride, and most importantly gratitude, as I appreciate: how lucky Beyond is to have the perfect person to trailblaze the next chapter of Beyond. I am so excited for Beyond 3.0 and its awesome successes and collaborations with the most underserved communities in Illinois.
Beyond has never been about one individual; it is an organization with an exemplary and dedicated team, a passionate community, and a radical mission. Under Bindhu’s leadership, Beyond will remain dedicated to our organizational priorities, commitments to our community partners, and a vision of growth and expansion into the suburbs, other legal deserts, and nationally. I hope that you will continue to support its vital work empowering underserved communities to create their own community-located, community- operated and owned, and community-directed legal aid programs to the best of your ability. In particular, I hope that you will consider contributing to the Beyond F3 Fund for Beyond’s 10-year anniversary campaign. The F3 Fund will raise money for work that is very precious to me: changing the legal aid system and lawyers to shift legal power into the hands of communities. You can contribute to the Beyond F3 Fund here: Beyond F3 Fund.
Solidarity in Resistance….Lam