One of the features of our newsletter has been introducing our new members, and also other organizations that do good work. But since we have so many members that do good work as their profession, we decided to combine the features!!

So here is the double feature, kinda like at the movies way back when… Without further ado, in there own words, we introduce Nodutdol’s future, Andy Marra and Jay Kim.

Jay Kim: I’m a staff attorney with a non-profit org called Common Law. Since Common Law is run collectively, I also help develop programs, fundraise, and general office management stuff...

Common Law provides legal education and legal services to membership driven organizations working towards social, racial and economic justice. Individuals who are members of one of our partner organizations receive free legal services as a benefit of their membership. For example, we work with food vendors who are members of VAMOS Unidos; someone who is not a dues paying member of VAMOS Unidos cannot receive free legal services from Common Law until s/he formally becomes a member…

We hope our model helps bring capacity to our partner organizations and is able to provide free legal services to people who otherwise would not receive it. ..

Two friends and I started Common Law our third year of law school. We were eating dinner together one night and started talking about how unsatisfied we felt with traditional legal services work. We really wanted to find an effective way to provide free legal services outside of a charity model and in a way that supported organizing efforts without interfering in the organizing itself. So, we decided to do our own thing and start Common Law….

We started out doing legal education workshops in community spaces during our third year of law school. After we graduated and took the bar exam, we worked part-time legal jobs to support ourselves while we launched Common Law and then, in July 2008, we received enough seed money to work full-time with Common Law….

I had known about Nodutdol for a while because a few of my friends had taken its Korean classes. I took intermediate Korean in 2008 and that’s when I learned more about the organization…


Andy Marra: I am a Senior Media Strategist for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). I provide communications strategy, message development and media advocacy services for high level legal, legislative and political issues or campaigns impacting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. I also regularly travel across the country working with LGBT community organizations in building their media capacity and assisting media professionals with bolstering their LGBT coverage…

GLAAD was formed in New York in 1985 to protest the /New York Post/'s grossly defamatory and sensationalized AIDS coverage. GLAAD is in the business of changing people's hearts and minds through what they see in the media. We know that what people watch on TV or read in their newspaper shapes how they view and treat the LGBT people around them. And we have a responsibility to make sure that those images foster awareness, understanding and respect…

Everyday our stories -- yours, mine, those of our families and friends -- open the truth of our lives to the people we share them with. In the same way, when the media tell our stories well, people in small towns, big cities and everywhere in-between find windows on our lives that broaden and deepen their understanding of who we are. Same principle -- infinitely larger scale…

I was sought out by GLAAD in 2004 to establish their Asian Pacific Islander Media Program. I later took on our work in the transgender community and assisting our ally organizations overseas. I accepted their job offer knowing how much impact my work with GLAAD could have on the community and media….

When media images of our lives are fair, accurate and inclusive, we find ourselves increasingly welcomed into a society that respects difference. And every day, I have the pleasure of giving LGBT people a voice and face in the media.

It has sometimes been difficult to find a community or sense of belonging. Nodutdol and its work reflect a great deal of my own personal values emphasizing the need for a progressive response to issues impacting people of Korean descent and other communities of color….

I also became a Nodutdol member because of the strong investment in Korean Reunification. I am limited for fully comprehending the suffering that tens of millions of other Koreans and their families must endure due to the division. But as an adoptee, I can draw a similarly painful parallel with being separated from my own biological family and culture. Nobody should have to experience the pain of not truly knowing who they are or left wondering what the full story is behind their existence. There is simply too much at stake to consider anything less than reunification.

As a transgender Korean American adoptee, I find myself to be harder to figure out than a Sudoku puzzle. But I can say that my journey in life and the people I have met along the way have been considerably more interesting because of who I am….

About Nodutdol eNews

Nodutdol eNews is the monthly e-mail newsletter of Nodutdol.Through grassroots organization and community development, Nodutdol seeks to bridge divisions created by war, nation, gender, sexual orientation, language, classes and generation among Koreans and to empower our community to address the injustice we and other people of color face here and abroad. Nodutdol works in collaboration with other progressive organizations locally, nationally and internationally as part of a larger movement for peace and social change.

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