Still alive and defending the rights of man... Sort of.

Hello there, everybody!  You probably thought that I had eloped with a starving artist or something, but I am here to tell you that this is not the case!  I'm still in Paris, and have now been interning at the LDH for an entire month.  And how has that been going, you ask? Well...

First off, I have to say that I have improved. Slowly, but significantly. So now I actually do things at work, most of the time.

But the learning curve is pretty steep. How can I describe this... I remember being really young and trying to watch a Star Trek episode with my dad. I would pester him with a constant stream of questions- "Why can't they go back to visit Earth? Why are his ears pointed like that?" And he was mostly good about answering my questions, but sometimes he just wanted to watch the show in peace.

That's kind of how I felt at the LDH, in the beginning. Or more accurately, I felt as if a younger version of myself was dropped into the middle of a Star Trek episode, handed an unflattering skintight uniform, and told that I could take over steering the starship whenever I felt ready.

I work with other interns who are law school graduates and native french speakers, whereas I don't know the first thing about law and still frequently receive pity-English when I take too long to count my euros at the supermarket checkout.  The expectations aren't the same for me as they are for the others, but it can still be a little overwhelming.

So, now that I've set the mood, maybe I should explain what I do.

The symbol for the ligue is a stylized Phrygian cap, a symbol of liberty
associated with the French Revolutionaries.

Le Ligue des Droits de l'Homme is an old organization that dates back to the Dreyfus affair. It has locations throughout France, but the building where I work is the main headquarters and home to the ligue's service juridique, a rotating team of young interns who are not yet lawyers but provide legal advice over the telephone and fight for justice, within the limits of the French legal system. 

The LDH building doesn't really look like a headquarters. It used to be the office building of a telecommunications company, which I know because you can still read the name of the company where letters used to hang on the concrete wall. I don't mind, because I've always felt that a benevolent organization is more legitimate if it doesn't invest its funds in crystal chandeliers. It's also located in my favorite quartier of Paris: Montmartre, land of Amelie Poulin.

A typical day at the ligue goes like this:

10:00 AM - 1:00 PM: We take calls. For the first couple of weeks I mostly listened to the other interns and asked questions, but I've slowly been taking more calls on my own. Cases usually have to do with immigrant rights (residence permits, citizenship demands, family regroupment, etc). We also get some cases that involve racism and other forms of discrimination. And a good number of callers think that the fact that their life is unfair constitutes a humanitarian crisis, or are law students that don't want to open a textbook, or are just plain crazy and believe that they are under surveillance by Iranian spies.

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Lunchtime! Everybody in the office sits around a table in the conference room together, so I get to see people who I would otherwise never have contact with. We drink coffee that was made in a normal America-style coffee maker. Then about half the office takes a smoking break, and I sometimes tag along for company. There are a lot of smoking breaks throughout the day.

2:00 PM - 4:30ish: We study our cases, call people back, attempt to read legal documents, get each other's opinions, and complain about crazy people. I often come to the sad realization that my own notes do not make much sense, and then ask a lot of questions.

4:30ish - 6:00 PM:  We present our cases to the people in charge, and they give us feedback while we take notes. Then we go home.

What else do I do at the ligue?  There have been a few highlights, such as:

-I left work to attend a labor rights protest with half the office, including my boss.

-I went to a conference about the humanitarian situation in Mali at the headquarters of the FIDH (another organization that appears to be higher up on the human rights food chain).

-I composed an email in English to a lawyer from the Czech Republic who is representing an asylum-seeker from Ukraine. After the second draft, my boss said that it was perfect and sent it without making any changes.

My boss and I met with a representative from IFE today for a performance evaluation. She basically said that everything is fine and that I am a polite and conscientious young lady, but I am too insecure about my French and need stop over-censuring myself. I know that she is right. This has always been a problem for me in French, but I'm working on it.

And now it's very late, and I am very much in need of sleep.

Bonne soirée,

Laura