NCLM Volume 71, Issue 1, 2021

NCLM.ORG 17 local infrastructure and interact with a very unique way with our constituents ... helped me understand the accountability that I have to the folks I represent but also just a greater understand- ing of at least some pieces of our infrastructure and how they work, how they’re funding, who the stakeholders are, what the real-world impacts are on people’s everyday lives. That’s where we are. Hopefully that experience will continue to pay off. Why did you enter public service to begin with? VA : I’m a lawyer by training. And prior to serving on the city coun- cil, in 2017, I did death penalty defense work. I say that to say my kind of mission, at least professionally, has been to do work that feels purposeful, that is kind of centered around service or serving the community that wants and needs an advocate—and so that has always been a foundation of my work. I hadn’t planned to run for office. That idea kind of came to me. And I thought to myself, this could be a really unique opportunity to serve in a different way. I didn’t want to lose that thread. It felt like I could take that same core mission that I have for myself and apply it to a much broader kind of scope, with different types of people across dif- ferent issues. But I hadn’t had a lifelong dream of serving in public office. This path has been a welcome surprise. With criminal defense and death penalty work, is there a single event or story that pointed you in that direction? VA : I think yes and no. On the one hand, there ended up being so many reasons, so many things that drove me to continue in that work. There are so many issues that I believe with the system that impact other parts of our criminal justice system My kind of mission, at least professionally, has been to do work that feels purposeful , that is kind of centered around service or serving the community that wants and needs an advocate— that has always been a foundation of my work . » Vernetta Alston , North Carolina State Representative continues on page 18 too that motivated me to be an advocate in that space. Initially, when I first got out of law school, I worked on the Racial Justice Act studies. The act was commissioned in 2009, and myself and a fleet of other new lawyers who had just graduated from law school in the middle of a recession got hired to pore through old court transcripts, to drive around to county courthouses in every corner of the state to pull files and make copies and read them and collect data that would support the RJA. I hadn’t previously thought about death penalty work. I thought I was going to go into children’s rights work. But once I was here, I thought, this is where I am, I’m going to invest in what I’m doing. I learned a lot, I read a lot of books and just learned about the death penalty, and the process of working on the RJA, that experience made me feel like that issue was incredibly urgent and that our work was urgent, and that people are being harmed by this aspect of our system, and we have an opportunity to change it. And so, I think working on the Racial Justice Act in particular was a really transformative experience for me professionally. You mentioned it feeling urgent. If I recall, it was urgent in another way too because the RJA was controversial, with some efforts to repeal it. Reaching across the aisle, and with that being a theme right now, of unity, how do you think that’s achieved, especially with some of these issues where you do see party lines being drawn? VA : One part of the answer is, to me, I’m still learning. I’m still incredibly new to this building and to this group of people, and particularly with COVID it’s been difficult to build relationships and sit down with people, and so I’m still very much learning