The ACLU of Washington has many wonderful interns who assist with our work. We would like you to meet some of them.
Caitlin Anderson grew up in Seattle’s Madrona neighborhood, surrounded by Ethiopian restaurants and a diverse group of people who first nurtured her loves for civil rights and an active lifestyle. In high school, she surrounded herself with many different kinds of people, from athletes to musicians.
Caitlin’s appreciation for diversity led her to study the growth and development of economies at Columbia University. She says that one of her favorite classes there was a civil rights course taught by Professor Elizabeth OuYang, a longtime civil rights attorney. It was from this aggregation of different experiences – childhood, high school, and college – that her passion for civil rights blossomed.
After graduating Columbia, she spent two years with Community Connections for Youth, a small nonprofit that promoted community-based alternatives to incarceration for juveniles in the Bronx. She then joined the Peace Corps and loved both nurturing international relations and helping out the youth. With her volunteer work, she incorporates her education in economics, viewing humanitarian aid policy through the “lens of an economist.” She says that it is also fascinating to see how much incarceration policies are linked to the economy, and she is excited to continue her work as a Field Intern with our Policy Advocacy Group, focusing on the death penalty and the impacts of legal system debts on indigent people.
An avid reader, Caitlin’s first exposure to the ACLU was through former ACLU staffer Michelle Alexander and her book The New Jim Crow about spread of mass incarceration. She was immediately drawn to the mission of the ACLU, and wanted to broaden her experiences after returning from the Peace Corps in Africa. She is incredibly excited to begin reaching out to the community and assisting with lobby days during the upcoming session of the state legislature.
When she isn’t reading, researching, or filling out applications to law school, she can be found playing with her dog or dancing at the Oddfellows building in Seattle.
