As we come together to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change, I would like to take the opportunity to thank and recognize the efforts of the Social Change editorial board for organizing a fortieth anniversary event. I would also like to echo a sentiment that has already been expressed by some of my fellow panelists: as a young idealist entering law school, there were moments when I questioned how, or if, I would fit in. There were, thankfully, two places where I found a home: the Immigrant Rights Clinic and the Review of Law & Social Change. At Social Change, fellow students came together with varying interests – from criminal justice to reproductive rights or social and economic justice – but united by a set of shared values.

As a first-year law student, I was interested in immigrant worker rights and was swiftly drawn to Social Change because of its core commitment to ensuring that even those with the least societal power would one day receive their full share of rights, be treated with respect, and be accorded value. Clearly, I am not the first to have seen this light; for forty years, Social Change has been a place where progressive students and scholars come together to share the details of their diverse commitments. As a result, Social Change is bigger than us; it represents a community of shared values and diverse interests.

My fellow panelists have impressed all of us with their rich understanding of particularly specialized areas of law. I, too, have spent much of my career focusing on a very specific field. While at N.Y.U., I participated in the Immigrant Rights Clinic; ten years later, I head an organization, La Fuente, committed to this same cause. I join my fellow panelists in celebrating the Social Change community for its commitment to specific issues and for providing an intellectual and physical space for thinking with breadth and depth about both the meaning and the nuts and bolts of social justice action.