I serve as a Student Attorney in the #UBLawResponds Puerto Rico Recovery Assistance Legal Clinic at the University at Buffalo School of Law. Last week, the clinic was undergoing preparations to travel to Puerto Rico, including many hours of research and training. Being from the island myself, I traveled to Puerto Rico to establish contacts with our local partners and begin preparations on the island. It also gave me the opportunity to visit several municipalities and witness the disconnect in what people in the island’s metropolitan area believe is the actual conditions of things when compared to what is actually happening in the center of the island and other communities.

Last Friday, I set out to visit the Municipality of Naranjito, Puerto Rico, in the center of the island. Not knowing what I would find, I made my drive there early in the morning. I took my cousin with me to help document what we would find; he is a photographer. We also brought several cases of bottled water, in case we encountered people who needed it. We began driving uphill on one of the main roads in Naranjito. A few minutes later, to our right, we saw this road that had collapsed due to a landslide and had fallen down the mountainside. Beyond this collapsed road, we saw houses. Immediately, we were concerned. What about those people? Are they being helped?

We looked for a place to leave the car, and we walked around the collapsed road, making our way to what seemed to be around 10-12 houses. We stopped at the first house and we were greeted by Margarita Ferrer Rodriguez, the daughter of Blanca Rodriguez and Oscar Ferrer. She invited us in and the next face I saw was Blanca’s. Around her, two of her great grandchildren were playing. Soon after, her husband Oscar came outside, immediately grabbed my hand and gave me a hug. This man was very happy to see me. They both were.

They had not received any help because their house was inaccessible. The municipal government had a water truck route operating daily, but every time they would just drive by. I was even more surprised when they told me they had been without power or water service since Hurricane Irma, several days before Hurricane Maria. She believed no one from the local government knew of these houses. I almost broke down to tears when Blanca looked in my direction, leaned forward in her seat, and told me “I let you in not knowing who you were because really, it doesn’t matter who walks through the door, we just want help.”

Read more about Jonathan Reyes-Colon's visit ... and what he discovered at www.ublawresponds.com ...............

On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria upended the lives of hundreds of thousands of US citizens on the island of Puerto Rico, and altered its environment forever. With winds at 155 miles per hour, the worst hurricane in modern times brought massive damage and immense change to the daily lives of most who live in that Commonwealth.

As a clinical law teacher at the University at Buffalo (UB) School of Law with an intense dedication to access to justice, one thing became crystal clear to me that very night. I knew I needed to mobilize UB law students to help the people of Puerto Rico.

In the months since, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has been taking much longer than first expected to move toward a new “normal.” Moreover, as time has passed, the legal needs for many who were on the edge and already lacked access to justice have increased tremendously. Over these months, the Puerto Rico Recovery Assistance Legal Clinic of the University at Buffalo School of Law, #UBLawResponds, has been forming itself as an effort dedicated to standing with the people of Puerto Rico and providing legal and other assistance.

Our journey to date has moved quickly. We were able to raise donations from incredibly generous alumni and friends to support our first service-learning trip (the resources that have been raised include funds that have allowed us to be able to bring humanitarian supplies to clients and communities). We received support from the University in the administrative aspects to forming a new clinical effort that we nicknamed #UBLawResponds. We had dedicated staff working hard (including many nights and weekends) to bring the clinic to fruition. We had many students apply to be part of the Student Attorney group for our initial 2018 clinic class, and a selection committee helped choose ten of them to be enrolled. We watched these selected Student Attorneys finish their fall papers and exams, then the very next day (December 15th) dive into 5 intense weeks of preparation for a 10 day service-learning trip, including two weeks of independent research and three weeks of six-hour-a-day classes on the UBLaw campus.

In preparation to be the supervising professor for these amazing #UBLawResponds Student Attorneys, I travelled to Puerto Rico the last week of December right before our class meeting started. During that pre-trip, I met with leadership of the University of Puerto Rico Law School (Universidad de Puerto Rico Escuela de Dericho) and its strong clinical program. I met with leadership of Ayuda Legal Huracán María. I also connected with other organizations similarly working to help move ahead. The enthusiasm for #UBLawResponds was heartwarming and helped me to prepare our students to become as ready for service as possible.........to be continued....

READ THE REST OF THIS UPDATE AND MORE FROM PROFESSOR KIM DIANA CONNOLLY AND OUR STUDENTS ON OUR BLOG www.ublawresponds.com 

An update from student attorneys, as the University at Buffalo School of Law Puerto Rico Recovery Assistance Legal Clinic enters the last week of preparation before departing for their service learning work

After two weeks of classroom training and intensive individual and team research, the student attorneys are nearly ready to go. The team’s staff attorney, Karla Raimundi and one student attorney, Jonathan Reyes Colon, both natives of Puerto Rico, have departed Buffalo in advance of the team’s arrival in San Juan on Sunday, 21 January 2018.

The University of Puerto Rico (“UPR”) School of Law has graciously offered workspace and library access to the team for the duration of the trip. Professor Kim Diana Connolly, Vice Dean for Advocacy and Experiential Education, and Director of the Puerto Rico Recovery Assistance Clinic, has been working around the clock with organizers, community leaders, and other stakeholders on the ground to ensure the students’ training aligns with current needs.

In addition to group learning about topics, such as preparing FEMA appeals, the student attorneys are each researching a specific area of law so they can arrive with a broad range of background knowledge. Students are becoming proficient in common disaster law topics like landlord/tenant, elder issues, and federal benefits, and also more novel topics like microgrid technology and Access to Justice Blockchain.

The student attorneys are incredibly grateful for this opportunity. We are mindful of the enormous generosity of time, labor, spirit, and funds that have made this experience possible. We would like to thank the Law School and Dean Aviva Abramovsky; the clinical faculty and staff, including Professor Connolly, Rebecca Donoghue, and Elisa Lackey; Professor Luis E. Chiesa and Attorney Karla Raimundi; the members of the selection committee; Brian Detweiler, Lisa Patterson, Lisa Mueller, Trevor Poag, Robert Grandfield, and Celine Murphy; our friends at UPR; all of our families and friends; not least of all, our community partners both here and in Puerto Rico.

In closing, the team has spent quite a bit of time considering its mission statement. More than an exercise in branding, we wanted our mission statement to define our service, to speak to our deference to the people we will serve, and to express our intention to be useful allies to people choosing their own destiny. Once we had an English version we were happy with, our Spanish-speaking team members worked through the translation. This required thoughtful discussions about the meaning behind terms that don’t translate literally like “disaster relief” and “empower.” We were, all of us, fascinated by how different the literal translation became in order to maintain the spirit of our message. We hope it works as intended for all who read it.

Our Mission

Because recovery goes beyond disaster relief, #UBLawResponds provides practical legal research and thoughtful pro bono service, through an ongoing collaborative effort to empower a resilient Puerto Rico.

El camino a la restauración va más allá de responder a los efectos de un desastre natural. La misión de la clínica legal de la Universidad del Estado de Nueva York es contribuir al proceso de empoderamiento de Puerto Rico proveyendo servicios de investigación legal gratuitos con aplicaciones prácticas en colaboración con la comunidad puertorriqueña y sus aliados.  #UBLawResponds