Appleseed Welcomes Summer Intern James Stephens

My name is James Stephens, and I’m excited to intern at Alabama Appleseed this summer! I was born and raised here in Birmingham and will start my sophomore year at New York University this fall. Right now, my plan is to major in history and hopefully attend law school after I graduate.

Growing up in Alabama, my interest in history made me keenly aware of this state’s legacy of injustice. Studying the systems of slavery, Jim Crow, and Convict Lease led my curiosity to mass incarceration and its modern injustices. In my first semester at NYU, I took a class called The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. There, I learned about the exponential rise in the prison population, the criminalization of poverty, and how our modern justice system creates a second class of citizens. This country holds almost a quarter of all the prisoners on Earth, and the most dysfunctional version of this system happens to be in my home state. The more I learn about the issues fellow Alabamians face in our courts and prisons, the greater my conviction that mass incarceration is one of the state’s biggest problems. With this education and love for Alabama, I am driven to help fix these issues however I can.

I am thankful to Appleseed for allowing me the opportunity to fulfill this effort. Here I am surrounded by inspiring Alabamians with a shared dedication to justice. This organization saves lives, fights the good fight, and builds hope for a better Alabama. I look forward to an educational and exciting summer!