" '[Aggressive debt collection] definitely doesn’t comport with the public image that people have of MSPCA, where people trust the MSPCA and they go to bring their animals there for their care', said Kristen Bor-Zale, a staff attorney with the Greater Boston Legal Services. 'It feels like a breach of trust for clients.' "
" 'For more than 20 years, the named plaintiffs, Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS), and the community have worked with the MBTA to make accessibility improvements that benefit all riders. I’m glad that RTAG will now have the resources and a strong platform to take our legacy into the future,' said Joanne Daniels-Finegold.”
" 'Thanks to the leadership and foundational work of Greater Boston Legal Services and the plaintiffs, and with the strong team we have assembled — including System-Wide Accessibility, the Boston Center for Independent Living, and the Riders Transportation Access Group — I am confident that we will continue to advance accessibility at the MBTA,' said Andrew Forman [one of the plaintiffs]".
" '[Aggressive debt collection] definitely doesn’t comport with the public image that people have of MSPCA, where people trust the MSPCA and they go to bring their animals there for their care', said Kristen Bor-Zale, a staff attorney with the Greater Boston Legal Services. 'It feels like a breach of trust for clients.' "
"Lead plaintiff Joanne Daniels-Finegold said the agreement 'recognizes the need to meet people with diverse disabilities.' [...] Reading a letter to the plaintiffs, lead counsel Taramattie Doucette of [GBLS] said, 'From the very beginning, you saw the barriers in transportation created barriers in life...I'm so glad we took on this case decades ago. Our legal work with the community has transformed public transportation for every single rider...' ".
"The plaintiffs’ persistence has led to a 'dramatic shift' in how the MBTA operates, says Taramattie Doucette, a lawyer with Greater Boston Legal Services who has worked on the case since the late 1990s."
" 'I am seeing over and over and over again fees that are mind-boggling‚' Laura Camara, a lawyer at Greater Boston Legal Services who has represented tenants in Randolph, said. '[They add] up to significantly more than what I am paying for my three-bedroom, single-family home. How can that be?' "
" 'In eviction cases, it’s really these large corporate landlords that are engaging in this practice,' said Greater Boston Legal Services Senior Attorney Courtney Libon, who is representing Almeida. 'There was never a finding of anything against her. And yet still, she’s paying for this large corporation’s attorney’s fees.' "
"Survivors of domestic abuse, sexual violence, and trafficking are among the one in three people in the United States who have a record and are in need of pathways to economic stability." Pauline Quirion, director of GBLS' CORI & Re-entry Project, Hema Sarang-Sieminski and Nithya Badrinath, the executive director and policy director of Jane Doe Inc., respectively, explain how Clean Slate legislation would provide a second chance to survivors and many others.
"[The Asian American Resource Workshop] has also been educating the community about their rights and resources. The Asian Outreach Unit of Greater Boston Legal Services has been working with AARW by helping with Know Your Rights information and co-leading trainings for what to do if under threat."