Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of Anita Santos Singh, a champion for access to justice. At the age of 32, Anita became the founding executive director of Philadelphia Legal Assistance Center, the federally funded legal services program serving Philadelphia. It is never easy to head up a program that provides legal services to the poor. While legal aid is supposed to assure access to justice for low- income Americans, these programs are chronically underfunded and have been so since their inception. We spend more on Halloween costumes for our pets in this country than we do for legal services for the poor. It is no surprise that study after study shows that 80 percent of low- income Americans cannot afford or access legal help for civil problems like eviction, child custody, or gaining access to their veterans' benefits. Nonetheless, Anita faced additional challenges of leading a brand new program which had been formed in response to the drastic service and funding cutbacks imposed by Congress in the 1990s, and she did so in the poorest large city in the country, with a shoestring budget and a couple dozen attorneys to serve thousands of clients. I headed up the search committee that hired Anita, and we knew she was up to the job. Under her leadership, Philadelphia Legal Assistance grew into a frontline organization that now helps over 6,000 clients a year fight systems of injustice and disparity.…”