Prerna Lal, Esq. is a formerly undocumented, queer Indo-Fijian lawyer hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area. With her name meaning “Inspiration Red” in Hindi, her journey so far has been nothing short of passion and inspiration. At age 14, her family left Fiji as violence and discrimination against Indo-Fijians became commonplace. By the time her family was able to legalize their status, which had been started when she was a minor, she fell out of legal status due to her age. When she was a law student in Georgetown, she was placed in removal proceedings until the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, allowing her to gain legal status through her U.S. citizen partner.
Lal is one of the co-founders of DreamActivist, and through her groundbreaking work in organizing undocumented youth digitally, the immigrant youth movement disrupted the immigrants' rights movement. Through digital organizing, the immigrant youth brought the federal DREAM Act to the forefront, fought for prosecutorial discretion, and won DACA. After serving as a staff attorney to Advancing Justice-AAAJ, she returned to the East Bay, where she had grown up. She now serves undocumented students and communities through her work at the East Bay Community Law Center and Undocumented Student Program at UC Berkeley.
This Pride Month, we celebrate Prerna Lal and her groundbreaking work in living out intersectionality. Specifically, we celebrate Lal’s work in playing a key role in transforming the immigrants’ rights movement into a youth-driven, queer-centered one.
Art by Chucha Marquez | lachucha.tumblr.com
