Ashleigh Washington

Co-Founder

pronouns: they/them/she/her

Ashleigh Keishana Washington is dedicated to the beautiful struggle together with organizers and other movement lawyers to dismantle racist and ableist barriers to education and re-envision a liberated future led by community power. She is a queer, neurodivergent Black person inspired by the lineage of queer and disabled Black organizers and lawyers who have constantly fought to assert the human right to education and dignity.

Ashleigh began her legal career with the Statewide Education Rights Project at Public Counsel with a focus on community policy work to transform school climate, discipline and law enforcement policies to achieve racial justice in schools. Ashleigh also has represented students and families in school discipline and special education matters; she uses those experiences to inform her work, looking at the roots, mechanics, and multi-layered impact of criminalization and school push-out. Along with support to other grassroots organizations, she has collaborated with organizers at COPE to monitor school district practices in the Inland Empire using data analysis to tell the story of disinvestment in Black students and hold schools accountable, co-creating How Far We’ve Come, Where We Hope to Go: School Climate in San Bernardino Unified School District.

Ashleigh obtained her J.D., with a specialization in Critical Race Studies, from UCLA School of Law. Before law school, she worked as a legal advocate at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project supporting survivors of violence to apply for immigration relief. She graduated from The College of William and Mary with a B.A in English, minor concentration in Anthropology.