She spent much of her two clinic semesters compiling existing research about police violence against African Americans in San Francisco in support of a new truth commission there. That commission (and similar ones in Boston and Philadelphia) will conduct victim-centered investigations of a pattern of violence or repression that publicly documents and acknowledges police violence and racial injustice — and develop policies to help communities heal from the trauma.

“We haven’t collectively grappled with our history as a country, and these commissions are a way to accomplish a collective understanding and truth telling in a healing way,” Jaramillo says. “Seeing this project take seriously the human rights violations that happen here every day felt like a unique and important opportunity to apply international human rights law to a U.S. context.”

The research, to be published as a memo and working paper later this year, shows years of anti-Black violence by San Francisco police. The publications suggest best practices learned from similar commissions worldwide.

Jaramillo also co-wrote an amicus brief for an Inter-American Court on Human Rights case about the intrusive, unlawful, and at times violent surveillance of human rights defenders in Colombia. A Berkeley La Raza Law Journal editor, she says these projects helped her learn to write concisely and persuasively for different audiences, and to work well within a team.

“Working on subjects so traumatic and challenging, my teammates and I became very close,” she says. “We all cared deeply about doing the project the right way, and developed a lot of trust while writing collaboratively and learning from each other.”

“I want my work to see the connections — between the injustices here and in Colombia, between racial injustice in San Francisco and in Minnesota where I grew up,” she says. “It’s finding the intrinsic holistic connection between things that seem separate. I hadn’t found that until I came to this clinic.” —Sarah Weld