Twenty-eight-year-old Kirk Johnson went to Iraq as an aid worker for the United States Agency of International Development in 2005. While there, he worked alongside Iraqi citizens who were risking their lives to provide translation, cultural and other services to American troops, who in many cases spoke no Arabic, understood little of the local customs and struggled to achieve even the most basic connection with the citizens of the cities they occupied. There’s no doubt, Johnson says, that these brave men and women saved American lives – but many of them still can’t achieve American amnesty.
As the war effort winds down and nearly half of America’s 100,000 troops are set to be withdrawn from Iraq, Iraqi translators and other workers will be "cut loose," left to defend themselves and their families in a country where they are now considered foes. Hundreds of them, along with their families and children, have been kidnapped, tortured or murdered because of their connection to the United States. The List Project is based on the idea that America has an urgent moral obligation to help the thousands of Iraqis who aided our nation in the war effort by allowing them access to country’s resources.
Johnson is working to make that a reality. In 2007, deeply affected by what he’d seen overseas, he created the List Project – a report designed to compile the names of thousands of Iraqi citizens who assisted the American war effort and enlist the help of hundreds of lawyers in achieving United States amnesty for these heroes.
The project is made possible thanks to the generous aid provided by its partnering law firms, including Mayer Brown. Mayer Brown joined the team in 2008 and now has 70 lawyers participating pro bono in the effort around the United States. The firm is committed to more than just the List Project – it seeks to institutionalize pro bono law and work with some of the most disadvantaged clients and unpopular cases to do right by the people who deserve legal aid.
The efforts of Mayer Brown, along with other firms and nonprofit aid groups, have enabled the List Project to bring dozens of Iraqis to America.
One former refugee, interviewed on NBC’s Today Show, expressed her heartfelt gratitude toward the List Project.
"I’m safe, and my children are safe," she said from her new home in suburban Washington, D.C. "I can send them to school. I can let them play in the playground, with no fear that they’re going to get shot."