It’s that time of year when as the weather gets colder we warm ourselves with thoughts of gratitude and giving, which, for many, includes charitable donations to organizations making a difference. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with the founder and executive director of one such organization. Scott Hechinger, a former public defender, runs the nonprofit advocacy organization Zealous, whose aim is to educate the public about the inequities of this country’s justice system. We examine why more public defenders aren’t elected to higher office, talk about the repercussions from last year’s recall of San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin, and discuss the impact Zealous is trying to make.

Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Scott Hechinger (SH) | 00:16 - If you care about human rights, if you care about fiscal responsibility, at the end of the day, public health and safety, like you should a support investing in public defense. All but you should also love your local public defender. You should be encouraging more public defenders to run for office. I think we'd be in a way, way better place across the board policy-wise. If we had thoughtful public defenders in office.

Narrator | 00:40 - It’s that time of year when as the weather gets colder we warm ourselves with thoughts of gratitude and giving, which, for many, includes charitable donations to organizations making a difference. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with the founder and executive director of one such organization. Scott Hechinger, a former public defender, runs the nonprofit advocacy organization Zealous, whose aim is to educate the public about the inequities of this country’s justice system. We examine why more public defenders aren’t elected to higher office, talk about the repercussions from last year’s recall of San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin, and discuss the impact Zealous is trying to make.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:35 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Scott Hechinger. He's the founder and executive director of Zealous. He's an attorney, former public defender and a law professor as well. Scott, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Scott Hechinger (SH) | 01:50 - Thanks for having me on. Great to be here.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:53 - So, first, why don't we talk about your role as a public defender? You're not actively serving in that role, but it's an important part of your background and maybe explain what the mission of Zealous is and how that kind of all works within that framework.

Scott Hechinger (SH) | 02:10 - So Zealous really is an outgrowth of the work, um, uh, that I was doing for close to a decade as a public defender in Brooklyn. And frankly, going back further than that, my first law job during law school down in New Orleans, uh, in one of the first intern classes, most people don't know this, but there was no full-time public defender office in New Orleans before Katrina in one of the strange silver linings that came from Katrina was that a lot of social justice attention got focused down in New Orleans. Um, and one of the ways that it happened was that a lot of public defenders went, came in from around the country and said, look, we wanna change the system of private attorneys who are friends with the prosecutors and friends with the judges, having this kind of old boys club plea deal system and actually get some folks in there that were trying to challenge the system, which is what public defenders do. The role of public defenders is to provide people who can't afford representation with meaningful Zealous counsel in court, um, in order to, to figure out what's actually happening in the case to, to try to come up with the best case solutions, whether that goes through to trial or before. Um, it's about challenging police misconduct in court. The sad thing is the reality is because of just endemic underfunding and,