Photo: Instagram
Brittany Barnett is a criminal justice advocate.
By Bernadette Giacomazzo — Written on May 10, 2019
When Kim Kardashian announced she wanted to become a lawyer, she chose to work alongside one of the most powerful criminal justice advocates in California. Who is Brittany Barnett?
Like Kim Kardashian, Brittany Barnett is a woman of many talents, and many facets. In terms of mentors, Kim certainly couldn’t have found a better one to help her become an extraordinary lawyer!
Here’s what we know about the amazing Brittany Barnett.
1. She's the founder of Buried Alive.
Buried Alive is a non-profit organization that speaks out, vociferously, against life imprisonment. According to their official website, people of color are incarcerated for life at a disproportionately higher rate than the rest of the population (almost half the people currently serving a life sentence are doing so for “drug crimes,” and 80% of those serving life sentences are people of color).
Brittany Barnett founded Buried Alive with the intent of helping the unjustly imprisoned. “[The organization] works to help advance the movement of reforming our nation’s criminal justice system through transformative litigation, legislation, and humanization. Our current focus is dismantling profoundly inhumane life without parole sentences handed down under federal drug law,” according to the official website.
2. She is also the founder of Girls Embracing Mothers (GEM).
Brittany Barnett is so committed to criminal justice reform that, in addition to founding the Buried Alive organization, she also founded the Girls Embracing Mothers (GEM) organization. This program aims to help daughters whose mothers are currently incarcerated. “GEM offers vital programs designed to empower the lives of girls with incarcerated mothers and assist them in building lives that have vision & purpose,” according to the official website.
Kim Kardashian is studying to be an attorney.
3. Her mother was in jail.
According to Brittany Barnett’s official website, the reason she is so passionate about criminal justice reform — and so passionate about helping young girls whose mothers are in prison — is because she, herself, is the daughter of a prison inmate.
“1374671. This 7-digit number will forever be imprinted in the mind of extraordinary lawyer, Brittany K. Barnett (formerly Byrd). It was assigned to her mother by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice when began serving time in prison in 2006. But the significance of this 7-digit number is much greater than an inmate number given her mother. This number sparked a heightened since of empathy and compassion in Brittany she never knew she had,” says her official bio.
4. She feels the media is focusing on the wrong things when it comes to what Kim Kardashian is doing.
Thanks to her high-profile protégé, Brittany Barnett is getting more attention than ever before. But, according to Blavity, Barnett has taken the media to task for focusing on Kim’s celebrity more than on the social justice causes that she’s trying to shed light upon.
“Kim has always been very clear in her role. It’s the media that spins it around — not Kim. We do not care how the media is portraying it - that’s what the media does. Who cares. We need Kim’s support and the support of anyone else who wants to join this fight. We love that she is using her platform to raise awareness. We not trying to be famous, we trying to get our people free. Period,” she said.
5. She's responsible for the 17 high-profile releases that Kim Kardashian takes credit for.
There’s nothing worse than when someone takes credit for the hard work you’ve done. And that’s how Brittany Barnett feels when it comes to Kim Kardashian taking credit for the work she’s done pro bono, according to Baller Alert.
“MiAngel Cody and I have BEEN doing this work for FREE. Ask any of our dozens of clients who are now free living their best lives. Both of us left six-figure salary jobs and wiped out our own savings accounts to fund our work. We attempted to get grants from these large foundations shelling out MILLIONS of dollars to other organizations but would not look our way because they so-called don’t fund ‘direct services,’” she said.
Bernadette Giacomazzo is an editor, writer, and photographer whose work has appeared in People, Teen Vogue, Us Weekly, The Source, XXL, HipHopDX, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, and more. She is also the author of The Uprising series. Find her online at www.bernadettegiacomazzo.com and www.longlivetheuprising.com.