Rasheedah Phillips, Esq. is the Managing Attorney of the Landlord-Tenant Housing Unit at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (CLS). She began her career at CLS in 2008 as a Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellow in the Community Economic Development Unit, providing legal advice, representation, and resources to low-income child care businesses and non-profit, community organizations. Rasheedah is a 2008 graduate of Temple University Beasley School of Law, and a 2005 Sum Cum Laude graduate of Temple University, with a degree in Criminal Justice. 

 

Rasheedah is the recipient of the National Housing Law Project 2017 Housing Justice Award, 2017 City & State Pennsylvania 40 under 40 Rising Star award, a 2018 Temple University Law School Black Law Student Association Alumni Award, and a 2017 Pew Fellowship recipient, and is a 2018 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity, and 2019 Barristers Association of Philadelphia Outstanding Young Attorney Award. Rasheedah’s writing has appeared in Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late Capitalist Struggle, Temple University Political and Civil Rights Journal, Villanova Law Review, Organize Your Own Catalogue, and many other publications. Rasheedah is the founder of The AfroFuturist Affair, Black Quantum Futurism Collective, a founding member of Metropolarity Queer Scifi Collective, and a self-published speculative fiction author of multiple books. She is also the co-creator of the award-winning Community Futures Lab project, a socially engaged art and research project that explores communal temporality, futurism, and preservation of memory and history in an area undergoing redevelopment, gentrification, and mass displacement.

 

Rasheedah has been working in the community for over a decade with organizations with organizations such as Need in Deed on service learning projects geared toward making adolescents aware of the consequences of teenage parenthood. She has served on the Board of Directors of several non-profit organizations that advocate for reproductive rights and the rights of women and children, such as the Family Planning Council, Family Care Solutions, and ChildSpace CDI. She previously served as Vice-President on the board of the Friends of the Free Library, and currently serves on the board of the Leeway Foundation and the zoning board of the Brewerytown-Sharswood Community Civic Association.