Becca Siever is a white, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual woman with very little melanin in her skin. Becca’s ancestors immigrated to America from a smattering of Western European countries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some settled in the north; some settled in the south.
Becca holds a Master of Divinity from Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity and a Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado’s School of Law. Becca's educational privilege demonstrates more about her ancestors than it reveals about her intellectual abilities; upon their voluntary arrival here, Becca’s ancestors could own land and enslaved human beings, access the G.I. Bill after serving in World War II, receive approval for mortgages so they could become home-owners, and simply exist without fear of being unfairly funneled into the criminal legal system.
Considering all this, Becca pursues opportunities for disrupting anti-Blackness, healing, growth, transformation, and liberation for all. And Becca strives for honesty and authenticity – with herself and others.
After years spent in the crushing grind of representing indigent persons accused of crimes in various courtrooms throughout the Denver metro area, Becca developed an embodied conviction: as Angela Davis has been preaching for decades, “Prisons don’t disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.”
Since leaving the Colorado State Public Defender in 2018, Becca has been recovering, learning, imagining, experimenting, relationship and community building, working, parenting - and all the things - with a focus on leveraging herself towards impacting systemic change.
Some eye-opening and life-changing experiences that will impact Becca’s approach to teaching Legislative Writing, Analysis, and Advocacy include witnessing (1) ICE raids in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 2007; (2) the repeal of the death penalty in Colorado in 2020; and (3) deforestation giving way to the development of Cop City in Atlanta, Georgia, today.
And finally, two deeply-held beliefs that will impact Becca’s approach to her work with the MENV community are (1) as Mariame Kaba teaches, “Hope is a discipline”; and (2) as bell hooks taught, “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”
Becca can’t wait to join the MENV community and explore liberatory legislation with some of you!