Marquis Palmer is an Outreach Manager with Common Justice. Through a diverse array of organizing, teaching, art, legal work, and academic research, he has been involved in various social justice causes for over a decade. He studied Philosophy at Hamilton College, graduating in 2018 with Hamilton’s highest honor, the James Soper Merrill Prize. He has worked at the National Lawyers Guild, created a short video project on the familial impact of mass incarceration, and produced an educational rap project exploring the concept of hope in the face of racial and economic injustice.

As a 2018-2019 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Marquis traveled to Germany, Brazil, South Africa, Mozambique, and Greece to support grassroots organizations that use skateboarding to elicit social transformation within their communities.. After working as a criminal defense investigator at Brooklyn Defender Services from 2019-2021, Marquis received a Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in Political Theory at SOAS, University of London, and Criminology at the University of Oxford. He has conducted research on the 19th century emergence of the American penitentiary system and gun violence among young Black men. Marquis is an avid runner, a lover of music, and proud uncle to many, many nieces and nephews.