Challenges to systems that create and sustain inequality require the use of multiple tools, of which litigation is an important one. Real change, however, requires community mobilization and must be based on the lived experience of persons who are affected by the injustice.  To ensure that our work is grounded in community needs and community solutions, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee partners with organizations that engage in community organizing. We coordinate our work to ensure that litigation promotes, rather than defeats, community power and organizers are often institutional clients in litigation.

The Committee led a panel at the 2019 Pro Bono Institute Annual Conference to share our experience working with organizers. Panelists discussed the roles of organizers and lawyers, how they intersect and how to avoid the conflict between the strategies used by lawyers and those by organizers. Over the course of the session, panelists explored the issues from the perspective of law firm partners, community organizers and Committee staff. The panelists discussed facilitation of group client decisionmaking, ethical issues, use of media and pressure brought by protest and other issues that arise when lawyers and organizers work together.

Foley & Lardner Partner, Joseph Edmondson, discussed how Empower DC connected residents impacted by the planned redevelopment of a DC public housing property—Barry Farm—to the WLC and Foley. This connection led to identification of appropriate class representatives and strategic framing of the factual allegations and claims in the federal lawsuit filed by Foley and the WLC in August 2017.  Though the federal case was ultimately unsuccessful, the partnership between Empower and the attorneys permitted Foley and the Committee to explore further creative solutions in aid of the tenants. Together we have since filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit pursuing redevelopment and demolition-related documents from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and support for a resident-driven redevelopment plan.

Blake Biles of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, LLP explained that the relationships he built with community organizers enabled him able to connect the resources of his law firm to residents.  In a series of cases, Arnold & Porter and DC residents were able to challenge poor conditions in housing and assert their rights to purchase properties under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act.  Tackling the habitability of housing and ability of low-income residents of color to build equity are but some of the ways in which community organizers and attorneys can effectively ensure residents are able to build power.

Parisa Norouzi of Empower DC illustrated how community organizers are able to pull levers that are unavailable to attorneys at firms but that are equally successful in achieving change.  Parisa illustrated how Empower DC has successfully supported the Ivy City community’s efforts to apply pressure on Mayor Muriel Bowser to seek the reopening of the Alexander Crummell School–a designated historic site.  Together, Empower DC and the community defeated a proposal several years ago that would have put a polluting bus depot on the site.