Attacking Structural Racism: a neglected framework for legal services practice
For many of our clients, the likelihood that they will spend their lives mired in poverty is largely determined at birth. A powerful combination of governmental policies, behavior of public institutions and the activities of an unregulated market conspire to stack the deck against distinct segments of our society, making economic advancement a rare and remarkable achievement.
At the same time, these same forces provide constant support and advantage to more favored groups and populations. In recent years, this phenomenon has begun to capture the attention of academics and advocates seeking to push back against judicial and political withdrawal from race conscious approaches to increasing economic equity. The subject of this body of analysis and advocacy has come to be known as Structural Racism.
Why this Symposium?
While our legal aid programs strive to have an im-pact on economic and social justice, we rarely look at these efforts through a race conscious lens. Recently, some legal services organizations and other public interest advocacy groups have begun to develop approaches to do just that. This Advocacy Symposium will explore the Structural Racism framework, identify the organizational and policy instrumentalities that perpetuate inequities, look at models incorporating this framework into the mission and priorities of legal aid programs and plan means by which we might begin to develop a structural racism advocacy focus here in New England.
Who should attend?
Anyone who is interested in learning about structural racism and how his/her legal aid practice can attack its root causes to seek economic equity for our clients. This will be an active program designed to bring advocates together for both learning and action planning. You will both learn the historical underpinning of the racial equity divide and its modern day engines, and participate in workshops to develop strategies, work plans and proposals for concerted action.
This course is not scheduled for delivery. Please contact us if you are interested in taking this course.
John Powell is the Executive Di-rector of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University and Gregory H. Williams Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and at the OSU Moritz College of Law. Professor Powell is a nationally recognized authority in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties and issues relating to race, poverty and the law. He is the organizer and convenor of the Structural Racism Caucus at the Leader-ship Council on Civil Rights in Washington DC. He began his career in legal services, first as a staff attorney at Evergreen Legal Services and later as Director of the Legal Services pro-gram in Greater Miami.
Betsy Leondar-Wright formerly United for a Fair Economy’s Communications Director for nine years, is a long time economic justice organizer and researcher. She is the author of Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists (New Society Publishers, 2005) and co-author of The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Wealth Divide (The New Press 2005).
Mona Tawatao, Bill Kennedy and Tammi Wong are attorneys with Legal Services of Northern California. This program has set an example for the nation, incorporating con-certed action to attack struc-tural racism into the program’s mission and priorities. They will help us understand how they’ve done it.