The goals of the Racial Justice Training Institute are to:

• Increase equal justice advocates’ capacities to develop and implement effective advocacy strategies to promote racial equity and dismantle systems and structures that result in racial disparities;
• Build an ongoing national network of advocates committed to and skilled in racial justice work;
• Develop a cadre of experienced equal justice attorneys and advocates able and willing to serve as faculty for racial justice training programs and as mentors for advocates committed to pursuing racial justice initiatives;
• Create a national resource center for racial justice advocacy, organized to be responsive to regional aspects of these issues; and
• Move legal services and equal justice advocates nationally to adopt an explicitly race-conscious affirmative advocacy approach.

Institute Structure & Components:

The Racial Justice Institute will be structured over a one year period and will include a combination of quarterly in-person retreats, web-based training, structured racial justice advocacy opportunities, peer support, faculty development, and mentoring from experienced advocates. It will also include access to separate intensive training programs in Affirmative Litigation and Community Lawyering, with new racial justice case files developed for each.

A central component of the Racial Justice Training Institute is the application of advocacy knowledge and skills in each participant’s day-to-day work as well as in advocacy initiatives that participant teams will work on throughout the year-long Institute. By working in cross-program regional teams, participants will have further opportunities to build state and regional networks through which their focus on racial justice advocacy will continue once formal Institute activities are completed.

Topics covered in this course include:

Curriculum Framework

 The Racial Justice Training curriculum is built around core racial justice competencies as these relate to a racial justice advocacy framework; it draws from a number of existing resources including those from the Kirwan Institute; LSNC’s Race Equity Project; Clearinghouse Review; Applied Research Center; Annie E. Casey  Foundation Race Matters Toolkit, and Shriver Center courses on Affirmative Litigation, Community Lawyering, and Leadership, among others.  

 ·       Core Competencies:  Acompetency is defined as a specific range of skill, knowledge or ability that can be developed through education, training and practice. The racial justice advocacy core competencies include: Understanding structural racism; Systems thinking and structural analysis; Social cognition and implicit bias; Framing and communications; Community engagement and coalition building; and Advocacy approaches. 

·       Advocacy Process Framework – the Advocacy Process Framework illustrates the typical process through which we identify and analyze problems, translate problems into actionable “issues” and goals, and then develop strategies – a combination of various tactics such as litigation, policy advocacy, community building, communications, etc. – to achieve targeted goals.  Within each of these phases, we make use of some or all of the core competencies.  For example, the competency of Social Cognition and Implicit Bias informs our understanding of how or when we “see” some “problems” rather than others.  Our use of Social Cognition & Implicit Bias comes into play again in the problem analysis, strategy development and strategy implementation phases.

 

Sample resources for this course

Racial Justice Advocacy Approaches

download Racial Justice Advocacy Approaches - 86.67 KB

Racial Justice Advocacy Framework

download Racial Justice Advocacy Framework - 91.27 KB

Racial Justice Core Competencies

download Racial Justice Core Competencies - 76.05 KB

Racial Justice Glossary

download Racial Justice Glossary - 193.23 KB

Core Skills for Successful Racial Justice Advocacy

Structured over a one-year period, CLAE's new Racial Justice Training Project will include a combination of in-person retreats, web-based training sessions, mentoring, and advocacy projects through which advocates will develop a full-range of advocacy knowledge and skills needed to effectively pursue race-equity goals. Specifically, advocates will be able to:

1. General Skills:

a) Recognize policies, practices and systems that result in or contribute to racial disparities;

b) Identify and obtain data necessary to demonstrate racial disparities;

c) Analyze data to determine whether disparities are the product of unequal opportunities by race or the result of other factors;

d) For data demonstrating racial disparities, identify underlying causes (within policies, practices, systems) that result in racial disparities;

e) Identify specific racial equity goals to pursue and a combination of policy/practice interventions that will reduce/eliminate targeted disparities;

f) Utilize race-based criteria as well as other analytical tools (e.g., power and asset mapping) for evaluating the efficacy of potential interventions;

g) Develop a comprehensive strategy utilizing a mix of advocacy (e.g., litigation, legislative, administrative) and other tactics (e.g., communications, institution building, leadership development) to successfully implement desired goals;

h) Successfully apply tools for defining goals, objectives and action plans for specific initiatives.

i) Develop outcome measures and processes for evaluating project effectiveness

j) Craft and communicate an effective race-informed message that successfully reaches diverse audiences.

k) Facilitate a group process for identifying underlying causes of racial disparities and developing strategies for addressing these.

2. Litigation Approaches:

a) Utilize legal handles for addressing racial disparities

b) Identify affirmative claims and causes of action to address racial disparities

c) Recognize and overcome typical justiciability issues such as standing, mootness, exhaustion, preclusion and sovereign immunity.

d) Evaluate alternative strategies for securing relief for multiple injured parties, and/or secure an enforceable institutional policy change in a single piece of litigation.

e) Effectively secure attorneys fees under 1983 and similar fee shifting statutes, including: approaches for seeking; computation-required documentation; and fee entitlement implications of different settlement approaches.

f) Craft a class-action affirmative complaint and tips regarding each essential component, including developing a compelling preliminary statement, jurisdictional requisites, pleading facts to secure admissions, class allegations, expressing claims and drafting the prayer for relief.

g) Assess and prove damages

h) Plan for and carry out discovery in a race-based action

i) Identify necessary expert witnesses

3. Legislative and Policy Advocacy Approaches:

a) Identify opportunities and interests among legislators or administrative agency heads to propound new legislation or administrative policy or amend existing ones to correct institutional barriers to equality

b) Draft or review proposed legislation or administrative policy

c) Identify support within the legislature or administrative agency

d) Coordinate with community advocacy groups

i) Introduce community groups into the legislative advocacy process

ii) Produce client stories to back up legislative campaigns

e) Craft media messages and cultivate media contacts to generate positive news stories in support of advocacy

f) Build broad-based coalitions, learn to identify allies and form unlikely alliances

g) Canvass legislative and/or agency strategies (e.g. district meeting, lobby day, election strategy, etc.)

h) Manage public action

i) Post-mortem evaluation and planning for the next campaign

4) Campaign-based approaches:

a) Recognize the differences between problems, issues and goals

b) Translate problems into actionable issues

c) Communicate strategic intent through media messaging

d) Work with diverse client groups through effective meeting facilitation and inclusive decision-making process

e) Assess winnability through stakeholder analysis, power mapping, feasibility analysis, environmental scans, and resource mapping

f) Work effectively across differences of race, class, gender, age and status

g) Work effectively with organizers to coordinate organizing with litigation and alternative advocacy