Organizing & Community Organizations: Critical Questions for Aspiring Community Lawyers

Throughout our conversations this quarter, most people in the class agreed on several general tenets on how to do accountable social justice work: that the people most impacted should inform the direction of movements, and that organizing is a crucial element of social change (if not the only hope for social change). In those conversations, we have talked about the need to support community organizations rather than government or national non-profits. We have also talked about how there is no mechanism for social change within the confines of the law, only harm-reduction at best, and so “we” should focus our efforts in organizing. However, it is my belief that many people do not have a clear idea of what “organizing” or “community organizations” are. I will provide my definitions and thoughts.

1. What is organizing?

Organizing is building collective people power. It is not advocacy or service delivery, nor is it education/providing trainings. Organizing work is about people identifying who their community is, what their needs are, identifying their own solutions, and developing their own strategy to get to it. Through that process, they build their own power and relationships to one another. That process may involve advocacy, education or trainings, but none of those things are the end goals of organizing.

Furthermore, organizing is not a strategy either. One does not “implement” community organizing. It is not “one” pathway to social change — it is a process based on a philosophy that building people power rather than systems power will create the social change we need. Organizing is meant to transform systems because it fundamentally challenges power structures as they are. As a result, organizing does not rest on a single person or organization, but is a collective process to build people power.

2. What are “community organizations”?

Technically a non-governmental, non-university organization is a “community organization”, in the sense that they’re “detached” from institutions and are doing work “in community.” However, I have a narrower interpretation of what constitutes a community organization. Community organizations are community-based organizations, with people from the community in it, that are accountable to the community it is working with. Under this definition, most legal services organizations are not community organizations, because they simply provide a service to a “community”, rarely employ people from that community, and are not necessarily accountable to the community (e.g. usually no people from that community on their Board of Directors). That is not to say such legal organizations don’t exist — see Sylvia Rivera Law Project or TGI Justice Project. My point is just that the number of community legal organizations are scarce.

Furthermore, one does not engage in organizing by working at a community organization. It is true that because community organizations are accountable to the community, many have community organizers. However, many do not. Furthermore, a community organization could have similar “campaign wins” in mind to organizing, but the tactics, methods, and how the campaign fits into a long-term vision are often different. Therefore, it is important not to conflate working for a community organization as necessarily organizing, either.

The same can be said for community lawyers. Lawyers are sometimes helpful for people facing abusive legal systems, including defending organizers facing criminal charges. Lawyers can decode opaque legal codes to make them accessible to the public, including to organizers. But that act alone does not mean that a lawyer is organizing, nor can it be said that they are “working with community” necessarily since merely disseminating information or providing defense does not equate to building actual relationships with community.

3. Why is this important?

As I prepare to graduate UW Law, conversations about jobs are at the forefront of many of my peers. Many, including myself, dream about working “with community” or “in community organizations”, failing to grasp what “community” they are even talking about. They dream about connecting with “those most impacted”, only to later struggle in identifying who exactly “those most impacted” are, and with finding a way to gain the trust of “those most impacted” because they are an outsider.

I think we need to deeply challenge ourselves to examine why we struggle to find ways to help. There is an endless amount of work to be done, but marginalized communities have had enough of lawyers who barge in and disrupt the organizing process.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs recently spoke at an event where she said that a person knows what role they need to play (in movement-building) if they are in community. By extension, it is my belief that those who ask “how can I help?” are often those who are disconnected from the community they are trying to help. My personal message to law students who ask how to be better allies, or how to be a community lawyer, is this: If you really do not know what your role is, I believe you need to critically examine why you are trying to help this community, what relationships you have built, what relationships you need to build, and allow this relationship building process to happen organically. This work inescapably means not entering spaces as a lawyer, but as a person first. And this trust-building work takes time — you cannot rush people into trusting you.

Once you have already built solid relationships, it is then time to ask the question: Who holds you accountable? Because it is not enough to think to yourself that that you are doing “good social justice work.” Dedication to transforming power structures requires that you are connected to people, and are creating structures and processes around you that encourage you to stay accountable to the people you are intending to serve/work with. Community lawyering is not about your ego, or what your preferred career track is. Systemic disruption is uncomfortable, tedious, unglamorous. The movement needs to shape the path, and if you are not accountable to the movement, then you are not doing movement work. There is not necessarily shame in not doing community lawyering, but it is disrespectful to those doing movement work to claim that your lawyering work is in service of these movements if you are not ultimately accountable to the movement.

4. Even community lawyering/movement-building can be problematic

One thing to keep in mind, particularly in the conversation of “what is your role”, is the fact that systemic oppression infects every part of our society. In that reality, organizations or organizing communities are not immune.

The patriarchy is one of those oppressions that permeate our work. Many women organizers have tuned into the ways labor is gendered in movement building work. Men make speeches, they walk at the front of the march, become “social justice celebrities” through their social media performances. In the lawyering world (yes, even in the lefty lawyer world), men are lead litigators, run for office, etc. Meanwhile, women (in both organizing and lefty lawyering worlds) are literally in the kitchen making food for meetings/actions, taking the diplomatic road when we witness patriarchy in our movements or rape culture as to not “divide the movement”, allowing men to process their fears/vulnerabilities/breakups/relationship with their mothers, and navigating fragile masculinity.

It is no surprise which of these types of labor in movement building and community lawyering is undervalued, even though it is necessary to sustain movements. Patriarchy, like other forms of oppression, exists in everyday interactions, including what roles we designate in our movement building work. We should not forget this as we move forward, and also recognize that the solution is not only to make women more visible as the ones making the speeches or filing lawsuits, or simply telling men to do more feminized labor, but also value all types of labor in movement-building and community lawyering work.

5. But it is not enough to simply acknowledge privilege

Yes, our movements become infected with the same oppressive logic as the system. However, consciousness is not enough, because consciousness alone does not build relationships. It is not enough to be able to identify who is valued in dominant society and how to interact with marginalized communities without your privilege showing. That is important knowledge, but it will not lead to liberation. In fact, overly focusing on privilege and marginalized identity has its own pitfalls. It can lead to fetishizing inaction on part of anyone with a marginalized identity, in the name of arguments like “it’s a privilege to go on strike.”[i] It can lead to conversations on “how to use your privilege for good” that just maintain privilege by thinking of it as useful, valid tool, rather than focusing how privileged folks can spend their time shifting the circumstances for those without that privilege to take power.

Acknowledging privilege doesn’t dismantle power structures, nor does it build relationships. Acknowledging your education privilege as a lawyer, similarly, doesn’t dismantle the power dynamics between lawyers and their clients either. It is no wonder, then, that many lawyers get stuck on acknowledging their privilege but then feel paralyzed on how to act. Yes, it is important to understand the historical underpinnings of State violence through acknowledging the existence of privilege, but there is no tangible measurement for when one has “checked their privilege” or is “woke enough.” Acknowledging privilege doesn’t answer the larger question of what we need to be doing as communities/organizations to build a culture of accountability. It simply puts the emphasis on individual organizers to somehow “know better,” and operates on a false belief that we can make anyone “be accountable” simply by pointing to their privilege. In sum, acknowledging privilege only goes so far — we need to be doing the rest of the work of what it looks like to build a culture of accountability, which can only be done when we have built relationships.

6. That was a lot, Erika — what’re you trying to get at?

In sum, here is a non-exhaustive list of questions I think all lawyers who want to work toward social change should think about (to start):

l What particular community do you want to work with?

l Why you are trying to work with this community?

l But really, why?

l What relationships you have built with this community?

l What relationships do you need to build?

l What internal processes will you use to acknowledge your privilege? How can you make sure you are continuously checking in on those processes?

l If you have built those relationships, then what is your role in community?

l Who has informed you that this is your role? Community members? Institutions?

l What systems of oppression might also be informing you that this is your role? What does that mean for you if these systems are, in fact, informing you that this is your role?

l What does it look like for you & your community to acknowledge and value all labor?

l What does it look like for you to be accountable to community?

l What does it mean to you & your community to have a culture of accountability?

l What would it mean for you to work yourself out of a job?

[i] “Privilege theory is really good for teaching people whose identities are valued in the dominant society how to interact with everyone else without colonized people wanting to strangle them…But it’s not, and never has been, a liberatory framework. It’s a tool with good applications in some places and poor applications in others just like any other. Now, however, people are using it to tell each other to stop agitating and that’s hot bullshit… We’re increasingly seeing the ways in which liberalism is coopting the idea of privilege and turning it into a strategy of counter-insurgency and policing anti-systemic movements.”

- Adrienne Bin Wahad on the debate over whether it is a “privilege” to strike on International Women’s Day.