Prevención de la transmisión de microorganismos

numbers of safe majority-minority districts to ensure election of minority representatives. A participation focus would call for electoral mechanisms that provide a fair chance, and require broad electoral mobilization, for any candidate, including an African-American, to win. Adviser Bill Quigley describes the current social system as intentionally creating a growing population of people who are not necessary anymore. Even in good times they are consid- ered superfluous. Whether they’re African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American or poor whites, that lack of need for people, or a sense of being unnecessary, is the foundation of injus- tice. An expanded conception of participation emphasizes the need to mediate the values of the marketplace with the moral relationships that tie peoples’ fates to each other at the intimate scale of kinship, friendship and neighborly community. In this way, the personhood of those in the most marginalized communities, whether undocumented immigrants, low- wage workers or minority children in punitive school environments, will not be lost. A concept of participation that incorporates lives and livelihoods has particular salience for racially marginalized groups, which have not benefited equally from the allocation of public resources and protections. As a starting point, it suggests more equitable distribution of resources. Thus, protection of low-wage workers, who are disproportionately immigrants and racial or ethnic minorities, becomes a more explicit focus of racial-justice concerns. In the case studies, efforts to gain protections for low-wage workers went far beyond demands for better wages and working conditions. In Greensboro and El Monte, with the support of min- isters, community organizations and other partners, low-wage workers asserted the values and moral commitments that knit their communities together and successfully challenged exploitation by major global companies, powerfully demonstrating both the tools and the goals of an expanded conception of justice.

INCORPORATING RACE INTO A COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK OF JUSTICE

In the case studies, when issues are presented in terms of community interests, advocates define problems and propose solutions more broadly. In the Greensboro and the Texas Ten Percent case studies, the expansion of the focus marked a turning point. In Greensboro, workers protesting bad working conditions, came off the picket line and were replaced by some of the community’s most respected ministers advocating for better corporate citizen- ship. In the Texas Ten Percent Plan, the focus of policy debate has begun to shift away from poor student performance and focus instead on poor school performance.

Yet, the law is not structured to encourage advocates to frame issues this way. The frame- work of individually based rights requires narrow definitions of problems so as to achieve tailored remedies. This process can obscure the broader interests at stake or the impact of individual claims on others within a community. The exclusive reliance on individual rights ignores the social dimension of human existence, the ways in which people define them- selves and draw meaning from their relation to a group, and the compelling human need to be part of a community. It also forecloses important claims that might help elevate collec-

tive interests over narrow, polarizing or parochial interests, and it potentially forecloses useful remedial approaches grounded in collective action. A growing body of literature is helping to illuminate the tensions felt by practitioners between traditional legal advocacy and the broader goal of widespread community participation.4

Defining the scope of community—what constitutes a community? Who is included? Who decides what is in the interest of a community?—is an extremely complicated task. In the Parcel C case, for example, two neighborhood groups asserted competing claims to speak for the Chinatown community. One long-established group conducted meetings in English only, effectively excluding the majority of its constituents from participation. However, it was recognized as the official voice of the neighborhood by the city government and the media. The other group, which opposed the parking lot, was a recently formed coalition of neigh- borhood organizations. When the community referendum on the fate of the parcel was held an overwhelming majority of the voters in a significant turnout opposed the parking lot. This demonstrated that if organizing and advocacy are effective, the legitimacy of communi- ty activists will be made manifest.

An area needing further attention is the scope of possible legal claims under a community- based framework. Though the criminal law of conspiracy recognizes the possibility for heightened efficacy when individuals combine their efforts as a group, there is no parallel understanding of what is lost when communities or groups are diminished in their ability to act in this way. Under traditional rights jurisprudence, even in class actions, groups are seen as mere aggregations of like individuals. One promising area for exploration is envi- ronmental law, where new kinds of claims are being framed that capture and create rights to social goods.5

The Future

The innovations in racial-justice practice are energizing and promising, but for some they are also worrisome. If attorneys are routinely and deeply engaged in tasks that could also be done by nonlawyers, what is the essence of a lawyer? Similarly, if racial-justice advocacy is broadened beyond the traditional civil rights, black/white paradigm to encompass other minority groups and disadvantaged whites, how is the field defined, so that it is not simply an antipoverty or economic-development effort? The key question is how to frame a broad vision of justice, an “umbrella” under which a multitude of interests can gather, without los- ing the passion or diminishing the resources for battling the particular forms of racial dis- crimination and injustice that affect each individual racial group.

These case studies show that it is possible for lawyers to be problem solvers without losing their identity as members of the legal profession. Perhaps even more forcefully, they illus- trate a vision of racial justice that simultaneously keeps the history and current status of each racial group at the forefront while broadening the constituency of social justice for all.

4 _{See, William Quigley, “Reflections} of Community Organizers: Lawyering for Empowerment of Community Organizations,” 21 Ohio Northern Univ. L. Rev. 455 (1995); L. Johnson, supra; A. Southworth, supra; J. Calmore, “A Call to Context: The Professional Challenges of Cause Lawyering at the Intersection of Race, Space and Poverty,” 67 Ford. L. Rev. 1927 (1999).

5 _{For example, recent administrative rul-} ings suggest that environmental ameni- ties are goods held in common and that enforcement efforts must look at the cumulative impacts of pollutants, not simply the discrete effects of individual substances.

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TAKE A FRESH LOOK AT RACIAL-JUSTICE LAWYERING

Include racial justice in funding guidelines:

Racial exclusion continuously reinforces poverty and disadvantage, weakens promising solutions to community problems, skews resource distribution and frustrates formation of broad coalitions. As a result, racial exclusion can undermine philanthropic efforts across a range of programs—from community revitalization to education reform, health and demo- cratic participation.

Innovative racial-justice lawyering can help strengthen foundation and community efforts. Using creative problem-solving techniques, this work can help to harness minority communi- ties’ resources to address racial barriers. With fresh approaches that link racial exclusion to larger structural barriers, racial-justice lawyering potentially creates broader constituencies for equitable policies. Including racial-justice criteria within funding guidelines can help to focus grantee efforts on these issues.

Add legal advocacy to the social change tool kit:

For grantmakers seeking to expand community engagement, mobilize public will and pro- mote policy change, innovative racial-justice lawyering provides a powerful, yet often over- looked, set of tools. Funders need not create new programs and initiatives to support innovative racial-justice litigation, policy analysis, legal advocacy and activism. Rather, they can add these tools to the array of approaches currently funded in established program areas. Funders can explore the ways that race is implicated in their ongoing programs and seek opportunities to integrate creative litigation and advocacy. Attention to race does not preclude concern for gender and economic inequities; rather, it may help to reveal the inextricable links among these related forms of exclusion.

Support the racial-justice infrastructure:

Combating racial justice requires a continuous web of activities at the local, regional and national level. Important and interdependent divisions of labor exist between groups working at these levels. New mechanisms are needed for sustained investment in local innovative racial-justice lawyering and legal problem solving. The local efforts have the advantage of directly impacting the lives of poor and marginalized groups. Through development of net- works and coalitions, the best local innovation can have national significance. But in efforts to “go to scale,” the resource needs of local efforts cannot be overlooked.

National foundations can enhance their capacity for strategic local funding by 1) creating advisory committees that include persons knowledgeable about racial issues within targeted locales, 2) setting up requests for proposal processes with reviewers including diverse local “experts,” and 3) partnering with local and community foundations.

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