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Mission
Louisiana Justice Institute (LJI) is a nonprofit organization devoted to fostering social justice campaigns across the state of Louisiana. LJI understands that as a local civil rights organization, it can and must serve as an agent for social change. The creation of LJI was responsive to a specific and urgent need to resurrect capacity for statewide, systemic, legal advocacy on behalf of impoverished communities and communities of color.
LJI bases its work on five precepts, which are integrally related to the principals of social justice:community-led organizing; cooperative endeavors; shared research and technology; empowerment training; and impact litigation.
LJI believes a community shared vision for social justice, combined with the opportunity and resolve to bring lasting change, will produce genuine, equitable recovery in Louisiana.
LJI bases its work on five precepts, which are integrally related to the principals of social justice:
LJI believes a community shared vision for social justice, combined with the opportunity and resolve to bring lasting change, will produce genuine, equitable recovery in Louisiana.
Programs
Legal redress through litigation is only one important tool to advance social justice. As campaigns develop in one community, they will benefit from statewide support networks. These support networks of grassroots groups and legal resources will be the beginnings of a statewide social justice “infrastructure” for Louisiana. This infrastructure will be a network of community groups and legal resources that together have the capability to identify social justice challenges and respond to them constructively with legal and political resources. Eventually LJI hopes Louisiana will reach the social justice “tipping point,” where the social justice infrastructure becomes self-sustaining with campaigns that have sufficient resources to combat social injustice as those challenges are identified.
In many respects Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region have served as the test case for many social experiments since the hurricanes. Most of these experiments have failed, and our communities have suffered. The bottom line – Vision must be created by the affected community, otherwise there is no buy-in, no change, and no social justice. We have learned what works.
LJI’s work is based on 5 Precepts for Social Justice:
○ Community-led organizing: LJI incubates and grows social justice campaigns statewide through a network of partners, including churches and community organizations, corporations, and law firms;
○ Cooperative Endeavors: LJI works to facilitate the networking and sharing resources between community groups, community leaders, legal and other resource organizations locally, statewide, nationally and internationally;
○ Shared Research, Media, and Technology: LJI will provide material support to its networks and partners by employing social science research to produce policy reports and issue briefs that identify barriers to equitable recovery and introduce effective social justice campaign strategies for adoption and adaptation in Louisiana. The production and distribution of LJI’s annual report on social justice will serve to celebrate and reinforce successes, identify challenges, and build social justice networks across the state. Further, LJI will support its partners by working with the local, national and international media – mainstream and alternative press – to communicate our community’s realities, struggles, and vision for a better Louisiana. Equally important, LJI has planned multimedia documentation and information, that is, a state-of-the-art, interactive web site with text, pictures, audio and video that will serve as the Justice Portal for Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
○ Empowerment Training: Provide hands-on training regarding voting rights and civic engagement, public education, housing, worker rights, health care, and criminal justice. Community members will gain knowledge about these specific issues in workshops focused on community-based advocacy. The Institute will work with community groups to build and train a cadre of leadership with an eye toward strengthening state-wide advocacy efforts.
○ Impact litigation: LJI will file class actions when necessary, because we have found the strategic use of litigation can bring dramatic social change and reform.
Our People and Our Partners. During fiscal year 2007-2008 LJI would like to employ a staff of five: President/Executive Director, Staff Attorney, Communications Director, Community Outreach Coordinator, Development Director, and Office Administrator. Tracie L. Washington is LJI’s current President/Executive Director. Tracie is the former director of the NAACP Gulf Coast Advocacy Center. Since the Hurricanes of 2005, Tracie has engaged in significant litigation on behalf of poor and minority communities in New Orleans. Tracie filed a lawsuit in January 2007 to open seats in New Orleans public schools for thousands of returning students who were “waitlisted”. She also is co-counsel on a lawsuit against HUD/HANO to enjoin the demolition of public housing projects in New Orleans. In addition, Tracie has used her skills as an organizer and her network of community partners to provide community training in Education and Housing (“Know Your Education Rights” campaign; Housing Town Hall Meeting – One Year After Katrina; and NAACP/Xavier University Health Fair & Screening). Lauren Bartlett is LJI’s Staff Attorney. Lauren is a former leader of the Student Hurricane Network (SHN). Lauren coordinated multiple volunteer projects and events for law students who came to the Gulf Coast from across the U.S. Through SHN activities, Lauren developed a wide range of partnerships with law firms and other legal advocates, including law schools and law students, across the U.S. who actively providing support and services to marginalized Gulf Coast communities. Lauren also has over 3 years of experience supervising staff at a programmatic level and has worked with numerous nonprofit social service organizations, in California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Washington D.C., Washington State, as well as internationally in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Ghana.
LJI will continue and expand upon the community partnerships developed in the past by the LJI co-founders, including with: Loyola University New Orleans College of Law; People’s Organizing Committee; New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice; Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund; ACORN; Second Good Hope Baptist Church; Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church; The Algiers Group; Watson Memorial Teaching Fellowship; the Principals Association of New Orleans; Pyramid Consulting; the Hispanic Apostolate; Juvenile Justice Project Louisiana; Downtown Neighborhood Improvement Association; Common Ground and Lower 9th Ward Village. Our community partners are LJI’s clients/constituents.
While all of the social justice campaigns we support and projects we coordinate are not formed with the above-referenced partners, all are held to account by the poor and the black and brown people in the affected communities where LJI works. LJI looks to these partners/constituents for our deliverables and our grade (the measure our work and whether we attained success).
In many respects Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region have served as the test case for many social experiments since the hurricanes. Most of these experiments have failed, and our communities have suffered. The bottom line – Vision must be created by the affected community, otherwise there is no buy-in, no change, and no social justice. We have learned what works.
LJI’s work is based on 5 Precepts for Social Justice:
○ Community-led organizing: LJI incubates and grows social justice campaigns statewide through a network of partners, including churches and community organizations, corporations, and law firms;
○ Cooperative Endeavors: LJI works to facilitate the networking and sharing resources between community groups, community leaders, legal and other resource organizations locally, statewide, nationally and internationally;
○ Shared Research, Media, and Technology: LJI will provide material support to its networks and partners by employing social science research to produce policy reports and issue briefs that identify barriers to equitable recovery and introduce effective social justice campaign strategies for adoption and adaptation in Louisiana. The production and distribution of LJI’s annual report on social justice will serve to celebrate and reinforce successes, identify challenges, and build social justice networks across the state. Further, LJI will support its partners by working with the local, national and international media – mainstream and alternative press – to communicate our community’s realities, struggles, and vision for a better Louisiana. Equally important, LJI has planned multimedia documentation and information, that is, a state-of-the-art, interactive web site with text, pictures, audio and video that will serve as the Justice Portal for Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
○ Empowerment Training: Provide hands-on training regarding voting rights and civic engagement, public education, housing, worker rights, health care, and criminal justice. Community members will gain knowledge about these specific issues in workshops focused on community-based advocacy. The Institute will work with community groups to build and train a cadre of leadership with an eye toward strengthening state-wide advocacy efforts.
○ Impact litigation: LJI will file class actions when necessary, because we have found the strategic use of litigation can bring dramatic social change and reform.
Our People and Our Partners. During fiscal year 2007-2008 LJI would like to employ a staff of five: President/Executive Director, Staff Attorney, Communications Director, Community Outreach Coordinator, Development Director, and Office Administrator. Tracie L. Washington is LJI’s current President/Executive Director. Tracie is the former director of the NAACP Gulf Coast Advocacy Center. Since the Hurricanes of 2005, Tracie has engaged in significant litigation on behalf of poor and minority communities in New Orleans. Tracie filed a lawsuit in January 2007 to open seats in New Orleans public schools for thousands of returning students who were “waitlisted”. She also is co-counsel on a lawsuit against HUD/HANO to enjoin the demolition of public housing projects in New Orleans. In addition, Tracie has used her skills as an organizer and her network of community partners to provide community training in Education and Housing (“Know Your Education Rights” campaign; Housing Town Hall Meeting – One Year After Katrina; and NAACP/Xavier University Health Fair & Screening). Lauren Bartlett is LJI’s Staff Attorney. Lauren is a former leader of the Student Hurricane Network (SHN). Lauren coordinated multiple volunteer projects and events for law students who came to the Gulf Coast from across the U.S. Through SHN activities, Lauren developed a wide range of partnerships with law firms and other legal advocates, including law schools and law students, across the U.S. who actively providing support and services to marginalized Gulf Coast communities. Lauren also has over 3 years of experience supervising staff at a programmatic level and has worked with numerous nonprofit social service organizations, in California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Washington D.C., Washington State, as well as internationally in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Ghana.
LJI will continue and expand upon the community partnerships developed in the past by the LJI co-founders, including with: Loyola University New Orleans College of Law; People’s Organizing Committee; New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice; Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund; ACORN; Second Good Hope Baptist Church; Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church; The Algiers Group; Watson Memorial Teaching Fellowship; the Principals Association of New Orleans; Pyramid Consulting; the Hispanic Apostolate; Juvenile Justice Project Louisiana; Downtown Neighborhood Improvement Association; Common Ground and Lower 9th Ward Village. Our community partners are LJI’s clients/constituents.
While all of the social justice campaigns we support and projects we coordinate are not formed with the above-referenced partners, all are held to account by the poor and the black and brown people in the affected communities where LJI works. LJI looks to these partners/constituents for our deliverables and our grade (the measure our work and whether we attained success).
Program Results and Goals
Our Focus Areas, Our Projects, Our Victories. LJI fills community-identified gaps in Louisiana’s current public interest legal resources, and we work closely with our partners and advisors to target those gaps. Our programs and litigation are focused on the following issue areas: voting rights and civic engagement; public education; housing; worker rights and economic justice; health care; and criminal justice.
VOTING RIGHTS AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT.
Louisiana has always stood at the forefront in the struggle for black voting rights. Even though voting rights were gained by blacks immediately following the Civil War, after Reconstruction blacks in New Orleans lost the right to vote. Katrina displaced more than half of New Orleans’s 460,000 residents, the vast majority of whom were African-American. Once again, blacks faced loss of the right to vote.
As a direct result of the Acorn vs. Blanco federal litigation filed against the Louisiana, led by counsel from Advancement Project, with LJI Board Member Bill Quigley and LJI President & CEO Tracie Washington serving as local counsel, several civil rights organizations were granted unprecedented access to election monitoring for each of the 2006 elections held in Orleans Parish. Attorneys monitored the absentee ballot process from start to completion, including on-site review of the ballot count. Moreover, during the Spring 2006 elections, counsel mapped, photographed, and reviewed every polling place in New Orleans, which led to significant changes for disabled voters.
Voters today continue to face major obstacles to voting in Louisiana including major registration purges, last minute changes in polling places and a heavy dose of apathy. LJI has partnered with other major civil rights organization through the Louisiana Voting Rights Network, to monitor polls at every election, insure access of all Louisiana voters to the ballot, particularly those still displaced, and provide all voters with the information they need to make informed decisions. Beginning January 2008, LJI will begin gathering and analyzing voting patterns in Louisiana post-Katrina among communities of color to help inform future projects aimed at increasing civic engagement and voter turnout.
In addition to protecting voting rights and our other strategies to enhance civic engagement, LJI is also committed to supporting and offering legal services to groups that are trying to establish and provide structure for community based organizations. LJI helps these groups with the process of incorporation, connects them with resources and other groups doing similar work, and also helps develop media and legal advocacy angles. LJI believes that this is just one more way to raise up the voices and the energy of community members to pursue lasting change. LJI is currently working with three such groups who are in the process of forming community based organizations.
PUBLIC EDUCATION.
Thousands of schoolchildren across the Louisiana Gulf Coast were displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Two years after the 2005 hurricanes only half of New Orleans schools have re-opened. What’s worse is the schools that have re-opened are divided into two tiers in a grand experiment at the expense of parents and students in New Orleans. The top tiered schools are racially mixed elite and charter schools. The other half of the schools, the bottom tier, are run by the Recovery School District and can be classified as underperforming and nearly one hundred percent African-American. This decision to run two school districts with multi-layered governing bodies, has led to numerous problems (lack of transportation, books, hot lunch, school facilities, qualified teachers), producing disarray and confusion, deeply frustrating many parents and students. In response to overwhelming requests, LJI President & CEO Tracie Washington helped coordinate several initiatives in 2006 and early 2007, including the following:
the New Orleans Public Schools Monitoring Line, which advised parents, students, and school employees of their rights and resources, and logged complaints for action by school system officials. School system officials were asked to respond to public complaints within one week;
the Disciplinary Advocacy Training seminar with Pyramid Community Parent Resource Center, Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children, Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the NAACP LDF. This nation is experiencing a crisis through the direct school-to-prison pipeline. In order to break this cycle, parents and community groups must be better prepared to defend children against unnecessary and illegal suspensions and expulsions. This first of its kind training in New Orleans provided community advocates with the tools to handle suspension and expulsion hearings on behalf of New Orleans public schools students; and
the state court class action lawsuit, Royal vs. Orleans Parish School Board, which forced the Orleans Parish Schools to comply with Louisiana law and provide free transportation services both to and from school for all students living one mile or more away from their school.
LJI continues this groundbreaking public education advocacy work with Operation POSSE (Parents of Students with Special Education Needs). In signing the school takeover legislation, Louisiana Governor Blanco promised a grand experiment to repair and reform New Orleans schools, which would serve as a model for the rest of the state. But many children, parents, and school administrators are not being served and have no where to go for redress. In response to several requests for advocacy, LJI has launched Operation POSSE. Thousands of flyers will be distributed to parents, students, and school employees, advising the community of their legal rights and providing an opportunity have complaints forwarded directly to the applicable administrators. LJI conducted its first training for 20-30 parents and students in December 2007, with three more to follow in January and February 2008.
LJI is also currently working to bring a legal fellow on staff for 2008-2010 to focus on coordinating of our Ending the Prison-to-School Pipeline Project, which will include legal and media advocacy on behalf of students with special needs who have been the subject of disciplinary action and their parents. The legal fellow will work with the city and state to bring increased mental health services to poor children and children of color in New Orleans Public Schools in the hopes of avoiding a generation of students faced with discipline before learning and incarceration not college. The legal fellow will likely handle 15-20 individual cases at a time, as well working towards the broader goal of forming coalitions around these issues and supporting existing campaigns.
HOUSING.
The 2005 hurricanes uncovered existing man-made threats to fair opportunity and affordable housing, created by specific policy decisions and many years of neglect. Today there is a gaping lack of affordable housing, a low rate of home ownership, and widespread racial discrimination and residential segregation. Combined with a slow and uneven reconstruction effort, many Louisianans have found it difficult or impossible to start over. Significant, immediate action must be initiated to insure that displaced residents are made whole with affordable and long term housing.
In response to the overwhelming demand to address housing issues, Tracie Washington embarked on several policy and advocacy initiatives, including the 2006 Town Hall Meeting on the State of Housing in New Orleans One Year After Katrina, a partnership with PolicyLink and the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations to form the Louisiana Housing Alliance, and the continued fight for public housing, culminating in the federal lawsuit styled Anderson vs. Jackson filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
LJI also partnered with the Advancement Project, to sponsor a Town Hall Meeting on Housing in New Orleans – Where We Are and Where We are Going in July 2007. This gathering, featuring Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Congressman William Jefferson, Mayor C. Ray Nagin, other New Orleans City Councilmembers, and housing advocates and activists, attempted to address the community’s questions concerning public housing, rental housing, and the Road Home Program.
In the fall of 2007, LJI launched Housing Rights for the Elderly in New Orleans: Preventing Construction Fraud and Unlawful Demolitions. This program targets elderly homeowners, who have received Road Home Program or Insurance funds and plan to rebuild their home, or who have been the victims of construction fraud or an unlawful demolition of their property. LJI attorneys are developing a community construction monitoring system whereby all contractors’ licenses and reputations will be verified, all contracts will be reviewed, and community members will assist in monitoring the construction process on a weekly basis. LJI attorneys will also begin conduct community workshops in early 2008 on contractor fraud prevention and demolitions, an d LJI will publish training materials and distribute those widely to elderly homeowners. LJI is also co-counsel on Idabelle Joshua, et al v. City of New Orleans, where we have requested an end to all demolitions of property by the City without a proper appeals process for property owners.
LJI attorneys are currently in the process of forming a coalition to carryout a campaign entitled Permanent Housing for All FEMA Trailer Residents Now. This coalition will organize Community Meetings and use media and other advocacy around closures of FEMA trailer parks and evictions of individual FEMA trailer residents. In addition, during January 2008, LJI will use law students to conduct a large outreach project, targeting residents of FEMA trailer parks slated to close by May 2008. The law students will conduct surveys to assess the needs of the residents and they will also pass out a comprehensive list of housing and other social services currently being provided in the local area to the residents. LJI also plans to compile an exposé report and organize a community services fair for the residents of the Renaissance Trailer park outside of Baton Rouge.
WORKERS’ RIGHTS AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE.
Tens of thousands of employees in the Louisiana Gulf Coast Region face tremendous barriers to regaining meaningful employment post-Katrina. These individuals were our teachers, our healthcare workers, our hospitality industry workers, many of whom lived paycheck to paycheck on poverty wages. And, by some estimates, close to 100,000 new migrant workers – Latino, Asian, Native-American – were recruited to the gulf region for reconstruction work, or have migrated her on their own seeking better economic opportunities for themselves and their families. What is clear is that neither the mostly African-American displaced workers nor the new immigrant workers will be served if the working conditions and wages return to their abysmal pre-hurricane state.
Tracie Washington has worked in partnership with the Brennan Center and the National Employment Law Project to develop FAQ brochures on Wage and Hour Law Rights and other employee rights issues. Tracie has also advocated for the rights of guest workers to receive Louisiana identification cards and state driver’s licenses. Based on this combined effort, in June 2006 over 200 guest workers received state identification, which allows them to open bank accounts, rent apartments, and participate in many of the other social benefits citizens of our nation enjoy. LJI also currently serves as local counsel with Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Immigration Law Center in the federal case Castellanos-Contreras, et al. vs. Decatur Hotel, Inc., fighting for wage payments due guest workers here in the U.S. under the H2-B visa program.
LJI is now actively planning the Pay Us Fair - Pay Us Legal! Louisiana Low-Wage Workers' Rights Campaign. The campaign will bring to the forefront worker exploitation in the Gulf Coast Region, uniting workers to campaign for better working conditions, and living wages. This work has begun, but it needs resources to grow and achieve the unprecedented alliance amongst low-wage workers to fight together for employment rights. LJI’s work will be multi-faceted on this campaign, first moving through organizing, then moving to training and finally advocacy in the following areas: wage theft, home owner and worker collaboration on contractor violations, state minimum wage and benefits laws with a private right of action, first source hiring agreements, strengthened enforcement of wage and hour laws and making worker rights an inextricable part of economic development. Depending on funding, this campaign is set to launch in early 2008.
HEALTH CARE.
The 2005 hurricanes devastated a health care system that was already straining to provide necessary health services to its population. Before the storms, Louisiana had a “two-tier” health system, with a quarter of the population below poverty and 20 percent uninsured. Health care for the poor and uninsured was provided through the state-run Charity hospital system financed by Medicaid DSH dollars, and more community-based care and broadened health coverage was needed. After the 2005 hurricanes, the Greater New Orleans area health system has been overwhelmed at best, and devastated at worse, with the loss of health facilities and closure of Charity Hospital, the dispersion of health care workers, and confusion and disrupted care for people, especially the poor and uninsured.
In response to the scores of requests for assistance in addressing this healthcare crisis, in February 2007, Tracie Washington worked with Xavier University and its Office of Technology to sponsor a Healthcare Symposium and Health Fair. The Health Fair was a tremendous success, with residents receiving blood pressure screenings and cholesterol checks, and free childhood vaccinations for children, and tetanus vaccinations for the adults. Further, several health care providers and physicians made presentations on such issues as cancer, mental health, and pediatric medicine.
In early 2008, LJI staff, along with pro bono attorneys from New Orleans, Boston, Phoenix and Seattle, plan to file a lawsuit to seek the partial reopening of Charity Hospital. Charity Hospital served as the local health center in New Orleans for the uninsured before the Hurricanes and has remained closed since. The partial re-opening of Charity serves an important role in bigger plans to rework the entire health care system of Louisiana to provide quality health care for all, from preventative to emergency care. In addition, as part of the larger plan, LJI has hired a health care community organizer.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE.
The criminal justice problems in Louisiana are so overwhelming and persistent that there is a definite need for more legal resources in this area. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country, prison conditions are horrendous, and police abuses are widespread. Indigent defendants have virtually no rights, and generally very poor representation. The criminal justice system is still in utter disrepair nearly two years after Katrina hit. Citizens are presumed innocent under our Constitution, but in Louisiana indigent defendants are not receiving anything close to constitutionally adequate representation.
In early October 2005, Dr. Louis X. Washington, Sr. a life-long senior African-American New Orleans resident commented “I’ve never seen whites and blacks get along so well in this city; everybody’s helping out everybody. It won’t last. Just wait until more of us come home.” Dr. Washington’s commentary was prophetic and, indeed, the racial tensions that have been tolerated for years in the Greater New Orleans community returned quickly. Jefferson and St. Tammany Parish Sheriffs made national news with their comments concerning racial profiling. And in Orleans Parish, the crime problem that was often blamed on public housing has not yet subsided, even though public housing residents have been prohibited from returning to the city. In the Greater New Orleans community, citizens segregate to discuss race and the conversations are often vitriolic. It is time to listen, and the “Listen Without Prejudice.” LJI will facilitate these conversations throughout the community, in safe spaces with our ministerial partners, to share statistics on race and recovery and to discuss how the community can work long term toward resolution of these race tensions.
Those conversations were never so important as now in Jena, Louisiana, where the Jena 6, six young African-American men, are caught in a struggle between engrained racism in a tiny town in the deep south, a shaky Criminal Justice system, and nationwide media attention that has recently brought in hundreds of thousands of protestors, some with big names like Al Sharpton and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. LJI has been involved in coordinating the legal team for the Jena 6, as well as assisting the families in their media campaign. LJI has helped coordinated the beginning in a series of anti-racism trainings in the public schools in Jena, as part of our larger conversations on race, recovery and criminal justice.
VOTING RIGHTS AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT.
Louisiana has always stood at the forefront in the struggle for black voting rights. Even though voting rights were gained by blacks immediately following the Civil War, after Reconstruction blacks in New Orleans lost the right to vote. Katrina displaced more than half of New Orleans’s 460,000 residents, the vast majority of whom were African-American. Once again, blacks faced loss of the right to vote.
As a direct result of the Acorn vs. Blanco federal litigation filed against the Louisiana, led by counsel from Advancement Project, with LJI Board Member Bill Quigley and LJI President & CEO Tracie Washington serving as local counsel, several civil rights organizations were granted unprecedented access to election monitoring for each of the 2006 elections held in Orleans Parish. Attorneys monitored the absentee ballot process from start to completion, including on-site review of the ballot count. Moreover, during the Spring 2006 elections, counsel mapped, photographed, and reviewed every polling place in New Orleans, which led to significant changes for disabled voters.
Voters today continue to face major obstacles to voting in Louisiana including major registration purges, last minute changes in polling places and a heavy dose of apathy. LJI has partnered with other major civil rights organization through the Louisiana Voting Rights Network, to monitor polls at every election, insure access of all Louisiana voters to the ballot, particularly those still displaced, and provide all voters with the information they need to make informed decisions. Beginning January 2008, LJI will begin gathering and analyzing voting patterns in Louisiana post-Katrina among communities of color to help inform future projects aimed at increasing civic engagement and voter turnout.
In addition to protecting voting rights and our other strategies to enhance civic engagement, LJI is also committed to supporting and offering legal services to groups that are trying to establish and provide structure for community based organizations. LJI helps these groups with the process of incorporation, connects them with resources and other groups doing similar work, and also helps develop media and legal advocacy angles. LJI believes that this is just one more way to raise up the voices and the energy of community members to pursue lasting change. LJI is currently working with three such groups who are in the process of forming community based organizations.
PUBLIC EDUCATION.
Thousands of schoolchildren across the Louisiana Gulf Coast were displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Two years after the 2005 hurricanes only half of New Orleans schools have re-opened. What’s worse is the schools that have re-opened are divided into two tiers in a grand experiment at the expense of parents and students in New Orleans. The top tiered schools are racially mixed elite and charter schools. The other half of the schools, the bottom tier, are run by the Recovery School District and can be classified as underperforming and nearly one hundred percent African-American. This decision to run two school districts with multi-layered governing bodies, has led to numerous problems (lack of transportation, books, hot lunch, school facilities, qualified teachers), producing disarray and confusion, deeply frustrating many parents and students. In response to overwhelming requests, LJI President & CEO Tracie Washington helped coordinate several initiatives in 2006 and early 2007, including the following:
LJI continues this groundbreaking public education advocacy work with Operation POSSE (Parents of Students with Special Education Needs). In signing the school takeover legislation, Louisiana Governor Blanco promised a grand experiment to repair and reform New Orleans schools, which would serve as a model for the rest of the state. But many children, parents, and school administrators are not being served and have no where to go for redress. In response to several requests for advocacy, LJI has launched Operation POSSE. Thousands of flyers will be distributed to parents, students, and school employees, advising the community of their legal rights and providing an opportunity have complaints forwarded directly to the applicable administrators. LJI conducted its first training for 20-30 parents and students in December 2007, with three more to follow in January and February 2008.
LJI is also currently working to bring a legal fellow on staff for 2008-2010 to focus on coordinating of our Ending the Prison-to-School Pipeline Project, which will include legal and media advocacy on behalf of students with special needs who have been the subject of disciplinary action and their parents. The legal fellow will work with the city and state to bring increased mental health services to poor children and children of color in New Orleans Public Schools in the hopes of avoiding a generation of students faced with discipline before learning and incarceration not college. The legal fellow will likely handle 15-20 individual cases at a time, as well working towards the broader goal of forming coalitions around these issues and supporting existing campaigns.
HOUSING.
The 2005 hurricanes uncovered existing man-made threats to fair opportunity and affordable housing, created by specific policy decisions and many years of neglect. Today there is a gaping lack of affordable housing, a low rate of home ownership, and widespread racial discrimination and residential segregation. Combined with a slow and uneven reconstruction effort, many Louisianans have found it difficult or impossible to start over. Significant, immediate action must be initiated to insure that displaced residents are made whole with affordable and long term housing.
In response to the overwhelming demand to address housing issues, Tracie Washington embarked on several policy and advocacy initiatives, including the 2006 Town Hall Meeting on the State of Housing in New Orleans One Year After Katrina, a partnership with PolicyLink and the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations to form the Louisiana Housing Alliance, and the continued fight for public housing, culminating in the federal lawsuit styled Anderson vs. Jackson filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
LJI also partnered with the Advancement Project, to sponsor a Town Hall Meeting on Housing in New Orleans – Where We Are and Where We are Going in July 2007. This gathering, featuring Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Congressman William Jefferson, Mayor C. Ray Nagin, other New Orleans City Councilmembers, and housing advocates and activists, attempted to address the community’s questions concerning public housing, rental housing, and the Road Home Program.
In the fall of 2007, LJI launched Housing Rights for the Elderly in New Orleans: Preventing Construction Fraud and Unlawful Demolitions. This program targets elderly homeowners, who have received Road Home Program or Insurance funds and plan to rebuild their home, or who have been the victims of construction fraud or an unlawful demolition of their property. LJI attorneys are developing a community construction monitoring system whereby all contractors’ licenses and reputations will be verified, all contracts will be reviewed, and community members will assist in monitoring the construction process on a weekly basis. LJI attorneys will also begin conduct community workshops in early 2008 on contractor fraud prevention and demolitions, an d LJI will publish training materials and distribute those widely to elderly homeowners. LJI is also co-counsel on Idabelle Joshua, et al v. City of New Orleans, where we have requested an end to all demolitions of property by the City without a proper appeals process for property owners.
LJI attorneys are currently in the process of forming a coalition to carryout a campaign entitled Permanent Housing for All FEMA Trailer Residents Now. This coalition will organize Community Meetings and use media and other advocacy around closures of FEMA trailer parks and evictions of individual FEMA trailer residents. In addition, during January 2008, LJI will use law students to conduct a large outreach project, targeting residents of FEMA trailer parks slated to close by May 2008. The law students will conduct surveys to assess the needs of the residents and they will also pass out a comprehensive list of housing and other social services currently being provided in the local area to the residents. LJI also plans to compile an exposé report and organize a community services fair for the residents of the Renaissance Trailer park outside of Baton Rouge.
WORKERS’ RIGHTS AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE.
Tens of thousands of employees in the Louisiana Gulf Coast Region face tremendous barriers to regaining meaningful employment post-Katrina. These individuals were our teachers, our healthcare workers, our hospitality industry workers, many of whom lived paycheck to paycheck on poverty wages. And, by some estimates, close to 100,000 new migrant workers – Latino, Asian, Native-American – were recruited to the gulf region for reconstruction work, or have migrated her on their own seeking better economic opportunities for themselves and their families. What is clear is that neither the mostly African-American displaced workers nor the new immigrant workers will be served if the working conditions and wages return to their abysmal pre-hurricane state.
Tracie Washington has worked in partnership with the Brennan Center and the National Employment Law Project to develop FAQ brochures on Wage and Hour Law Rights and other employee rights issues. Tracie has also advocated for the rights of guest workers to receive Louisiana identification cards and state driver’s licenses. Based on this combined effort, in June 2006 over 200 guest workers received state identification, which allows them to open bank accounts, rent apartments, and participate in many of the other social benefits citizens of our nation enjoy. LJI also currently serves as local counsel with Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Immigration Law Center in the federal case Castellanos-Contreras, et al. vs. Decatur Hotel, Inc., fighting for wage payments due guest workers here in the U.S. under the H2-B visa program.
LJI is now actively planning the Pay Us Fair - Pay Us Legal! Louisiana Low-Wage Workers' Rights Campaign. The campaign will bring to the forefront worker exploitation in the Gulf Coast Region, uniting workers to campaign for better working conditions, and living wages. This work has begun, but it needs resources to grow and achieve the unprecedented alliance amongst low-wage workers to fight together for employment rights. LJI’s work will be multi-faceted on this campaign, first moving through organizing, then moving to training and finally advocacy in the following areas: wage theft, home owner and worker collaboration on contractor violations, state minimum wage and benefits laws with a private right of action, first source hiring agreements, strengthened enforcement of wage and hour laws and making worker rights an inextricable part of economic development. Depending on funding, this campaign is set to launch in early 2008.
HEALTH CARE.
The 2005 hurricanes devastated a health care system that was already straining to provide necessary health services to its population. Before the storms, Louisiana had a “two-tier” health system, with a quarter of the population below poverty and 20 percent uninsured. Health care for the poor and uninsured was provided through the state-run Charity hospital system financed by Medicaid DSH dollars, and more community-based care and broadened health coverage was needed. After the 2005 hurricanes, the Greater New Orleans area health system has been overwhelmed at best, and devastated at worse, with the loss of health facilities and closure of Charity Hospital, the dispersion of health care workers, and confusion and disrupted care for people, especially the poor and uninsured.
In response to the scores of requests for assistance in addressing this healthcare crisis, in February 2007, Tracie Washington worked with Xavier University and its Office of Technology to sponsor a Healthcare Symposium and Health Fair. The Health Fair was a tremendous success, with residents receiving blood pressure screenings and cholesterol checks, and free childhood vaccinations for children, and tetanus vaccinations for the adults. Further, several health care providers and physicians made presentations on such issues as cancer, mental health, and pediatric medicine.
In early 2008, LJI staff, along with pro bono attorneys from New Orleans, Boston, Phoenix and Seattle, plan to file a lawsuit to seek the partial reopening of Charity Hospital. Charity Hospital served as the local health center in New Orleans for the uninsured before the Hurricanes and has remained closed since. The partial re-opening of Charity serves an important role in bigger plans to rework the entire health care system of Louisiana to provide quality health care for all, from preventative to emergency care. In addition, as part of the larger plan, LJI has hired a health care community organizer.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE.
The criminal justice problems in Louisiana are so overwhelming and persistent that there is a definite need for more legal resources in this area. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country, prison conditions are horrendous, and police abuses are widespread. Indigent defendants have virtually no rights, and generally very poor representation. The criminal justice system is still in utter disrepair nearly two years after Katrina hit. Citizens are presumed innocent under our Constitution, but in Louisiana indigent defendants are not receiving anything close to constitutionally adequate representation.
In early October 2005, Dr. Louis X. Washington, Sr. a life-long senior African-American New Orleans resident commented “I’ve never seen whites and blacks get along so well in this city; everybody’s helping out everybody. It won’t last. Just wait until more of us come home.” Dr. Washington’s commentary was prophetic and, indeed, the racial tensions that have been tolerated for years in the Greater New Orleans community returned quickly. Jefferson and St. Tammany Parish Sheriffs made national news with their comments concerning racial profiling. And in Orleans Parish, the crime problem that was often blamed on public housing has not yet subsided, even though public housing residents have been prohibited from returning to the city. In the Greater New Orleans community, citizens segregate to discuss race and the conversations are often vitriolic. It is time to listen, and the “Listen Without Prejudice.” LJI will facilitate these conversations throughout the community, in safe spaces with our ministerial partners, to share statistics on race and recovery and to discuss how the community can work long term toward resolution of these race tensions.
Those conversations were never so important as now in Jena, Louisiana, where the Jena 6, six young African-American men, are caught in a struggle between engrained racism in a tiny town in the deep south, a shaky Criminal Justice system, and nationwide media attention that has recently brought in hundreds of thousands of protestors, some with big names like Al Sharpton and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. LJI has been involved in coordinating the legal team for the Jena 6, as well as assisting the families in their media campaign. LJI has helped coordinated the beginning in a series of anti-racism trainings in the public schools in Jena, as part of our larger conversations on race, recovery and criminal justice.
Program Evaluation Methods
Measuring our Success. As a newly formed organization dedicated to fostering social justice campaigns with community-based partners, LJI is in a unique position to allow the communities we work with to form an integral part of how we systematically and effectively monitor and evaluate our work. To achieve this community-driven monitoring and evaluation approach, LJI uses multiple avenues and tools.
First, LJI sends out a short quarterly e-newsletter illustrating our current work and future plans. We attach a short survey to the e-newsletter which requests candid feedback from our partner organizations, including assessments of our successes, needed refinements and lessons learned for the future. Follow-up is conducted by phone or in-person for each response. The input given through those surveys is compiled and discussed in the following e-newsletter.
... more >
First, LJI sends out a short quarterly e-newsletter illustrating our current work and future plans. We attach a short survey to the e-newsletter which requests candid feedback from our partner organizations, including assessments of our successes, needed refinements and lessons learned for the future. Follow-up is conducted by phone or in-person for each response. The input given through those surveys is compiled and discussed in the following e-newsletter.
... more >
Funding Needs
LJI is continually in need in volunteer technical services for web-based media advocacy, and for donations of money so that we can keep campaigns going.
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