By Miguel Keberlein
Guest
Columnist
Chicago,
IL, USA
Joe
was getting his life back on track.
A
young dad working toward getting on his feet and earning more visitation with
his kids, he did everything he could. He worked to find an apartment and a job,
buy a car, and support his children financially and emotionally. He was using
his every last dollar
just to live, so when his car’s taillight broke – it was
hit by another car while parked on the street – he couldn’t afford to get it
fixed. The tickets accumulated, and his car was booted, and the cycle started
again. When he couldn’t get to work, he lost his job, then his ability to pay
his rent, then his opportunities to see his kids. Because he didn’t see a way
out, Joe turned back to a life he’d worked hard to leave behind.
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| Miguel Keberlein |
There
are so many ways Joe’s story could have gone differently. He had choices, but
he didn’t know about them because of a key barrier: access to legal help in his
community.
While
we can’t always know why a particular individual might be a participant in or a
victim of gun violence, we do know that gun violence is happening in certain
areas of Chicago because of that barrier to accessing information and resources
that can help people make more meaningful choices.
The
intersection of violence interruption and legal aid cannot be overlooked, and
that’s why the Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services is partnering
with Communities Partnering 4 Peace (CP4P), a Metropolitan-convened violence
prevention initiative, to establish our new CP4P Justice Corps.
Over
the next year, we’ll bring legal services directly to justice-involved adults
and those at risk of committing crimes in our communities through collaboration
with our CP4P community partners operating in community areas most affected by
gun violence.
There’s
an important value in understanding that communities work best when they’re
deciding what they need. We want to be in those communities, listening to the
needs they identify.
The
CP4P Justice Corps will enhance our relationships with our partners to empower
Chicago’s most disadvantaged residents, many of whom are unaware of their legal
rights in employment, housing, public benefits, crime victim services, human
trafficking, elder law and domestic violence or how to access services that are
not available locally.
From
listening to our people entrenched in these communities, and from comprehensive
needs assessments with our partner organizations, we’ve seen the opportunity
inherent in providing more immediate access to an attorney who can offer support
in these critical areas. We’ve seen how issues like wage theft can hold someone
back from sustaining employment, how ensuring a student receives an IEP can
support them in staying in school, how an expungement can help a returning
citizen move on from their past – how legal services can create
transformational change.
With
the CP4P Justice Corps, the Legal Aid Society’s services can now adopt CP4P’s
hyperlocal approach to meet individuals where they are. Speaking with an
attorney doesn’t have to mean traveling downtown to an unfamiliar 10th
story office, it can mean stopping by to see a trusted friend in the community.
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| CP4P Justice Corp Goals |
Our
CP4P partners can offer the individualized, responsive focus that brings LAS’s
services beyond access to justice. To make justice a reality for everyone, we
need to look at it through the lens of the individual first: this is what justice means to me.
Take
Joe. With an attorney’s support, Joe could address his employment issue with
his landlord to work out a rent payment plan. Together, they could talk with
his employer to help resolve his ability to get to work. They could track down
who smashed his taillight or reach out to the City about his car. An attorney
could help Joe see the way out he was working so hard to achieve.
Legal
services provide a buffer between someone like Joe and the life they want to
leave behind, so that one particular incident – like a broken taillight – isn’t
going to cause them to lose their job or their home or their family.
People
living in poverty always have to walk a line of survival. As a legal
professional, I see legal aid as a duty and a responsibility of those in my
field to be purveyors of the information that can help people not just survive …
but thrive.
We’re
the holders of the rules of the game, and we have a duty to help people
understand those rules. When we show people that they have someone who will
stand by and fight with them, we give them a sense of ownership in their
community: I can do this.
As
a legal community, in complement to the critical work being done by our fellow
legal aid organizations in the areas, we are creating more hopeful avenues for
people by addressing some of the structural issues they face. The Justice Corps
initiative aims to collaborate on the ground to help fill gaps that exist in
our communities based on our CP4P partner organizations’ self-identified needs.
We aim to be reflective in our work; our communities’ needs will change over
time, and we will evolve to meet them.
For
Chicago to be the best Chicago it can be, everybody has to be invested in
resolving the issue of gun violence.
Is
legal aid going to be the one thing that resolves gun violence? Absolutely not.
But communities need access to all the available tools and resources in order
to create lasting change. To create choices: Do I go one route I know
already? Or, can I follow some of these avenues of promise that might lead me
to more stability and peace in my community?
Let’s
choose peace.
Links:
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Miguel Keberlein is the Executive
Director of the Legal Aid Society of
Chicago’s Metropolitan Family Services.
Chicago’s Metropolitan Family Services.