When those in power siphon wealth from the people who can least afford it, they not only take away from the immediate needs of society’s most vulnerable – they make it impossible for a community to thrive. NCLEJ is fighting every day to stabilize and grow the economic opportunities for low-income people and communities of color.
Central to the issue of economic justice is racial justice. We cannot have one without the other.
In 2021, we launched the Racial Justice Fund to provide dedicated support for this critical mission area. Our racial justice advocacy goes far beyond litigation – we prioritize supporting the critical work of grassroots movements organizing to build power within their communities.
Your contribution will support our efforts to advance racial and economic justice for communities of color and low-income workers. In recent years, we’ve been hard at work at the forefront of this fight in cases all around the country:
We’re supporting Black Love Resists in the Rust and nine individual plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit challenging discriminatory policing practices in Buffalo, New York. We’re seeking to end Buffalo’s longtime practice of targeting communities of color for traffic tickets, and bring real accountability to policing in Buffalo by partnering with the Fair Fines and Fees Coalition.
We represented four minority-led grassroots groups – Brownsville Green Justice, Ocean Hill-Brownsville Young Professionals, Mi Casa Resiste, and Indigenous Kinship Collective to fight the racially-discriminatory construction of a fracked gas pipeline running through Black and Brown communities in Brooklyn.
We challenged the modern-day debtor’s prison operated by Montgomery, Alabama, in which police targeted low-income drivers of color with a vicious cycle of punitive fines and requirements.
We’re fighting back against racially discriminatory policing practices in Oklahoma City.
Through our public benefits work, we’re fighting to ensure that low-income communities of color get equitable access to the benefits they are eligible for. In Alaska, we secured an interim agreement for the State to halve their over 10,000 person SNAP backlog within six months. Indigenous communities and other racial minorities in Alaska are at high risk of food insecurity, and our lawsuit against the State forced them to step up to meet their legal obligations to provide benefits for families in need.
The National Center for Law and Economic Justice advances racial and economic justice through ground-breaking impact litigation, policy advocacy, and support for grassroots organizing. We have provided legal representation and support since 1965.
