The Action Lab (TAL), the Law and Political Economy Project, LPE NYC, and the Initiative for Community Power are excited to announce our upcoming Convening on Law and Power Building, to be held at NYU Law School on April 7th from noon to 6:00.
For decades, lawyers invested in progressive social change have grappled with how to effectively deploy their skills and capacities – and, more broadly, law itself – in service of organizing for social, economic, and racial justice. The desire to wed law to transformative organizing efforts and collective mobilizations has generated innovative modalities of practice and frames of analysis. It has also produced a number of pressing questions: to what extent – and how – can law be used to build durable power for poor and oppressed people? What kinds of legal strategies, approaches to law and organizing, and organizational forms best facilitate this project? How do lawyers orient themselves to counter-hegemonic and anti-systemic movements given the conservatizing nature of the legal profession? How might longstanding modalities of law and organizing need to be adapted to meet the challenges of our current political moment?
These and other questions are the animating themes of the Convening on Law and Power Building. The Convening is intended to spark discussion and reflection – as well as forward and strategic thinking – among practitioners, academics, and students with a shared commitment to using law to build a more just and democratic society. Speakers will include Lester Spence (Johns Hopkins), Purvi Shah (Movement Law Lab), Ben Sachs (Harvard), Sameer Ashar (UC Irvine), Scott Cummings (UCLA), Marbre Stahly-Butts (Law for Black Lives), Chris Newman (National Day Laborer Organizing Network), Marika Dias (Safety Net Project), Mike Grinthal (TakeRoot Justice), Sienna Fontaine (Make the Road NY), Jeena Shah (CUNY), Andrew Friedman (NYU/Action Lab), Sochie Nnaemeka (Working Families Party), Daniela Tagtachian (Initiative for Community Power), and John Whitlow (CUNY).
Please register here.
