Law School Blog
Equal Justice Works Conference and Career Fair, Washington, DC
Sunday, October 7, 2007
At this year's Equal Justice Works Conference, I was struck most by a
workshop entitled, "Advancing Justice and Promoting Government
Accountability Through Community Lawyering, the Law, and Grassroots
Organizing."
The Executive Director of Illinois' Citizen Advocacy Center presented her
experience as a lawyer promoting grassroots organizing around local
government accountability. Part of that work involves teaching community
members to use tools like the Freedom of Information Act and the Open Public
Meetings Act to gain access to information about what local government
officials are doing in their community. Frequently, those people are
stigmatized and labeled as undesirable community members because they sought
accountability and made some noise.
The Center sends out hundreds of anonymous Freedom of Information Act
requests every year in order to test the response. A full 40% go
unanswered. Often, Center attorneys have to call the government body in
question, identify themselves as lawyers, and threaten a lawsuit before the
information is released. This struck me, because if lawyers with years of
experience using the FOIA tool are frequently stymied in getting
information, imagine the challenge for a citizen with limited time and
energy who seeks the information in her free time! The lessons the Citizen
Advocacy Center has learned reminded me that even when good tools exist as
pathways to open government and true accountability, resistance to their
implementation is just around the corner. Hearing about the Center's work
to make sure that FOIA and Open Meetings could be used by any citizen who
wants to employ them was one of the highlights of my Equal Justice Works
experience.
- Colleen Melody, 2L and Gates Scholar