Centering Legal Knowledge and Lived Experience in Local Communities

This session brought together a variety of voices to have a conversation about the importance of centering lived experience within access to justice work. Panelists discussed the diverse ways in which legal knowledge and expertise may be gained and the power of centering lived experience in movements to achieve more just outcomes from the legal system.

Panelists:

• Liz Medicine Crow, President and CEO, First Alaskans Institute
• Jhody Polk, Founder and Lead Organizer, Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub (L.E.A.H.)
• Alana Greer, Director, Community Justice Project

Moderator: Nikole Nelson, Executive Director, Alaska Legal Services Corporation

Resources:

Session notes: Centering Legal Knowledge and Lived Experience in Local Communities

Other resources:

• Pathfinders profile of Jhody Polk, The advocate fighting for legal empowerment in U.S. prisons

Critical Participatory Action Research: Commitments, Accountabilities and Epistemic Justice

This session drew from the Public Science Project’s 25 years of work with community-based organizations, activists, lawyers and young people to produce research rooted in the perspectives of those most impacted by injustice to document structural inequalities and build empirical data for policy, organizing, and popular education. It focused on two projects: 1) The Morris Justice Project, a multi-year collaboration with community residents in the Bronx, where researchers and lawyers systematically and quantitatively documented the impact of aggressive policing on youth, adults, and elders through a secondary analysis of NYPD data conducted with the community and original data collected through a community-generated survey; and 2) The Survivors Justice Project, a new project launched in 2020 that works to document and animate the impact of the 2019 Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA) alongside women who have been incarcerated. Presenters shared key commitments, radical possibilities, and their rich collaborative engagement on these projects, making clear why and how it is critical that those most impacted by injustice are situated at the center of research.

Panelists:

• María Elena Torre, co-founder and director of The Public Science Project, The Graduate Center, CUNY
• Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology, Women’s Studies, American Studies and Urban Education, The Graduate Center, CUNY
• Kate Mogulescu, Associate Professor of Clinical Law, Brooklyn Law School
• Sharon White-Harrigan, Executive Director, The Women’s Community Justice Association (WCJA)

Moderator: Matthew Burnett, Policy Officer, Open Society Justice Initiative

Resources:

Session notes: Critical Participatory Action Research: Commitments, Accountabilities and Epistemic Justice

Other resources:

• Growing Up Policed in the Age of Aggressive Policing Policies