We organize alongside community partners, file impactful lawsuits, advocate for broad-level policy change, and amplify our clients’ stories, all with the goal of building power in low-income communities and creating lasting change.
As a legal aid organization, we provide direct legal representation to eligible, low-income clients on a variety of issues. This can relieve some of the immediate impacts of systemic oppression on individuals and families and can free directly affected community members to lead the work.
We foster collective strength with people facing oppression in Virginia tothat ends historic imbalances of power and wealth. We organize and support community groups to grow leaders, strengthen communities, and develop tactics and strategies that will create long-lasting change.
We use lawsuits as a powerful tool to defend a community’s rights, create leverage for movements, and challenge the legal structures that maintain and perpetuate poverty and injustice. When we encounter issues that could be effectively litigated in a way that could benefit everyone experiencing the issue, we work with impacted people to challenge the injustice in court.
LAJC’s policy advocacy is crucial to dismantling systems of oppression and holding government accountable to the community. We work to enable robust participation by directly impacted community members by lifting up their expertise to policymakers, strengthening partnerships with community led groups and coalitions, and by providing community partners with technical assistance and access to those who hold power.
We weave public-facing communications work into everything that we do. We amplify community voices and stories to influence change and to share information on legal rights, opportunities for action, and important developments affecting our communities.
We share knowledge with and from community members most directly impacted by legal and other complex systems that affect their lives. We aim to make the law, legal tools, and systems accessible to everyone, while also learning from those directly impacted how those systems can be improved.
