ChuckE Law - Community Lawyering in Miami

What is the role of the grass roots left movement in the U.S. in relating to the new Obama administration. Frances Fox Piven in Obama Needs a Protest Movement ( The Nation 12/1/08) uses the early FDR administration as a model to lay out a particularly aggressive role for mass organizing. She argues that Obama, like FDR, was elected as a centrist and will govern from the economic center unless mobilizations and protests create a "white hot urgency" forcing him to respond. The parallels between the election of 2008 and the election of 1932 are often invoked, with good reason. It is not just that Obama's oratory is reminiscent of FDR's oratory, or that both men were brought into office as a result of big electoral shifts, or that both took power at a moment of economic catastrophe. All this is true, of course. But I want to make a different point: FDR became a great president because the mass protests among the unemployed, the aged, farmers and workers forced him...

On October 14, 2008 I wrote complaining about the terms of the Miami World Center Development Agreement currently being considered by the City Commission. As I read it, the Development Agreement grants a number of unprecedented City concessions to the Developer. For example, for twenty years: ● The City cannot do anything that decreases the allowed density on the property; ● The City cannot change its Comprehensive Plan in any way that threatens this development; ● The City must facilitate all future land use approvals, including DRI approvals; ● The City agrees to provide all the necessary infrastructure; ● The City agrees that the Development (which is nowhere described) conforms to the Comprehensive Plan. These are not all necessarily bad things - and they may be necessary to get the long term financing that such a project requires. What is somewhat amazing, however, is that the City Commission failed to exact any concessions from the Developer in return for...

It seems everyone with a blog must comment on the Obama election, so here goes. But first I wanted to refer you to a post by Makani Themba-Nixon of the Praxis Project which I came across after I wrote this. She says everything I wanted to say (and much more) but also much, much better. If you have limited time jump right to the link. As for my thoughts: First, this election demonstrates that the tools, language and values of the type of community organizing that is going on in Miami resonate and payoff when applied on a scale much greater than we are currently utilizing them. So we know how to do it, we just need the resources, campaigns and vision to do it. Second, for lawyers, it demonstrates that change can take place without lawyers playing a central role (at least as lawyers.) There is always some role to play. The thousands of lawyers that Obama utilized for poll watching in Florida, linked with all the other civil rights groups, and the peremptory lawsuits, may wel...