The Community Justice Project (CJP) is marking 10 years in Miami, practicing what it calls “community lawyering.”
“ It is a philosophy that says if lawyers would actually position themselves and put our resources and our talents behind directly impacted community members, who are working to make their communities more accessible, then we can actually shift the needle,” CJP director Alana Greer told WLRN.
The nonprofit provides legal help to tenants facing eviction, workers dealing with wage theft and others impacted by the legal system. Much of CJP’s work has centered on housing justice — supporting tenants, mobile homeowners and public housing residents in Miami-Dade County who are fighting evictions, displacement and deteriorating living conditions.
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“Florida tenant law and mobile home law have very few protections,” Greer said. “I think particularly since the pandemic we have seen unconscionable rent increases, and full-on displacement of entire buildings and neighborhoods of people in the name of profit.”
Over the last decade, CJP has also worked with grassroots organizations across Florida on issues including police violence, immigrant rights and censorship in public schools.
As the organization marks its 10th anniversary, Greer spoke with WLRN’s Sherrilyn Cabrera about the evolution of CJP’s work, the challenges facing communities in Florida and what lies ahead.
The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
WLRN: Your team includes not just lawyers, but researchers and artists. How do artists shape the work and why are they essential?
GREER: We have been so lucky to get to work with really visionary artists from our inception. It was almost an accident at first. One of our now board members, Aja Monet, a poet, had just recently moved to Miami when we got started and we were working with a mobile home park in El Portal — having these hours-long meetings around really tough legal issues around how the park was going to close, how people were going to have to leave their homes of 30, 40 years. It was a really draining process.
[Monet] came in and started doing poetry workshops after our legal meetings, talking about the concept of home, and in a place like Miami. The work that came out of these abuelas and kids and all these different residents [they were] really beautiful reflections. Not only on the home that they were losing in this site, but on what home was for them over multiple instances of immigration, of family, of all of these themes. And it was so important to just have that space for them, and all of us, to be full humans in that moment. I think it made our legal work stronger.
We've been so lucky to host a number of artist in residence series and really engage with artists, not only for the beautiful, incredible products that they're able to do with their art, but I think the process of working deeply with organizers, with impacted folks has been so, so generative. It's really something that grounds us through some of the toughest times.
"I'm most hopeful because I get to spend every day working with young people, immigrants, tenants, workers who — despite unimaginable pressures — are standing up and saying ‘we're gonna fight for a better future.’"Alana Greer, CJP Director
CJP has also taken local issues, like police violence, free expression and racial justice to the United Nations. What does it mean for a South Florida community’s struggle to be heard on that global stage?
We first started when we were working with groups like Dream Defenders and others after Trayvon Martin was killed, and another police killings here in Miami-Dade County, and it was a time when our court systems here in the United States were completely failing to provide any sort of justice, our legislative branch was completely failing to provide any sort of acknowledgement of the pain and the horror that so many Black families have had to endure because of police violence, so many families in general have had to endure.
Being able to sit in a forum like the UN, to have that formality, to have the voices of those young people, of those family members to be heard and acknowledged. I think it was incredibly sustaining. Does it flip a switch and change what people have to live through here in Miami-Dade County? No, but I think it really was able to shine a light and give people some fuel to keep this fight going. Right now, any forum we have where we can have people speak truth to power, is essential. We're really just trying to, as lawyers, find those spaces, create those spaces where they don't exist and have those voices be heard.
You recently also brought a Miami-Dade teacher to speak before the UN about classroom censorship. Tell me a little bit about CJP’s work trying to fight against classroom censorship — and what do you hope the world will understand about what's happening in Florida schools right now?
I think we've seen over and over again, the playbook that is coming out of Florida, being replicated at the federal level. And so when we see things like the banning of books, erasure of Black history, the pressure and dismantling that is being put on public institutions and the public, whether it's universities or K-12 schools, what happens here is consequential for the rest of the country and the rest of the world. We need to be standing up loudly. We need to be shouting about what is happening in our classrooms and where those spaces are being shrunk in the public sphere.
We need to be creating those spaces for ourselves, and there's so many incredible teachers that are doing that work. I think that experience really taught us, too, about preemptive compliance and the ways that even when there is not a direct law against something or direct demand, the pressure that is put on these folks that hold space, like teachers, to go through — out of fear — and put away books around Black history, put away books of things that might upset someone [and] how much damage that can do to our institutions and to our spaces.
The Community Justice project is celebrating 10 years. When you look back, what feels most different today compared to when the organization started a decade ago?
I think when we first started a decade ago, so much of our work was about getting folks to the table at the local level, about getting folks to be able just to be heard on issues that were shaping their lives. That is still a challenge and I think we still have to work really hard to get folks a seat at the table in our cities and our counties.
But I think we are up against a much bigger challenge — like the censorship issues, the erosion of public space and the erosion of the basic ideals of democracy right now. And really thinking about ‘how do we support civil society? How does our work representing individuals and organizations keep that spirit alive and keep the ability for us to have diverse voices, to have visionary leadership in this county and in this state alive.’
As CJP enters the next decade, what are you most hopeful about and what concerns you the most about the road ahead?
I'm most hopeful because I get to spend every day working with young people, immigrants, tenants, workers who — despite unimaginable pressures, despite being locked up in torture camps like Alligator Alcatraz, despite having their family members disappeared, despite being evicted over and over again unjustly — are coming back and standing up and saying ‘we are gonna stand together and we're gonna fight for a better future.’ If they can do that, I certainly can show up and do that. They inspire me to keep working towards that future. I think it's that sense of collective action, that we can work together towards a better future, that holds me through those fears.
