The Southern Coalition for Social Justice is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in August, 2007 in Durham, North Carolina by a multi-disciplinary group, predominantly people of color, who believe that families and communities engaged in social justice struggles need a team of lawyers, social scientists, community organizers and media specialists to support them in their efforts to dismantle structural racism and oppression.
Some of our current efforts include these interrelated issues:
- Protecting minority voting rights and strengthening meaningful opportunities for effective civic participation for all.
- Helping families keep the land that has been in their family for generations (Heirs Property) safe from developers, and helping to explore ways to make it a sustainable asset builder for their families.
- Advancing environmental justice and advocacy supporting community-driven efforts.
- Challenging racial discrimination at all stages of the criminal justice system and its impact on racial and ethnic minority communities.
- Facilitating access to quality health care by removing barriers facing communities of color and low-income patients.
- Ending discrimination against immigrants and the mistreatment of undocumented persons.
OUR MISSION:
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice promotes justice by empowering minority and low-income communities to defend and advance their political, social and economic rights. We use the combined skills of lawyers, social scientists, community organizers and media experts to help underrepresented people develop strategies to achieve their visions for themselves and their communities, incorporating an international human rights perspective and linking their efforts to broader processes of political, legal, social and economic change in the South.
OUR VISION:
We are a democratically-run organization that seeks to deepen democratic participation in the South, and that works in coalition with local, regional, national and international social justice and human rights organizations.
Communities will succeed in realizing their own goals and people will know from experience that they can make a difference on issues that matter to them.
OUR GOALS
We seek to:
1. Create a worker-managed entity that is a fulfilling community to nurture and sustain social justice work and workers.
2. Provide the highest quality legal advice and representation to poor and minority communities engaged in social change efforts.
3. Bring the best social science research (whether litigation or policy-related), communications strategies and community organizing skills to serve community priorities.
4. Have substantive priorities that are community-determined.
5. Build coalitions across community lawyering organizations in the South and between national organizations and local community groups.
OUR CORE VALUES
We are committed to:
1. Representing low-income, racial and ethnic minority and disadvantaged individuals and communities who otherwise would not have legal representation.
2. Having a concrete impact that moves us towards eliminating structural inequality.
3. Bringing a multi-disciplinary approach to cases and matters even when it is difficult to do so.
4. Pursuing community empowerment by collaborating with community members to design strategies to address the issues they identify as most important to them.
5. Being a democratically run organization that is non-hierarchical, egalitarian, and respectful of every person\'s contribution.
