“This system perpetuates a cycle of debt and poverty that disparately affects people of color; people of color are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system in California and this involuntary debt can affect the building of intergenerational wealth.” Theresa Zhen, Staff Attorney, East Bay Community Law Center.
“What they are essentially saying to these people — families, disabled people, veterans — you can’t be here and we are not telling you where you can go — basically just get out of town,” said Osha Neumann from the East Bay Community Law Center.
“A lot of (prison) programs actually train people how to do these jobs, how to have a career in this, without telling them they’ll be banned from getting the license,” said Jael Myrick, a Richmond city councilman and program coordinator of the Clean Slate Program at the East Bay Community Law Center, which is sponsoring the bills. “That’s the issue we’re trying to fix.”
Over the years, we realized that there was enough consumer law work to fill another clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center. They already had immigration law and landlord tenant and other clinics. But this one would focus on consumer law defense. They called it the Consumer Justice Clinic. And it is thriving.
Some advocates for homeless people in Berkeley have lent some support to Whitson and her neighbors. Osha Neumann, a lawyer with the East Bay Community Law Center, told Berkeleyside earlier this week that he’d begun exploring the RV residents’ rights, and whether homestead laws could apply and prevent them from being towed.
On May 10, two of our civil rights attorneys received prestigious awards from Berkeley Law’s Public Interest and Pro Bono Program for their outstanding clinical supervision! Please join us in celebrating Rosa Bay and Ubaldo Fernandez.
Oscar Lopez, attorney at East Bay Community Law Center’s Education Advocacy Clinic joined us to talk about the mission of EBCLC
The racial justice work churning within Berkeley Law is expansive and inspiring. Yet the people leading that work—clinic leaders, student advocates, faculty scholars—acknowledge that confronting racial inequities in America demands confronting them in its legal institutions. “Racial justice work is disingenuous unless it’s connected to that acknowledgment,” says Tirien Steinbach ’99, director of Berkeley Law’s East Bay Community Law Center (ECBLC). “People talk about leveling the playing field, but very few legal entities actually do it.”
Osha Neumann, a homeless rights advocate and attorney, questioned why the city has chosen to close an existing, self-organized camp to accommodate its own Tuff Shed program.
“We need housing,” said Osha Neumann, an attorney and advocate for homeless people who designed the 1976 mural depicting the history of the park and Telegraph Avenue that is painted on the side of Amoeba Records near the park. “We need housing for students. We need housing for people who are homeless. I don’t think we need it there.”
