Levi Strauss | Lateefah Simon

it’s important for folks to be on the

ground with bull horns

negotiating at the highest levels and

while that’s extremely effective those

voices from the streets

need to meet the courtroom and the

highest halls of justice

for there to be systemic change my name

is latifah simon

and i’m the executive director of the

lawyers committee for civil rights

the mission of the lawyers committee is

to

marshal the private bar to fight for

change for 40 years

they’ve been organizing top tier

litigators top tier litigators in some

of the biggest firms in the country

in the same way similarly to have

organized young people on the streets

we fought cases in front of the supreme

court we’ve desegregated the fire

department here in san francisco

we pushed through litigation where there

was a dissent decree filed

before my birth where the schools were

desegregated

in san francisco this organization we

ensured that poor people all over san

francisco had access

equal access to low-income housing we’ve

done significant work here

that i’ve actually personally benefited

from leadership is not the person who’s

at the front of the line in the protest

it’s not the person who’s speaking at

the press conference the leader is

someone who decides to stand

up in the face not only criticism

but doubt and they do something

different

for legal help if you get arrested

levi foundation was one of the few

funders when i came to them years ago

and i said you know what i run an

organization

i’m 20 i’m the youngest we got about

eight hundred thousand dollar budget we

are all ghetto girls we all got babies

and we will change

the face of san francisco the program

officers believe me

daniel it’s latifah from the lawyers

committee how you doing i’m calling to

thank you for

your participation in last week’s event

what’s going to be hard is getting us

grounded and humble enough to really

hear what people are saying

real folks in real community what

they’re going to demand for this

organization to do so

my work is aligning the staff now and

aligning the board

to take some real serious risk and to

move from our laurels

i said to the staff the other day i said

the sacred cows let’s cook them and eat

them

now the question is how do we move past

immediate and systemic and how do we

really become a cornerstone for existing

movement

that’s going to be interesting there is

going to be civil unrest out here today

and again because we don’t we need to

really figure out other avenues

to organize this is one of the few ample

opportunities

where people feel like they can organize

what i will do with the attorneys

is bring in a whole new way of thinking

i’m trying to bring in a flood

of experienced litigators who call

themselves community lawyers to train

these attorneys both the senior

attorneys and the junior attorneys

if you are indeed embedded and committed

to social justice work how do you need

to speak the exact same language as your

clients and

vice versa you should be a trainer and

your client should be a trainer

because if you believe in any one moment

that you’re better than the client or

that

this client can’t be trained not only to

speak for themselves

but to understand every step of the

process then you’re in the wrong

business

who could imagine i mean i think about

my grandma she lived in

jim crow south she worked to clean

houses

if she was to be able to articulate you

know my granddaughter

will get paid

to talk about freedom that’s crazy that

is so

darn cool i’m very lucky