CALA develops community activism-law programs in partnership with activist partners to provide free legal services to and support the community activism of under-served populations.
CALA develops community activism-law programs in partnership with activist partners to provide free legal services to and support the community activism of under-served populations.
Community Activism Law Alliance (“CALA”) serves the most disadvantaged communities in Chicagoland by uniting lawyers and community activists together in a collaborative pursuit for social change. We have brought legal services back into the communities that most need them through a new model of lawyering and activism—“community activism lawyering.” The legal programs we have created return legal services to the communities with the highest rates of poverty and crime. In contrast, most legal assistance organizations have centralized in downtown Chicago due to funding decreases. The legal services we provide achieve great results for the individual clients we serve. More importantly, however, through our community activism-law programs, we seek to increase the capacity of and use the law to help activists and community members achieve broader social change.
