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A smaller event at Little People’s Park earlier this year…
You are invited to the first-year anniversary, barbecue, AND legal clinic, of the Orange County Legal Clinic, this Saturday at Santa Ana’s Memorial Park, 1-4!
The Orange County Legal Clinic was established in October 2018 by members from Chicanxs Unidxs and Resilience Orange County. We had been working with youth as young twelve who were facing felonies, youth who were being denied special education services, youth who were being suspended and expelled from schools, young adults trying to find a second chance at life, and adults trying to get off gang injunctions and gang databases.
We saw an obvious need to create a space where community members could be “linked” or could get help, so we reached out for training to Los Angeles’ Youth Justice Coalition. Now we host monthly clinics every second Saturday of the month throughout Orange County. Wanting to create the least restrictive, easily accessible spaces for community members, we hold our clinics in parks, apartment courtyards and private homes. Community self-reliance is our hallmark, as opposed to depending passively on attorneys or the system.
The clinic is celebrating its victories in the past year with a BBQ and a legal clinic, Saturday October 12 from 1-4, in Santa Ana’s Memorial Park. In this past year we have helped 42 people solve their problems with the justice system. Here are some of their stories:
- We linked a 13-year old Santa Ana youth from Santa Ana to the mental health services he desperately needed. School police had charged him with two sets of felonies at age 12 and 13. The Juvenile Court system and OC Public Defenders office diverted the charges once the youth was linked appropriately, and his expulsion from the district was prevented.
- We helped a 12-year old girl get back home after running away and being afraid to contact police.
- We helped a man in his 30’s reduce his sentence from 100 years to four.
- We helped a woman in her 50’s who’d been facing housing and employment exclusion for many years by linking her to services and helping her to expunge her record.
- We helped a family with a 5-year old son to get the mold in their apartment removed.
The OC Legal Clinic was developed to reconcile grassroots organizing with legal advocacy, thus establishing grass-roots community-centered lawyering that goes beyond representing an individual in court. We believe this is essential in ensuring fair and justice advocacy for the community. We aim to link people to existing programs that help with immigration cases, special education advocacy, protection of students’ rights, tenants’ rights, expungements, petitions for removal from gang injunctions/gang databases, courtroom support, sealing of juvenile records, and participatory defense/assistance with open cases.
We do not want to reinvent services/programs and we do utilize community resources/services already in place. We refer out to attorneys when needing representation and we assist community members with understanding the systemic process and completing steps towards their case without providing legal advice. We understand that knowledge exists in community members, and that the more that is learned, the more avenues towards justice are created.
OC Legal Clinic collaborates with:
- Community Legal Aid So Cal
- Elder Law and Disabilities Rights Center
- Learning Rights Law Center
- Resilience OC
- UCI Law School
- Attorney Sean Garcia-Leis
- Carrazco Law Group
- Youth Justice Coalition
The clinic is in need of support from attorneys, law students, and any volunteers that are eager to help with cases. In addition, the development of an internship for interns/ volunteers has been developed.
Chicanxs Unidxs is a grassroots organization based in Santa Ana that promotes cultural and political empowerment by addressing different social justice issues. For years we have been in the forefront of fighting gang injunctions and the criminalization of communities of color.
🖂 orangecountylegalclinic@gmail.com 🕿 (714) 352-0313
Awesome!!