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• 1 2021-11-10T20:46:08+00:00 Interview with Melanie Shakarian 26 The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland image_header 2021-11-30T13:31:54+00:00

  https://youtu.be/_flHhmtEr3M
  
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  Informative Quotes

  The Civil Justice System - Court and Background:
  

  "If your liberty is at stake, you do have the right to an attorney in a United States court ... but that is only the criminal side of our justice system. Our justice system is a bifurcated judicial system, and we have that criminal side, where yes you have the right to an attorney if you can't afford one, but then separate and apart from that  we have the civil side of the justice system... really anything related to shelter, safety, and economic security... There is no right to counsel in civil cases."

  "As people learn more and more about the judicial system they talk very much about the criminal justice system, and we talk about criminal justice reform, we talk about 'you have a right to an attorney,' next to the supreme court case Gideon v. Wainwright. In Popular culture we don't talk nearly enough about the civil justice system, when there is a lot more cases, actually, in the civil justice system."

  (in relation to pre-covid statistics):
  "In eviction court, just in Cleveland alone... if an eviction was filled against somebody, and somebody was then given a court date, to show up to try to defend themselves, 60 percent of people wouldn't show up at all... basically it is a significant highlight of  how disenfranchised people are when interacting with our judicial system. If people new they could get help, and knew they could have an attorney by their side, they would be more likely to show up in court to fight that [eviction]."

  "We really see civil legal aid work as this important investment a community can make, long term, in making sure that we don't see problems manifest in other ways down the road. its very much preventative community lawyering."

  The Legal Aid Society:
  

  "We are a private non profit. We try to help as many people as we can on the civil side of our justice system. We have four main goals at legal aid: we are here to ensure safety and health; we are here to promote education and economic stability; we provide access to housing and stable housing; and then fourth and finally we are here to ensure the government and justice systems are held accountable for our client community, and are accessible to our client community"

  "We are problem solvers and we are handling these problems related to money, we are handling problems related to income, we are handling problems related to family relations, civil rights and liberties, especially in immigration contacts, we handle problems related to housing, education. Those are the main areas that we focus on"

  "We have 65 attorneys and 45 other staff  who focus on those areas, and often the intersection of those areas"

  "Our organization was founded in 1905, exactly because society didn't recognize these really significant problems that low income people faced and how working together as a community, resolving these problems, improves the entire community: not just the well fair of those seeking the help."

  "For us the way that we fight and promote social and racial justice is through our unique skills as attorneys"... "We believe strongly that there are ways to use the judicial system to fight for justice and change."

  Budget and Funds:
  

  "Our budget is about 14 -15 million dollars annually, more than half of that comes right from philanthropic donors, like people who give year per year, foundations, law firms, corporations in Cleveland. Separate and apart from that philanthropy the other half of our budget comes from a couple more evergreen sources. There is a national granter called the legal services corporation."

  "They provide funds to every legal aid across the country: 134 legal aids across the country.
  based on our poverty populations across the country, every legal aid gets a share of that congressional propitiation."

  Educating the Public:
  

  "I always say yes to doing these type of conversations because everyone in the community needs to understand how access to the judicial branch of government really affects our democracy, and if people feel disenfranchised, it is no different from feeling disenfranchised at the polls."

  "We are always looking at specific populations where there is protections to be enforced and we have subcommittees of our staff  to focus on those very communities."
  
  "We work really hard to educate key community partners to make referrals to us because when we can team up with another source provider on a case, the outcomes of our case are that much more sustainable and long lasting because there are two professionals working and its not just us.
  Separate from that we do a lot of community outreach presentations. we do printed materials,  flyers, we have very close relationships with our public libraries, who do a great job of passing out literature. Of late, food banks have been very helpful, especially when we were shut down [due to COVID] and people couldn't pick up stuff at their church or the library."