Conference on Movement Lawyering for Global Justice, Bellagio, September 2019
Such a privilege to co-convene this extraordinary meeting with Katie Redford & Mark Gevisser. We brought together 20 remarkable activists, movement builders and lawyers from Burma/Myanmar, China, Ghana, India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, the UK, US, Vietnam to develop novel ideas and co-create a book and video material to share lessons.
The conference had 3 objectives:
1. To develop practical frameworks for practitioners to turn the theory and practice of “movement lawyering” into concrete action.
2. To deepen a collective understanding of and clarity around “movement lawyering.”
3. To create the space to reflect, share and connect.
1. To deepen a collective understanding of and clarity around “movement lawyering.”
Through intensive engagement between a group that was evenly divided between movement lawyers and movement builders, across regions and sectors, a consensus emerged about the meaning of movement lawyering, and the role that it plays in any quest for social justice. In summary: the relationship between movement-building and any legal strategy is symbiotic and interdependent, and litigation needs to be understood as just one of many strategies to bring about change.
2. To develop practical frameworks for practitioners to turn the theory and practice of “movement lawyering” into concrete action.
Through the presentation of several key “gold standard” case studies, and the application of the principle that “theories of social change emerge through a reflection of practice,” participants shared their experiences and developed, collectively, a playbook to enable lawyers and activists to effectively work together to address systemic injustice, shift power, and make game-changing contributions to the combined benefit of both. (See Outcome 1 below)
3. To create the space to reflect, share and connect.
The meeting schedule had two highly effective innovations: “Talking Walks”, in which participants were paired off to explore the estate together; and a Writing Workshop. The Talking Walks required no feedback to the group, but as organizers, we noted the way that connections were made, and ideas poured into the collective, through them. The Writing Workshop required each participant to bring a draft personal essay to the meeting. These were distributed before the meeting, and the participants were divided into three groups. Each participant had to read, closely, the submissions of the others in their group, and responses were shared through a workshop process. These essays were a powerful, and personal, way of introducing the participants to each other, too, before they met.
The project has three outcomes, seeded in the meeting
A Book to be published 2020
Videos on the Power of Law, Power of People
A New sense of energy and inspiration
The three outcomes, seeded in the meeting
Book
A book is in development, with each participant finalising their chapter. The book will be published in 2020, and will describe global movement and legal advocacy strategies packed with powerful case studies, building on the lived experience of the participants, and articulating best practices for working together to the combined benefit of both. This book will serve as a backbone for future roadmaps, training materials and curricula aimed at building the next generation of movement leaders and movement lawyers.
Videos
A documentation team of two skilled videographers joined the meeting. They conducted interviews with most of the participants, and also filmed structured dialogues, each featuring two participants moderated by one of the coordinators. These videos will form the basis of an online “Power of Law, Power of People” platform, currently in development. They will also be made available to each participant to use in their own advocacy work.
A New sense of energy and inspiration
The meeting closed with an extraordinary encounter: David Wicker, the fourteen-year-old leader of the “Fridays for Future” climate crisis movement in Turin, came to talk to us. Several of us then went with him for a climate strike in his home town, and a week later he and his comrades managed to draw 150 000 people onto the streets; one of the largest protests in Europe. The effect of David’s presence, and the discussion it engendered, not only helped shift many of the participants into thinking about the way they were going to tackle the climate crisis in their individual movements, but gave us all energy and inspiration. The discussion was recorded, and will be disseminated in the ways described above.
Conclusion
During the meeting, one participant spoke of the infelicitous equation underpinning our project: movements are born out of pain, which they seek to relieve by using the inadequate tools of the powerful. Another qualified this: Yes, but they are forged through love and community. This led us, collectively, to appreciate the alchemy that can happen when you merge “the power of people” and “the power of law”, and the way that, when done mindfully, it can create space that shifts power.