Our Values
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Water is versatile. It can be big and powerful, it can quench thirst, it can be healing, it can drown us. It finds its own level, always. That is, water is always seeking balance and has a place it has to go. It can be scarce, it is necessary….When we hold water back we can create power but there is a danger when we remove the dam unexpectedly. It’s really flexible and adaptable. It takes the form of our containers. Bruce Lee says ‘Be like water…’ if we can understand fully the nature of water, we can understand what we are doing here.
- Aishah Shillingsford
Adaptability is the ability to change (and be changed) to fit changing circumstances. It is the practice of changing, while staying intentionally in touch with our deeper purpose and values. As a movement lawyer, practicing adaptability means we provide creative legal support to communities as they adapt to shifting conditions and experiment with new strategies. Many of the systems that harm our communities are highly adaptable, so we must be vigilant in forecasting changing conditions. Adaptability requires that we strive for openness and curiosity. To be adaptable we must strengthen our abilities to assess present conditions, pivot when conditions shift, and stay grounded in joy.
Individual Level
● You are aware of your default reactions to change and assess when those reactions create space for opportunity, possibility, and moving towards your vision.
● You work to build your capacity to let go of practices or approaches that are not working.
● You view shifts and setbacks as joyful opportunities to imagine new possibilities.
● You are eager to learn from others and shift analysis and tactics without rigidity.
Organizational Level
● Your organization can adapt to changing circumstances while still keeping its focus on the goal of building power in marginalized communities.
● Your staff works in adaptive ways, allowing them to play different roles based on their shifting strengths, skills, and capacities.
● You build a staff culture and organizational structure where change is honored, anticipated and celebrated and staff’s adaptability is incentivized and lifted up.
● You reserve resources (financial and human) so your organization can pivot.
● Your organization implements regular practices of reflection, assessment and forecasting.
Community & Movement Level
● You cultivate and encourage the imagination of your clients and community partners.
● You help partners gain confidence and knowledge to understand how law can be a tool for reimagining and transformatively changing society.
● Rather than simply looking for community partners that meet your organizational expertise you adapt your expertise towards community needs and requests.
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“Never forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried you over.”
- Fannie Lou Hamer
“When Canada geese are migrating, they take turns at the front of the V--turns being the leader, the weight carrier...the follower, the rester.”
- Kat Aaron
Interdependence & Collectivity is the practice of prioritizing the collective and cultivating our mutual dependence. It requires being reliant on others as well as responsible for others. Adopting interdependence means acknowledging that our vision of a different world is only obtainable if a variety of different sectors, silos, organizations and individuals are in relationship and are thriving. Interdependence is a recognition that we share a fate. As movement lawyers, interdependence and collectivity require that we understand and meet the needs of others and are brave enough to articulate our own needs. It requires self awareness, empathy, patience, and humility.
Individual Level
● You are fully present in your interactions and relationships with others.
● You actively listen and take the time to hear others.
● You recognize and celebrate both your own contributions and the contributions of others.
● You communicate honestly and authentically with others.
● You constantly reflect on the ways in which your own self interest or ego impact your relationships and work.
Organizational Level
● Your organization has structures that encourage and incentivize collaboration.
● Your organization has a culture of authentic, respectful, and direct communication.
● Your organization has robust systems for offering feedback and for implementing or responding to feedback.
● Your organization prioritizes collaboration and co-creation.
● Your organization is in deep relationship with a range of groups--especially base-building organizations.
● Your organization regularly engages in collaborative funding and exchanges of in-kind services.
● Your organization does not empire build--it intentionally strengthens other organizations.
Community & Movement Level
● You experiment with cross-movement collaborative structures that share funding, objectives & staff time.
● You develop joint fundraising and communications infrastructure with other movement organizations/collectives/firms.
● You invest and build community outside of your immediate issue area or expertise.
● You engage in a variety of different tactics (i.e. safeguard against litigation’s tendency to create momentum in one tactic only).
● You encourage partners to connect legal strategies to other strategies.
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“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”
- Octavia Butler
“There is no innovation or creativity without failure, period.”
- Brene Brown
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few."
- Shunryu Suzuki
Creativity is using our imagination to create something new in the world--new ideas, solutions or approaches. The problems of oppression, poverty and human suffering are not intractable, but solving them requires awakening the most creative and innovative part of ourselves. Creativity isn’t a rare gift to be enjoyed by a lucky few or by trained artists, it’s a natural part of human thinking and behavior. However, for most of us our creativity is blocked by the challenges of continued crisis, fatigue, self-criticism, and alienation. Furthermore, as legal advocates, our training and dependence on precedent create a tendency to think about what has been done before instead of imagining a new way forward. We have been trained to solve problems with a singular tool (law) and a singular medium (words). Unblocking our creative thinking can have far-reaching implications for ourselves, our organizations, our movements and our communities.
Individual Level
● You adopt a beginner’s mindset where learning, growth and failure are necessary and inevitable.
● You take the time to nurture your creative practices and make time to experience the creativity of others.
● You enter experiences with a spirit of curiosity, seeing more possibilities than constraints.
Organizational Level
● Your organization creates metrics that incentivizes individual and collective creativity.
● Your organization has feedback loops and regularly scheduled times to generate new ideas and facilitate creative thinking.
● Your organization balances workload and time pressures to avoid conditions that limit your teams’ creativity.
Community & Movement Level
● You build strong relationships with organizations and communities that feed your collective creativity.
● You engage in collective visioning with organizations and partners.
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“Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.”
- Nelson Mandela
Dignity is the practice of respecting and honoring the worth of all individuals. It requires a recognition and celebration of the value of people- both those we work with/for as well as those whom we disagree with or oppose. Cultivating dignity as a movement lawyer allows us to bring our whole selves to our practice and results in more nourishing relationships. In our commitment to dignity we must practice self care, love, empathy and the cultivation of discipline and joy. The practice of dignity allows us to build collectively but also to celebrate and respect the self-determination of others. Dignity allows us, and those we are in a relationship with, to feel esteemed, respected and purposeful.
Individual Level
● You honor your body, mind and work through balance and mindfulness.
● You nourish authentic, balanced, mutual personal relationships.
● You can engage in interpersonal conflict in ways that avoid diminishing the dignity of others.
● You are able to set boundaries that allow you to be healthy and focused.
Organizational Level
● Your organization is structured in a way that encourages staff and members to maintain balance in their lives and work (i.e. work expectations are not exploitative).
● Your organization has systems and processes in place to resolve conflict and repair harm.
● Your organization celebrates its workers, members and their accomplishments.
● Your organization values people outside of what they produce.
● Your organization makes space for joy, playfulness and wellness.
Community and Movement Level
● You are in relationship with your clients and community partners in ways that are not simply transactional but are based in mutual respect and dependence.
● Your engagement with clients and communities is rooted in authenticity and respect.
● You and your organization practices patience, respect and empathy in ways that cultivate an atmosphere of dignity and encourages others to move through community and movement in that way.
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“Every practice produces a theory. Nobody has yet made a successful revolution without a revolutionary theory.”
- Amilcar Cabral
“I use the term radical in its original meaning--getting down to and understanding the root cause. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change the system.”
- Ella Baker
Radical Politics requires an understanding of power. Integrating radical politics into your practice requires a study and constant interrogation of the ways that patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism impacts individuals and systems. Cultivating radical politics as a movement lawyer helps ensure that you are not recreating the power dynamics or re-entrenching the harmful systems that we are struggling against. Radical politics allows us to create alternative ways of thinking, working, and practicing. A commitment to radical politics requires an interrogation of how privilege and power impact us as individuals, as organizations, and as a movement.
Individual Level
● Your interpersonal relationships manifest equality, mutuality, and empathy, because you understand that modeling transformation starts with your most intimate relationships.
● You engage in constant and structured self-reflection.
● You dedicate time to the study of political ideologies and traditions in order to develop your politics.
Organizational Level
● Your organization clearly defines a theory of change that is integrated into your annual plan, daily practices and human resource procedures.
● Your organization engages in consistent political education.
● The behavior of people in your organization is aligned with your organization’s political theory and there is appropriate and timely correction when there is not alignment.
Community and Movement Level
● You engage in and seek out opportunities to expand your study with clients and community members.
● Your organization is mindful of how it recreates power or privilege hierarchies when it engages with clients and community.
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“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories…”
-Amilcar Cabral
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.”
- Virginia Woolf
Integrity is the consistent adherence to a moral code or set of values. When a movement lawyer moves with integrity her clients, partners and colleagues trust her. To act and live with integrity is to develop and uphold a set of values that serve as an internal compass and are manifested in your actions, words and commitments. Integrity comes from the Latin word “integer,” which means to be whole and complete. To adhere to a moral code, to embody steadiness and accuracy, to live in honesty, requires cultivating self-acceptance and wholeness. Practicing integrity means seeking consistency between what you feel, what you say and what you do. It requires discipline, honesty, rigor and accuracy.
Individual Level
● You are consistent and dependable.
● You are honest and authentic.
● You do what you say you will do when you say you will do it.
● You stand up for what you believe, even if it is unpopular.
Organizational Level
● Your organization has a clearly articulated set of values, which it manifests in its culture and product.
● Your organization has clearly articulated expectations, objectives and values which it adheres to and articulates throughout all of its work.
● Your organization has clear accountability mechanisms.
Community/Movement Level
● You build relationships built on trust and reliability.
● You work in a way that is consistent and dependable and breeds trust and harmony.
● You build relationships with partners, clients and other organizations built on mutual respect, honesty and a record of shared work.
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“Everything, given time and nurturing, is moving toward balance and healing. The mushrooms that cleaned the land after nuclear trauma...the process of forest growth after a fire...the way our skin heals after a cut...stronger than before. Healing is organic, healing is our birthright.”
- Lisa Thomas Adeyemo
Sustainability is the ability to meet present and future needs without causing harm or depletion. It requires dealing transparently and systematically with risk, uncertainty and irreversibility. It means growing and evolving in ways that are responsive to the needs of the ecosystem and communities that you work in. It necessitates holding a high standard to achieve goals and produce outcomes, while at the same time attending to personal, organizational and community well-being.
Individual Level
● You take responsibility for caring for yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
● You build restorative activities (meditation, yoga, exercise, etc) into your regular schedule to improve personal health and prevent burnout.
● You have a clear, attainable plan for your own personal growth and development.
● You set and achieve consistently high standards for the outcomes of your work.
Organizational Level
● Your organization fosters innovative and creative thinking among members and staff.
● Your organization achieves significant, regular, concrete victories that improve members’ lives, affect broader policy change, resource allocation, and forward your vision for social change.
● Your organization grows at the speed of trust and community need, not funding streams.
● Your organization strives to continuously grow and improve.
Movement & Community Level
● You support the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health of individual and organizational allies.
● You conduct strategic movement planning with allies around common vision, analysis, strategy and resources.
● You plan for and win victories that benefit important movement constituencies and organizations beyond your own organization