What the Movement Partnerships team is all about

Our Movement Partnerships team works alongside networks & alliances of grassroots organizing groups in the housing justice, racial justice, climate justice, criminal legal system, and pro-democracy sectors and builds long-term and rapid-response legal infrastructure to address legal needs and legal vulnerabilities. We believe that it is our sacred responsibility to support, flank and bolster the work of social movements when they call upon us to do so. We work with lawyers supporting movements and the movements themselves. We help movement groups determine legal needs, assess how legal strategies could be useful to power-building projects, and develop new approaches to trusted tactics and re-imagined strategies.

Meet our movement-partnering team!

The legal advocates behind Movement Partnerships are passionate and dedicated lawyers who bring their expertise and commitment to social justice to the forefront of the relationships with their partners. Joey Mogul and Ruby-Beth Buitekant, whose deep-rooted experiences in movement lawyering and human rights advocacy are key in shaping our partnerships and strategies, lead this team. AmBer Lamar, Movement Law Lab Program Associate and Rosey Lowe, Executive Assistant round out the squad. They both bring a history in the arts offering creativity, storytelling skill and beauty to the team.

Joey Mogul: An Unwavering Lawyer and Organizer for Human Rights and Liberation

Movement Law Lab was incredibly excited to bring on Joey Mogul to lead our Movement Partnerships team in early 2024. Joey is a movement lawyer, organizer, and educator with over 25 years of experience fighting for justice and liberation. Joey’s career is defined by their unshakeable commitment to representing survivors of police torture, abuse, and misconduct; representing organizers and protestors targeted by the State; representing and supporting transgender and queer people ensnared in the criminal legal system; and working side-by-side with those directly impacted by state violence and other grassroots organizers seeking accountability and transformation. 

As a partner at the storied People’s Law Office to co-founding Chicago Torture Justice Memorials and the Chicago Torture Justice Center, Joey was at the forefront of efforts to hold law enforcement accountable and seek holistic redress for those harmed by racist systemic state violence. Joey drafted the initial reparations legislation for survivors of police torture at the hands of infamous former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his men. Joey also co-led the multiracial, intergenerational, grassroots campaign that secured the passage of his unprecedented reparations legislation in Chicago’s City Council making Chicago the first city to provide reparations  to survivors of racially motivated police violence. Joey’s continues to support survivors of police violence and the work to implement the reparations legislation. 

Joey has also represented numerous organizers, activists, and LGBTQ individuals in civil rights, criminal and capital cases, consistently fighting for human dignity in the face of systemic oppression and State repression. Joey’s representation of transgender and queer people in civil and human rights cases also led to Joey co-authoring Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Beacon Press, 2011).

Here at Movement Law Lab, Joey continues to champion the causes of those who are fighting against injustice and building a better world. As Joey puts it, “Movement lawyering is about showing up, being of service to organizers, committing to the long haul, and refusing to take ‘no’ or ‘impossible’ as an answer.”

Ruby-Beth Buitekant: A Radical Southern Lawyer

Ruby-Beth Buitekant, a radical Southern lawyer, brings a unique blend of legal expertise, facilitation, and grassroots activism to Movement Partnerships. Ruby-Beth grew up in an activist household and was raised by a mother who centered social justice, listening, and community work at all times. Ruby-Beth has dedicated her career to tackling issues of racism and building organizational capacity within movements. Her journey includes roles such as a law clerk with Gideon’s Promise, and a co-founder of the anti-gun violence program, Youth Organizing to Save Our Streets (Y.O.S.O.S.), in Brooklyn, New York. Buitekant’s grassroots activism expertise empowers our partners to mobilize communities and foster movements that drive meaningful social change.

Ruby-Beth has been a prominent voice on issues of racism within the criminal legal system, racial justice, and prison abolition, especially in her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Her legal work is characterized by her commitment to reimagining strategies and developing new approaches that reflect the evolving needs of social movements.“I believe in the power of grassroots movements to transform society,” she says. “My role is to help build the legal structures that make that possible. I help lawyers better understand how social movements think and work, and I help movement leaders understand the roles that the law can play.”

Key Partnerships and Initiatives

Here are some of the organizations our Movement Partnership team is currently engaged with:

• Stop Cop City: A grassroots campaign resisting the construction of a City of Atlanta  sponsored massive militarized police training facility that is destroying the Weelaunee Forest in DeKalb County, Georgia. Through this partnership, we are working with a coalition of lawyers to provide legal support to grassroots organizers running a democratic campaign to have the majority of Atlantan City residents who oppose the construction of this facility be heard and their will respected.

• MAMAS: A fiery Chicago-based feminist of color, abolitionist reproductive justice collective, unapologetically confronting and dismantling systems of state violence. MAMAS includes the Mothers of the Kidnapped (MOK), who are mothers and caretakers of survivor of Chicago police torture and frame ups. We’re partnering with MOK/MAMAS to support their organizing campaigns to vacate wrongful convictions and provide necessary medical treatment to people languishing behind bars. 

• Final 5 Campaign (F5C) and Liberation Library: We’re working with this coalition of organizers in their campaign to abolish the last five youth prisons in Illinois, including the recruitment of lawyers and legal workers to support necessary research for the campaign.  

• Chicago Torture Justice Center (CTJC): Committed to advancing healing and justice for survivors of police torture, we provide legal strategy and support to CTJC, in their on-going campaigns to vacate wrongful convictions and pursue reparations and redress for all impacted by police violence in Chicago.

Whether it’s fighting against authoritarian policing, advocating for mothers facing racially discriminatory criminal legal system, or challenging economic injustice, our Movement Partnerships team stands ready to flank, support, and build a future rooted in justice and equity.

Past cornerstone collaboration

One of the Movement Partnership’s cornerstone collaborations has been with the Right to the City Alliance (RTTC). This multi-year partnership mobilized lawyers to resist mass evictions in the early months of the global COVID pandemic. Along the way, we bolstered tenant power and trained both lawyers and organizers together to develop innovative, transformative housing campaigns.

Together with RTTC, we launched the Level Up Housing Justice Fellowship, an in-depth 8-month program designed to develop pairs of local housing-justice lawyers and organizers. The fellowship focused on growing essential legal skills, campaign strategies, and a deep understanding of organizing principles, while fostering regional solidarity among housing advocates.