Q&A with East Bay Community Law Center’s Zoë Polk about advancing justice through a women of color-centered platform.
For our latest spotlight featuring leaders from our All In for Oakland grantee partners, I had the pleasure of speaking with Zoë Polk, Executive Director of East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC). EBCLC centers women of color in their work to achieve a thriving, equitable East Bay – and they are showing why their approach works.
Read my interview with Zoë to learn more about her and EBCLC’s work to uplift families and advance systems change through legal services, policy advocacy, and education.
— Ray Colmenar, President of Akonadi Foundation
Similar to all of our work, we are triaging and helping people in crisis while using what we have learned to create policies and end the need for lawyers in the field—and we are seeing progress.”
Women of color are assets to our societies, communities, and homes. When we think about the folks who come into our offices, they are overwhelmingly women of color, specifically Black and Latinx women, who are accessing our services on behalf of themselves and their loved ones. They are working with us to uplift their families. Too often, they are overlooked in the vital role they play in healthy and successful outcomes for communities. We saw some of that in the pandemic. “Essential workers” was a euphemism for Black and brown women who were holding up this country during one of its most challenging times.
At EBCLC, we shifted the organizational structure, from our Board to our staff, to ensure we were WOC-led and centered. We believe that if we target our operations to create solutions for women of color then everyone will win.
A: Current political structures continue to carry forward the legacy of legalized divestment, exclusion and extraction from communities of color. Our organization sees this up close in the eviction courtrooms, youth detention centers, immigration hearings, and every public social welfare program. Thus, lawyers and legal advocates must show up for racial justice with urgency. It is incumbent upon us to enforce systems change in partnership with our clients.
It is important to name that this work comes with risk. Racial justice organizations must be supported in the face of political and financial blowback from the so-called “Racial Reckoning of 2020.” I am grateful that the Akonadi Foundation resources our work through direct partnership and through the LEAD for Racial Justice Fund.
A: Yes, in 2022, after four years of advocacy, Governor Newsom signed AB 1720. The bill removes barriers from the criminal background check process for people applying to work at care facilities. This was an occupational segregation issue. We kept seeing Black and Latinx women with years of caregiving expertise restricted to low wage jobs and being systemically prevented from providing more financial stability for themselves and their families. Their stories underscore the importance of client informed policy advocacy and why it is ultimately a successful strategy.
In coalition with other tenants rights organizations, EBCLC enforced Alameda County’s eviction moratorium, the longest and strongest in the country. After it ended in 2023, we successfully advocated for protections, including the expansion of just cause eviction legal protections as well as protections for school-age children and educators from being evicted during the school year. Our work is situated within the context that in the US, Black women with children have the highest eviction rate of any demographic in the country. Unfortunately, this statistic matches our internal data, with Black women being 1 out of every 3 of our eviction clients. This data underscores EBCLC’s commitment to advancing racial justice in legal representation and policy advocacy.
A: More than half of California households face at least one civil legal issue a year. A civil legal issue can result in the loss of your home, income, job prospects, education, and family unity. These households, which are disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) receive little to no legal help for nearly all of their legal issues.
However, as a legal organization, we know that adding more lawyers does not solve all issues
So, when we think about multimodal, we think of two things: assisting folks who are in deep and urgent crisis and fighting so that legal representation is no longer necessary. We triage civil legal crises and craft policy that protects our community from the harmful effects of structural racism-redlining, health discrimination and the school to prison pipeline. Our clients’ experiences in these systems indicate to us which archaic policies are overdue for change. By drafting legislation, advancing local policy, and litigating impact cases, we aim to prevent the very issues our clients once faced, thereby relieving millions from these structural burdens.
A: The EDJY Program represents youth caught at the intersection of the juvenile legal and education systems. Young people are entitled to education rights. That is why we offer legal and social work services to youth, including incarcerated youth, who might be expelled from school or blocked from receiving access to the education resources they need. Most of those affected are Black and Latinx youth from women of color-led households because they are often more likely to be adultified and dehumanized.
Similar to all of our work, we are triaging and helping people in crisis while using what we have learned to create policies and end the need for lawyers in the field—and we are seeing progress.
Last summer, our advocacy led to the passing of SB 274, which eliminates the use of suspension for minor misbehavior covered under the “disruption or willful defiance” category for California TK-12 students. We have also been closely paying attention to AB 268, which allows the use of electronic monitoring devices to continue to oppress young people. We helped pass a bill that requires California to collect data on the demographic background of people who are being monitored. The new bill also allows those wearing the devices to receive credit for their sentence. In addition, tracking devices can no longer be used to record conversations or as a means for probation officers to contact folks.
On an individual level, we were able to reach an agreement for one of the high school seniors enrolled in the EDJY program. He had faced delinquency charges for an incident around expulsion and we helped him receive his high school diploma and an expungement of expulsion records upon graduating and complying with the Probation Department’s term. We were thrilled to welcome him home and support his enrollment in a local community college!
A: “Systems impacted” lets racism off the hook. It implies that oppression just happens to people randomly. This is false. By saying “systems intended” we aim to acknowledge the historical context and intentionality that created present day racial disparities. Race and gender are two of the biggest determinants of how healthy and successful you are in this country. The systems in place – the way they are constructed and operated – are the reason for that. It is all very much intentional.
A: EBCLC is part of a network of coalitions at local, state-wide and national levels, and we support community-centered policy advocacy in partnership with our partners, clients and communities.
Within coalitions, we offer unique perspectives as lawyers who are in touch with community needs. For example, our expertise extends from everything to sharing knowledge on how community members can get involved in public hearings and school board meetings to crafting public record requests.
Some of the challenges are that it can be time consuming, and hard to reach a consensus and create healthy structures on tight timelines; however, the ability to leverage our collective voices helps us build power in our communities and hold politicians accountable. You can learn more about our coalition work here
A: It is an immense privilege to train law students to engage critically on racial justice. We invite them to interrogate why legal, social and economic systems distribute benefits and burdens unevenly. Our students have such diverse career paths after they graduate. We have alumni who are politicians, law professors, judges, and corporate executives. It is our hope that the values they learn in our legal clinic influence how they build and leverage power.
Last semester, a student gave me feedback that our seminar class made her believe she could be a successful public interest lawyer. She said that our discussions on white saviorism, Black woman leadership, and the nonprofit industrial complex showed her that she could create a career on her own terms. This was enormously gratifying. It was also an indicator that our curriculum is having the desired impact.
A: We are hosting voter registration community events for the upcoming presidential election. Folks who are interested can stay in touch by following us on Instagram: @eastbayclc.