Legal & Advocacy Agenda

Inclusion-Based Legal Advocacy

Characteristics of exclusion, and the institutional barriers that prevent true inclusion, do not exist independently of one another in poor, minority communities. Using legal representation, advocacy, research and, when necessary, litigation, the Center contributes to the rapidly emerging civil rights movement that is being led by North Carolina's poor, excluded minority communities and supporters to dismantle structural racism and end exclusion.

The Center recognizes the broad scope and intersecting harms of segregation and exclusion and addresses their interrelatedness by concurrently targeting five characteristics of excluded communities:

1. Lack of basic infrastructure and beneficial economic development;
2. Segregationist school district boundaries, school siting, attendance zones and student assignment;
3. Environmental hazards and socially disfavored land uses;
4. Inadequate or substandard housing; and
5. Restrictions on civic engagement and political participation.

The Center's legal and advocacy agenda is built on a commitment to finding remedies to these systemic issues by concentrating on the connections between them at local, state and national levels.

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