Towards a:
National Afrikan People’s Parliament
‘People Empowered for Self-Determination!’
‘Taking Responsibility, Effecting Solutions!’
You are invited to:
iNAPP Legal & Constitutional Sub-Committee
Community Law Study, Dialogue & Action Circle
on:
Tuesday 4th June 2013
from
7.30pm – 9.00pm
At:
Queen Mother Moore School,
Methodist Church,
Nelsons Row, Clapham, SW4 7JR
Topic:
Legal and Extra-Legal Action in Community Defence
Following the Woolwich Tragedy resulting in the death of Lee Rigby, a serving soldier and charging of suspects Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowal with his murder, we will be discussing what implications this incident has on the collective well-being security of Afrikan heritage communities within and beyond the UK.
The repercussions of the Woolwich Tragedy are already being felt far beyond the suspects. This is now a matter of Afrikan community concern, more so since we are hearing about threats of vengeful reprisals upon Afrikan and other racialised communities.
There are indications of incursions by the police and other state and security personnel into homes in pursuit of those deemed by the state to be inciting, aiding and abetting terrorism resulting in other Afrikans being arrested and placed under surveillance since this incident.
With heightened Afrikan community concerns and reports of increasing measures of stop and search and restrictions on free speech and other human rights arising from this tragedy, we will be exploring how Afrikan communities and our community based organisations can best defend the best interests of our communities and society as a whole.
Questions we will be exploring:
- What is extra-legal action?
- What does community self-defence mean?
- What kinds of legal and extral-legal action should Afrikans take as a result of the Woolwich Tragedy?
- What are the implications of the proposed ‘Snooper’s Charter’ (Draft Communications Bill) for Afrikan heritage communities?
- How can Afrikan communities protect ourselves from attempts by MI5 to coerce youth and other members of our communities to become spies?
- Post Woolwich: What is the role of the NAPP in defending the interests of Afrikan communities?
An Introduction to the NAPP Community Law Study & Dialogue Action Circle
Access to justice for Afrikan individuals, families and our communities requires knowledge, skills and positive attitudes such as the self and community confidence and determination to be able to utilise, engage and transform laws as they impact on our person, families and communities.
The Community Law[1] Circle is a space where we aim to do just that - i.e.
1. Increase the capacity of participants to deal with legal issues - by improving our critical understanding of the law, discussing when and how best to take action, or by making better choices and avoiding law related problems.
2. Raise the legal consciousness[2] and capability[3] of participants so that they are more equipped, knowledgeable, confident and capable of self-determinedly applying law, contesting and resisting unjust law and shaping ‘just' law in their day to day lives.
We will do this by:
- Providing law related education including public legal education
- Providing support to relevant community campaigns
- Engaging in legal and extra-legal community defence initiatives
- Facilitating stimulating dialogues on relevant legal issues among and between lawyers and those untrained in law.
Our approach for these monthly Community Law Study, Dialogue & Action Circles is to have an engaging and enabling space where conventional lawyers and jailhouse/street/grassroots lawyers, activists, community advocates, educators, youth and community development workers can: dialogue and; exchange ideas as well as strategies and tactics on how best to achieve justice outcomes in our personal lives, our families as well as our inter/intra community relations.
So, rather than take a top down approach to just having conventional lawyers lecture at us and present law divorced from its socio-political and economic context, we are taking a bottom up approach to collectively teaching and learning about the law. This approach to law teaching and learning is well known in our communities. In fact, most of the legal gains that we have made by way of the abolitionist movement, the Pan-Afrikan Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Civil Rights and Human and Peoples’ Rights Movements have been made as a result of taking this collective approach to learning and teaching about as well as shaping the law.
In this way, conventional lawyers are invited and encouraged to engage in Community Law ‘groundings’ with our communities where everyone: lawyer or non-lawyer; activist; advocate and other concerned citizens of Global Pan-Afrika in Britain, are encouraged to learn and raise their own legal consciousness and legal capability towards improving law related outcomes, actions, support and campaigns in our communities.
This is not to undermine or denigrate the expertise of conventional lawyers in our midst but rather to encourage conventional lawyers to be more accountable lawyers that serve the interests of their communities and construct advocacy as well as defence strategies that truly meet the unmet justice needs of their clients. In addition, our discussions will enable conventional lawyers and other advocates to become more aware and better informed of the community impact of some of the individual cases that they take up. We are reminded by the late Afrikan American Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.'s notion that our lawyers must rediscover their mission of becoming “legal architects who [proactively] renovate the palaces of justice and redesign the landscape of opportunity in this nation.”
For further information and to confirm your attendance on 2nd April 2013, please contact:
Sister Esther Stanford-Xosei
Co-Chair of the iNAPP Legal & Constitutional Sub-Committee
Sis Esther Ekua Stanford-Xosei
Phone: 0845 519 4896
Mobile: 07588579563
Email: info@estherstanford.com
[1] Community Law means law as critically studied, contested and self-determinedly shaped by social groups for their own community development.
[2] Legal Consciousness is the sum total of views and ideas expressing the attitude of people toward law, legality and justice and their concepts of what is lawful and unlawful. Legal consciousness a theoretical concept became popular as a term within academic studies of law and society in the 1980s and 1990s to address issues of legal domination and hegemony, particularly how the law sustains its institutional power despite a persistent gap between the law on the statute books and the law in action. It is concerned with providing social and legal remedies to address the reality of why so many people acquiesce to a legal system that, despite its promises of equal treatment, systematically reproduces inequality. Legal consciousness is not an individual trait or just a collection of ideas; legal consciousness is a type of social practice reflecting and forming social structures. The study of legal consciousness documents the forms of participation and interpretation through which lay persons and professional lawyers and legal actors sustain, reproduce, or amend the structures of meaning concerning law. Legal Consciousness therefore traces the ways in which law is experienced and interpreted by specific individuals and groups as they engage, avoid, or resist the law and legal meanings.
[3] Legal Capability is a term that was first coined by PLENET, the Public Legal Education Network. It is much broader than the concept of legal literacy, not just about knowledge of the law but also having the skills, self- confidence and community self-determination to shape, scrutinise and apply law in one’s own best interests. It makes links between law-related education including public legal education and training as well as community development - thereby breaking down the apartheid boundaries of legal ghettoes that serve to alienate and exclude those, who have not been schooled and trained in law, from access to real justice processes.
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