Based in Miami, the LatCrit organization is a registered, tax-exempt nonprofit corporation under the laws of Florida and IRS regulations. LatCrit community members include academics, activists, practitioners, law students and others across the state, country and hemisphere who have made a professional commitment to give a voice to those who otherwise would not be heard in education, law and social justice reforms. LatCrit members are a committed group of leading innovators in academic and grassroots communities with a well-established record of working independently as well as in coalitions and alliances to effectuate anti-bias education and legal reforms. A listing of some of the leaders in the LatCrit effort is attached hereto as Exhibit B. Through student recruitment, educational initiatives, cutting-edge scholarship, proposed legislation, strategic lobbying, grassroots efforts, and high-impact litigation, the LatCrit movement has for 15 years been challenging the current legal system’s bias in favor of the privileged. Because they’ve received little to no funding, however, the LatCrit group—with members in all 50 states as well as international members—have operated diffusely and communicated chiefly via email, correspondence, and periodic meetings. Unfortunately, groups like the Federalist Society, with massive corporate funding, and Supreme Court decisions like Citizen’s United (which permits corporations to give almost unlimited amounts to political campaigns that reinforce incumbents and their biases), have drowned out many challenges by LatCrit community members.
To level the playing field and to give the LatCrit activists a fighting chance to be heard, they have purchased a small facility near Ocala, Florida to serve as the hub of their educational, research, advocacy and activism to remedy the imbalance and deficiencies in the current legal system. Having an independent physical base has become critical as universities and law schools increasingly are even less equipped to focus on legal problems of the poor and the “outsiders” of society due to increasing budgetary, bureaucratic and political constraints. After sixteen years of laying the groundwork for this bricks-and-mortar move, this “Living Justice Center” located in the middle of the state will enable LatCrits to take their teaching, learning and writing projects on behalf of the underprivileged to the next level of sustainability and effectiveness.
