What We've Built is Worth Fighting For

Nancy Drane, Ronald Flagg, Kirra Jarratt, and Aracelis Gray testify in support of the Access to Justice Initiative at the Budget Oversight Hearing before Councilmember Brooke Pinto.

In recent weeks, across two separate budget hearings, over 120 witnesses urged the DC City Council to reverse the proposed 86% cut to the city’s Access to Justice Initiative. Providers, clients, and community members laid out in clear and irrefutable terms how vital legal services are in helping residents in crisis stay safely housed, protect their children, put food on the table, and so much more.

Last week, the Judiciary Committee voted to restore $3.5 million of the $27 million proposed cut. But we still have a long way to go to ensure full restoration by the full Council. That’s what it will take for our grantee partners to continue serving more than 44,000 DC residents annually. And that’s what we need to preserve the infrastructure we’ve spent years building to support the growing impact and efficiency of their work.

This infrastructure includes the DC Social Justice Transformations Network, which is about to celebrate five years of connecting diverse stakeholders—including across legal services, health care, social services, education, and local government—to better serve residents with complex, overlapping needs. And it includes the highly successful rollout of the DC Resource Bridge last fall. Thanks to coordinated intake and referral across more than two dozen legal services providers, DC residents now only need to make a single phone call to get the legal help they need.

A steep cut to the Access to Justice Initiative would not only drastically reduce the services that members of these networks provide, it would eliminate the efficiencies they deliver altogether. Those who will pay the price are our most vulnerable neighbors, including seniors, children, and people with disabilities.

I’m so grateful to everybody for lending their voice at this critical moment—whether to testify, write to your Councilmembers, post on social media, or express support from around the country. We’re proud to share the conviction and commitment that so many of us share in an ongoing series of videos that explain why access to legal services is a necessity and what a projected 38,000 DC residents—people like Skye Curry and Larelle Clarke—stand to lose.

In my own video, I share how the growing uncertainty of funding makes it harder than ever to keep improving the civil justice system so that it serves all DC residents—regardless of income, knowledge, or power. But that doesn’t mean we won’t keep working to do so every single day. And with you by our side, raising your voice, we are that much more likely to succeed.

With gratitude,

Kirra L. Jarratt

Chief Executive Officer