The Community & Economic Development Program uses the tools of corporate and transactional law to promote racial and economic justice across the communities of New York City.
• Small Businesses: We represent small businesses struggling through the economic impacts of gentrification and the pandemic, especially with commercial lease issues
• Community Non-Profits: We represent community groups and non-profits that need legal support to start up, grow, stay in compliance, and achieve their goals
• Co-Ops & Solidarity Economy: We represent worker-owned cooperatives and solidarity economy projects building more equitable ways of working and living.
• Movement Groups: We represent community activists fighting for equity for their communities and building grassroots power in movements for racial and economic justice.
Our Goals
- Support movement spaces and other physical infrastructure needed by movements for racial, social, and economic justice
- Help businesses and organizations being started by or serving people impacted by incarceration and the drug war
- Represent worker-owned cooperatives and solidarity economy projects
- Support mutual aid groups and democratically structured non-profits
- Help non-profit affordable housing developers and community land trusts working toward social housing and permanent affordability
- Support organizations fighting to protect the physical safety of communities threatened by violence
Legal Work
We help all kinds of businesses and organizations across New York City with their non-litigation legal needs.
While many clients come to us for a one-time specific need, we also offer long-term, full service corporate and transactional representation to community-based projects similar to what private sector corporations receive from their corporate counsel.