Reliance on litigation atrophied the community group’s own organizing

Evidence

On another level, however, the struggle has been a failure: not only is the dump expansion moving forward, but many Padres members have been demoralized by the seven-year struggle. “I feel like I’m throwing rocks at the moon,” sighs Paco Beltran, “and catching them on my head.” The residents were forced to rely on litigation when all other avenues to achieving community victory had been closed off. The loss of momentum in Padres during the late stages of litigation was palpable; people saw the lawsuit as the only way to beat the county. The reliance on the law, and on outsiders, came at the expense of the self-reliant, cohesive, and dynamic group of just a few years before. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 487 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

During the almost three years it took the case to wind its way through the Superior Court and Court of Appeal (from January 1995 to August 1997), the community group had largely relaxed and become dormant. Intermittent efforts by Cole to spur the group to action had met with little success. With their struggle tied up in the courts, Padres’s leaders had moved on to more pressing things. Rosa and Lorenzo Garcia had a new home built in nearby Shafter. Juan Reyes and Juanita Fernandez had a second child, Mireda. Paco and Lydia Beltran watched their oldest son, Gabriel, apply to and be accepted at California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo. Children grew older, plantings and harvests came and went. The struggle against the dump seemed far away. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 468 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

My struggle was to make them understand that they’re the ones who have to make everything happen. It was not him [the lawyer] who was going to be able to come in, it was not me who was going to be there to come and save them. I mean, we’re not coming in on a horse and here’s a knight in shining armor, coming in and saving the community. And I had prepared them for that. My whole thing was: it’s yours, it’s all of us, and it’s not having an attorney come in and he’s going to run and do everything for you, and so on. They knew that. But we also knew that we needed technical assistance, we needed the legal advice, we needed all these other things that the community didn’t have. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 456 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Effective EJ organizing must reject savior-lawyer dynamics while still using legal help; EJ activism shifts from facility opposition to contesting decision-making legitimacy; Reliance on litigation eroded the community’s own organizing capacity. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 487 (+4 more)

Related

• Reliance on litigation eroded the community’s own organizing capacity. (similarity 0.95)
• Litigation absorbed the movement’s energy and left the community dormant. (similarity 0.89)
• Legal help must build community capacity rather than substitute for community action. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Reliance on litigation eroded the community’s own organizing capacity. #corroborates (0.95) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 487
• Litigation absorbed the movement’s energy and left the community dormant. #corroborates (0.90) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 468
• Legal help must build community capacity rather than substitute for community action. #responds-to (0.85) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 456
• Organization can destroy substance but underestimates stable communities #qualifies (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 892
• Ad hoc adjudication breaks litigant participation and undermines its legitimacy #expands (0.70) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 3312