The Initiative for Community Power designs and leads courses on social justice, and creates and supports student fellowships to work with organizations, and on academic projects, challenging inequality. We also offer resources about movement lawyering, community organizing, and social change and build and sustain partnerships with social justice organizations and create community among faculty, students and leading social justice practitioners.
Law, Power and Organizing Initiative
Led by Andrew Friedman, ICP has launched a first-of-its-kind Law, Power and Community Initiative within NYU Law’s Clinical Program to help advise, coach and support clinical faculty and students to develop and deploy a sophisticated understanding of organizing, social change and campaigning, and to build out a dynamic organizing team to provide capacity to NYU’s clinics on power-building, coalitional and campaigning work.
Courses, Externships, and Clinics
Law and Power Seminar and Externship
Law and Power is a new, 14 credit seminar and externship led by Andrew Friedman, offered at the Law School through the Pro Bono Scholars Program. This course includes a seminar component and fieldwork at social justice partner organizations that organize with, and represent, indigent clients. In Spring 2024, the externship program catalyzed over 8,000 hours of fieldwork!
The seminar focuses on an exploration of what it means to be a lawyer working for racial and economic justice. In the course, students explore different conceptions of social justice lawyering, and the tensions among them, as well as a range of materials, workshops, discussions and simulations designed to help students engage with philosophical and practical questions about lawyering and the myriad roles lawyers can play in social movements. Additionally, students dig into questions about social change dynamics: the dynamics of movement moments and uprisings, the role of structured organizations, and what is involved in building people’s organizations with the capacity to secure meaningful social change. Students get an introduction to different roles attorneys can play in social change work and meet a number of attorneys and organizers with different experiences of social change work and lawyering. Students also delve into practical questions and skill development activities to help build their capacity and efficacy as agents for change.
Law and Organizing Lab
The Law and Organizing Lab is designed to help students to develop and apply a broad range of analytical and change-making tools. The Lab seeks to expand the boundaries of traditional legal education through both classroom teaching and work with community organizations and partners. The law can be a powerful tool to disrupt or challenge inequality, oppression, and marginalization, but making durable change in the world often requires a sophisticated sense of how things work beyond the courtroom. Making ambitious change often requires a sophisticated understanding of community, politics, and power. Organizing, public policy advocacy and issue campaigning are fields that have developed valuable tools and techniques to spark change. These tools and techniques can and should strengthen students’ legal practice. The Lab will help students to develop new capacities and to deploy a sophisticated understanding of social change organizing and campaigning, and realpolitik - in partnership with deeply-rooted community organizations working for racial and economic justice. The Law and Organizing Lab is intended to spark discussion, reflection, and strategic practice, among students with a shared commitment, or interest, in using law to build a more just and democratic social order.
Training Academies & Efforts to Strengthen Legal Education
Annual Law and Organizing Academy
As part of ICP’s commitment to facilitating and nurturing the next generation of innovative movement lawyers, starting in 2022, ICP has organized an annual Law & Organizing Academy (LOA) that brings law students together to dream big and equip them with the necessary tools to be agents of positive social change. The LOA has trained more than 110 rising second- and third-year law students. LOA connects students with organizers and scholars to learn about the fundamentals of organizing, social change, law and political economy, political education and to analyze current campaigns for economic and racial justice. LOA brings law students for a short course of study to build community and learn key frameworks and skills at the intersection of organizing, law, and political economy. Amid the escalating and interlocking crises that define our current moment, progressive law students are seeking ways to practice law that builds movement power. Yet law schools rarely provide space to interrogate the relationship between law and organizing, and there are even fewer opportunities to come together to forge solidarity across institutional boundaries.
The Law and Organizing Academy is a partnership between the NYU Initiative for Community Power, the Action Lab, and, previously the Law & Political Economy Project, along with a range of frontline social justice organizations, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, VOCAL NY, Make the Road NY and NJ, TakeRoot Justice and the Safety Net Project. Here is the 2023 Program and 2024 Program.
Apply to the 2025 Law & Organizing Academy Now!
We invite current law students from New York-area law schools or with New York-area summer internships to apply to our fourth annual Law & Organizing Academy (LOA). This year, LOA will take place on May 21-22, June 20, July 11, and July 25, 2025 in various locations in New York City and one day in upstate New York.
LOA students will primarily come from partner organizations, who send their interns to LOA at the start of the summer. We will also have some spots for other current law students who have a demonstrated interest in power-building work and/or social change. Please note that we are only accepting applications from students attending New York-area law schools or interning in the New York area in summer 2025, due to the geographic focus of the Academy. The 2025 LOA has a new structure to (1) limit barriers to participation by maximizing our time in NYC and (2) deepen our connections to each other and the content by adding continuing education days throughout the summer so there’s a feedback loop between the Academy and your internship.
The 2025 LOA has a new structure to (1) limit barriers to participation by maximizing our time in NYC and (2) deepen our connections to each other and the content by adding continuing education days throughout the summer so there’s a feedback loop between the Academy and your internship.
The schedule for LOA 2025 is as follows:
Wednesday, May 21 (half day)
Thursday, May 22 (full day)
Friday, June 6: Happy Hour
Friday, June 20 (noon to 6pm)
Friday, July 11 (noon to 6pm)
Friday, July 25 (noon to 6pm)
Topics covered will include organizing frameworks, introduction to law and political economy, racial capitalism and the state, theories of social change, power-building, learning from practitioners and campaigns for racial and economic justice. Beyond the formal sessions and workshops, LOA also offers law students the resources and time to engage in critical reflection on the role of law in social change, build relationships with each other during meals and on breaks, and seek informal mentorship from faculty and organizers during the length of the retreat.
To apply to LOA, please fill out the online application (Google Form) no later than Feb. 28, 2025.
LOA is free to attend and includes food. For our day in upstate NY, LOA will reimburse train travel from NYC.
As mentioned above, this year's LOA follows a new format with two grounding days before your internship starts and three continuing education days throughout the summer. To participate in the program, you must attend all of the dates bolded above.
Application Materials:
1. Cover letter/personal statement: This statement, which should not exceed one page double-spaced, should detail the applicant’s interest in and experience with 1) power-building work and/or 2) social change.
2. Resumé.
Please reach out to Daniela Tagtachian at dat9851@nyu.edu with any questions or accessibility requests.
The Summer Organizing Training Camp
ICP hosts a Summer Organizing Training Camp for public policy and college students that includes field-based organizing practice with partner base-building organizations
Law and Organizing in Law Schools
As part of ICP’s commitment to strengthening legal education and the development of the next generation of social justice lawyers, ICP is facilitating collaboration among doctrinal and clinical professors from around the country to discuss current efforts and possible interventions to train aspiring lawyers to more effectively catalyze change and build power for working-class and marginalized communities.