A renowned non-profit that provides legal services and advocacy for New York’s most vulnerable populations has moved into a new office in the Financial District. The Urban Justice Center (UJC) held a ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday in its new offices at 40 Rector Street, where the organization has taken all 32,000 square feet of the building’s ninth floor.
From this facility, said Doug Lasdon, UJC’s founder and executive director, the organization will, “continue being a voice for the voiceless New Yorkers, serving the City’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities.” UJC fields ten legal teams that specialize in helping populations with few other places to turn for help, including victims of domestic violence, impoverished veterans, Iraqi refugees, sex workers, the mentally ill, and children who are gay, lesbian or transgender. UJC’s move to 40 Rector was made possible by a $5 million grant from the City Council, spearheaded by City Council member Margaret Chin and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
Ms. Brewer told the UJC team, “people’s lives are being saved because of your work.” Ms. Chin, whom Ms. Lasdon called, “our guardian angel,” said, “Urban Justice has made our City so much better, and we look forward to helping you build a stronger, more progressive City together.”
U.S. Senator Cory Booker, whose first job after Yale Law School was as a UJC staff attorney, recalled, “I first worked for UJC in East Harlem, during a summer when police sweeps were going on and so many of our young people were getting churned into the criminal justice system. We need to take our legal system and try to make it a justice system again. Today, in many cities, so many of our young kids get ground into the criminal justice system and even when they are get out, they still continue pay a price, whether because they were put in solitary confinement, which other countries consider torture, or because they can’t get jobs after a felony conviction for being involved with drugs on a level that, frankly, the last three presidents have admitted to.”
and how it led to the path that eventually brought him to the U.S. Senate
“This country will never live up to its truth until it recognizes the value, the worth, and the dignity of every one of its citizens,” Senator Booker continued. “We have a Declaration of Independence, but the spiritual truth of America is a declaration of interdependence: We need each other. These bond and these links have to be honored.”
After UJC sent Mr. Booker to Newark to litigate on behalf of slum residents, he left the organization in 1998 to run (successfully) for City Council. In 2006, he was elected mayor of Newark, and in 2013 he was elected the junior United States Senator from New Jersey.
The UJC was founded by Mr. Lasdon in 1984, based on the then-unique idea of providing legal services directly to the poor where they were: in soup kitchens, at homeless shelters and on the streets. The organization expanded its vision to include exposing and eradicating the legal and legislative causes of systemic poverty. Early UJC cases established the right of homeless people to receive public assistance and established that the city was legally responsible for the plight of youth who age out of the foster care system. Today, UJC has more than 120 staff and offices throughout the five boroughs. In 2014, UJC closed over 11,000 cases benefitting 19,000 clients.