Street Democracy

street democracy was established to provide a broad range of legal services to impoverished persons and communities. in 2006, street democracy began by providing direct legal services to the homeless and hungry at a detroit soup kitchen. in 2010, we evaluated our first two years of work. we realized that we were spending too much time chasing clients who were not ready to be helped. and while we were providing quality representation for individuals, we were not creating systemic change. we had a choice to make: continue to represent clients on individual matters or use our time to institute programs and structural reform that changes the way society helps the fallen and forgotten regain their footing.  we chose the latter. thus, it became our mission to represent the poor and vulnerable, to use that representation to identify and research the systems that perpetuate poverty and punish the poor, and then—with courts, schools, police, community, and clients—we craft, implement, tes