ArchCity Defenders mark 10 years of service, activism

As ArchCity Defenders prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary this weekend, its mission has expanded but its original goals — to prevent and end homelessness — remain at its core, Executive Director Blake Strode said.

Attorneys Thomas Harvey, Michael-John Voss and John McAnnar founded the civil-rights law firm in 2009 in St. Louis, aiming to combat homelessness through “holistic” legal representation. They based their approach on a model pioneered by The Bronx Defenders in New York, viewing clients as whole individuals with not only a range of legal needs but also related social and social service needs.

“We provide legal services in a way that is very different from most legal organizations and takes into account, really, that for most people their legal challenges are not the most important, most pressing, most urgent challenges that they face,” Strode said in an interview as he and the organization prepared for anniversary-weekend events Nov. 8-9.

“They face challenges of poverty, which means that they are often housing-insecure,” Strode said. “There are often mental health issues. They are often navigating . . . family structures.”

In 2014-2015, ArchCity began to expand its approach by taking a deeper look at those problems, viewing them as systemic issues created and perpetuated by city institutions, Strode said. The organization set its eyes on changing those institutions, rather than just providing support for people caught up in those systems.

Strode began working for ArchCity through a fellowship in 2015 by establishing its civil-rights litigation unit, which focuses on such issues as cash bail, police misconduct, excessive force and court debts that result in incarceration. He said the region has experienced sweeping changes in its municipal court and jail landscape in recent years. He also pointed to what he termed a “seismic drop” in municipal court warrants and tickets issued, which led to a substantial decrease in municipal revenue.

“It’s a system that really serves as one of social and racial control that captures poor people, black and brown people, and entangles them for years in a way that they cannot escape because it’s designed for them not to escape,” Strode said.

He notes ArchCity Defenders is not solely responsible for these changes.

“There has been legislation, there has been litigation and, importantly for us, there has been grassroots-organizing and people directly impacted who have raised their voices, who have demanded change and who have really kept pressure on the system to make these kinds of changes,” he said. “We have been really proud to work with organizers and activists who have been committed to doing that.”

Strode pointed to the landmark $4.75 million settlement reached with the city of Jennings in 2016, in a class-action suit filed on behalf of people who were jailed because they were too poor to pay fines and fees, as one of ArchCity Defenders’ best outcomes reached through litigation during the past 10 years.  Strode said he still keeps a photo of those clients, taken outside the courtroom after the ruling.

“It was just such a moment of some relief for many of our clients that they had been seen and heard,” he said. “. . . We had people getting checks in the mail for thousands of dollars for the time they spent in jail. The harm is so deep. It is only a drop in the bucket, but I think it’s an important recognition.”

In addition to that work, ArchCity Defenders has won $8 million for its clients in civil-rights and class-action suits involving approximately 20,000 people. Most of those suits involved allegations of First Amendment violations and police misconduct during events such as the Ferguson protests and the acquittal of Officer Jason Stockley for the shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith. Strode said those lawsuits forced a reckoning with daily systemic injustices and brought about widespread change in the region.

“I’m hopeful that, even as time continues to pass and more distance is put between where we are and that sort of critical moment during Ferguson, that people remain engaged in that struggle and in that effort to bring about the kind of social change necessary to have a different kind of region that is no longer built upon the systemic oppression of poor people and people of color,” he said.

Today, ArchCity Defenders employs about 30 full-time staff members, about double what it had a year ago, Strode said. Even so, he said, the organization still has to decline nine cases for every one case it takes on, due to limited time and resources.

The organization will observe its 10th anniversary on Nov. 8 on the stage at Stifel Theatre, featuring a live podcast taping of ArchCity Defenders’ and Action St. Louis’ new podcast, “Under the Arch.” Nov. 9 features a day-long roundtable on racial justice at the Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being, which will include lawyers, activists, funders and community members.

For more information about the events, visit www.archcitydefenders.org.