Justice for all!? Solidarity-based legal struggles in times of crisis
Conference of the RAV on 16./17. June in Leipzig.
We invite all colleagues, lawyers and people interested in legal politics to join us for two days of discussion, exchange and celebration.
We want to start on Friday evening with a kick-off event, where we want to deal with the development of emancipatory legal struggles – also based on the history of the RAV. At the end of the 1970s, when the RAV was founded, it was primarily about legal defense struggles against state impositions and sanctions, about the struggle for a free advocacy and against the restriction of individual liberties. And where do we stand today, what has changed in the meantime? In the face of increasing social inequality and the escalation of the climate crisis, for example, we see ourselves more and more in a self-conception and a role that is about the necessity of shaping and asserting collective rights, the struggle in solidarity for rights and participation in rights for all. In addition to the defense against state intervention and encroachment, we proactively have expectations of the state and make our own demands.
On Saturday we want to make current rights struggles around the right and access to the right visible, reflect on our roles and alliances, exchange ideas and network for common struggles. This will happen in various formats, mainly interactive workshops.
A total of 24 workshops and other discussion formats will focus on feminist legal struggles, anti-discrimination and access to justice, migration law and institutionalized racism, legal struggles outside of the Federal Republic, strategies against delimited state power, changes in perspective on the law, legal work and social movements as well as legal political networking, but also the right to strike, legal education, occupational bans, the penal system and gender-sensitive language. The workshops will be offered jointly by critical lawyers from various fields of work, legal activists, and civil society actors.
And on Saturday evening, the circle will be closed in another larger discussion. Starting from the described development from a defensive struggle for the preservation of individual freedom rights to offensive demands for a solidary right, we want to deal with the development of an understanding of (human) rights that does not stop at purely individual protection rights for the individual, but raises collective demands for participation, for equality and anti-discrimination as well as the protection of livelihoods for all and contributes to structural changes.