Last November, DJC launched our 2025 year-end fundraising campaign—Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win. We’re deeply grateful to share that, with your support, we hit our goal and have already begun putting these funds to work in service of local movements fighting for liberation.
As a movement lawyering organization, DJC was founded with a clear theory of change: Only when directly impacted people get organized and make demands on systems of power do we see meaningful or lasting shifts in our lived realities.
This belief requires us to decenter attorneys as experts in struggles for liberation. Instead, we use the law as a tool to prop up the transformative organizing happening on the streets and in neighborhoods across the city.
We know this approach works. Last fall, we shared the news that we won a major lawsuit regarding ShotSpotter, a faulty police surveillance tool. More than an isolated lawsuit, this legal battle was part of a broader community organizing effort to end city investments in racially biased surveillance tech and transform our idea of what makes us truly safe.
This moment of heightened, white nationalist authoritarianism requires the same kind of visionary movement lawyering that is deeply embedded in grassroots fights for justice. DJC will be able to lean into this work even further this year thanks to your support.
We exceeded our $50,000 goal and raised $54,352! Because of this, we were able to unlock a matching $50,000 major gift and immediately begin pursuing some of the tactics we outlined during our year-end fundraising campaign.
For one, we’ve immediately elevated our longtime attorney, Eric Williams, to the post of Legal Director—empowering him to build out a litigation strategy and help organize a network of pro-bono lawyers to defend Detroiters from federal overreach.
So far, this has looked like working closely with our partners to map out the most effective legal approaches deployed in other cities (including litigation, rapid response networks, and know your rights trainings), and ensuring we’re well positioned to take coordinated action in Detroit.
Alongside groups like Detroit Will Breathe, we’ve also been uplifting the call to remove ICE from the city of Detroit and prohibit its collaboration with local police and use of city resources for its staging operations.
We know that if we only focus on what we’re fighting against, we’ll quickly lose sight of what we’re fighting for. Over the last couple of months, DJC has also made investments in the dreaming and narrative shifting work that is vital to articulating the future we want.
This includes growing our Artist Residency program to leverage the imagination of formerly incarcerated Michiganders to help us envision a world free of prisons and policing. We continue sharing our perspective on local and regional platforms to counter tough-on-crime rhetoric and replace it with alternative visions of public safety, defined by housing stability, dignified employment, and community self-determination.
From the courtroom to the halls of Congress, the streets, the workplace, and every other site of struggle in between, movements for justice are growing and they need community lawyers by their side. We encourage you to stay connected as our work deepens this year by signing up for our newsletter, becoming a volunteer, or reaching out to explore other ways you’d like to get involved.