Collective Justice Centre

Collective Justice Centre - $1,000

Who

Nima Hussein, 23
Cecilia Scoles, 23
Mumina Egal, 24
Lily Xia, 24

What

The Collective Justice Centre (CJC) is an independent organization founded by tenants in the Herongate neighbourhood and a committee of advisors and elders. The CJC aims to establish a physical centre in the neighbourhood to build power with our neighbours through education, outreach work, and organizing in order to sufficiently identify and dismantle structures of exploitation, oppression, domination, and discrimination through a decolonial approach. Their primary aim is dismantling barriers to legal advice and services. 

In their words: “Legal aid and social service clinics have not been able to adequately uphold equitable access to justice for residents and have not acted in the interest of protecting the integrity of the neighbourhood. In particular, local clinics have been designed to operate from the top down, have only served clients on an individual basis, and are linguistically limited in their services. These gaps in legal services became apparent during the Herongate mass evictions in 2015 and more recently, in 2018. Tenants experienced a lack of access to justice and were unable to exercise their legal right to organize or challenge their evictions. Hence, success would look like progressing towards more equitable access to justice for working class racialized residents in the southend of Ottawa.”