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John Richardson and Pivot Legal Society
By Nicole Zummach
January 22, 2007
VANCOUVER, BC // We see them walking the streets, huddled in doorways to stay warm, or sleeping on a park bench, but how often do we think about homeless people, sex workers or addicts? We may toss them a few coins or donate to an agency that serves these marginalized individuals, but do we ever think about how their well-being is directly tied to our own? John Richardson would argue that until we see the intrinsic connection between the haves and the have-nots in our society, things aren't going to change.
And he should know. Since founding Pivot Legal Society in 2000, Richardson has been working closely with marginalized groups on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, strategically using the law to advocate on their behalf. Pivot's mandate is to take a strategic approach to social change, using the law to address the root causes that undermine the quality of life of those most on the margins. It's a major undertaking, but Richardson's work has not gone unnoticed. In 2005, he was selected as an Ashoka Fellow, bringing recognition to the valuable work that Pivot is doing. CharityVillage spoke with Richardson about Pivot's current campaigns, the new enterprise it is launching, and how Canada is doing as a civilized society.
CharityVillage: What was your impetus to create Pivot Legal Society?

John Richardson: Before Pivot, I was articling with Sierra Legal Defence Fund, which does strategic litigation for the environment. They use a number of tools in their advocacy, including media, communications, and research reports, as well as litigation. They are located right on the edge of [Vancouver's] Downtown Eastside, so every day I was walking through the neighbourhood in order to get to work. One day it clicked with me that all the strategic advocacy tools that Sierra Legal was using could be very effectively applied to advocate on behalf of marginalized people.
At that point I did a bit of research and met up with a woman named Ann Livingston, who was the coordinator of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU). We organized monthly meetings in the Downtown Eastside, bringing together lawyers, drug users and sex workers in a free discussion about the issues that people were having in their lives and the ways the law could be applied. From those meetings, Pivot Legal Society emerged.
CV: What are you working on right now?

JR: We have a number of campaigns that we focus on: housing, addiction, sex work, police accountability, and child apprehension cases. All of our campaigns start first with extensive community consultation. So we go out and we gather first-hand stories and experiences from people, usually in quite large numbers, around specific issues. Then we analyze the affidavits and identify what problems are affecting a lot of people that can be addressed through a strategic legal initiative.
What's taking my time right now is our housing campaign. It's very timely because there is a lot of development pressure on the Downtown Eastside arising out of the upcoming Olympics - rising property values in Vancouver, a surge in development, and expansion of the downtown core. So we are trying to protect existing low-income housing and advocate for the development of more low-income housing.
CV: Given the work you do, you obviously face a lot of uphill battles. What are some of your successes? Where have you made inroads?

JR: Our policing campaign is our oldest campaign; that was the one we began with. It's had a pretty profound impact on policing in British Columbia. We filed 50 complaints simultaneously against the Vancouver Police Department, alleging misconduct against residents of the Downtown Eastside. One of the results of that was widespread policy change on the part of the Vancouver Police Department around their arrest procedures, search and seizure procedures, breaching processes, record keeping, and all these things. There were quite a number of them.
CV: You have a quote from Gandhi on your web site: "The best test of a civilized society is the way in which it treats its most vulnerable and weakest members." How would you say we are doing as a society here in Canada?

JR: Poorly. I think it's overrated. I think Canadian society is quite proud of how it deals with marginalization, but it actually isn't doing that great. We hold ourselves high but the numbers don't often bear it out. There are certainly enormous opportunities for improvement, specifically in British Columbia in recent years with cutbacks to welfare. It's definitely not getting better in British Columbia. We live in a very wealthy and abundant society but there are a lot of missed opportunities to maximize everyone's participation.
CV: What needs to change for there to be improvements in the way we function as a society?

JR: It think it's really simple. I mean, obviously it's very hard, but it's quite simply a shift in attitude and people seeing how their immediate quality of life is directly affected by the quality of life of people on the lowest rungs of society. People want to have safe neighbourhoods where there is not a lot of public disorder, and low crime rates and low taxes. They want all these things but they don't see how it is intimately connected to the empowerment and inclusion of marginalized people in society. People often have a very judgmental attitude toward marginalized people and think they don't deserve these benefits. But actually, it's the wrong analysis. The analysis should be, do you want to live in a society that is as close to utopian as it can be? If you do, then the best way to get there is to raise the floor and everyone goes up that way.

CV: What can nonprofits do to change society's perception of marginalized people - and by extension the organizations that serve them - as simply looking for a handout?

JR: Right now, a lot of nonprofits serve marginalized populations fairly exclusively. But I think increasingly nonprofits are starting social enterprises. They are called enterprising nonprofits, and they start businesses on the side to diversify their revenue sources. So their relationship with the general public is transforming from not just asking for donations, but also providing services and a deeper relationship with the rest of society. In doing this, they become not only economically stronger, but also form a stronger connection with non-marginalized populations.
This is on my mind because we are starting a full service law firm called Pivot Legal LLP. We've abandoned the typical office structure; all our staff are members of a workers co-op. So it's a law firm on top of a workers co-op that is held together by a nonprofit. It's transforming our whole organizational model and allowing for significant growth and opportunities for expansion that weren't there before.
I think the growth of [nonprofit enterprises] is going to have a very deep impact as it becomes more and more mainstream and has a bigger and bigger impact on not only people's inclination to give, but also their participation in the economic system. They will come into economic contact with more and more of these socially-minded businesses and more and more of their purchases will take into consideration social responsibility factors. This is the wave of change - a greater and greater economic role for nonprofits and socially responsible businesses.
John Richardson is the co-founder and executive director of Pivot Legal Society. For more information about the organization, visit: www.pivotlegal.org.

To learn more about the Ashoka Fellowship program, visit: www.ashoka.ca.