Two Paths to Justice: Community Power and Legal Systems

By Valerie Contreras

This summer, I’m diving into two seemingly different worlds: community-based organizing through grassroots networks and legal advocacy through a personal injury law firm internship. Originally, I had planned on immersing myself in a non-profit organizing environment. Instead, I find myself in a law firm wondering how my passions for justice translate in this space. On the surface, these environments may feel worlds apart–one focused on collective power and systemic transformation, the other rooted in legal systems and individual restitution. But as I spend more time in both spaces, I’m beginning to see points of overlap, tension, and even synthesis.

As someone who previously partook in community activism and grassroots organizing, the key stakeholders are community members who are directly affected by structural inequalities. These movements rely on trust, local knowledge, and collective agency to imagine and push for alternative futures. At the law firm, the stakeholders are also individuals impacted by harm-often physical, financial, or emotional harm resulting from accidents, unsafe conditions, or negligence. The focus is on justice within an established system: navigating courts, insurance, and liability in pursuit of compensation and healing. In both cases, the people at the center are those who’ve experienced harm, but the responses differ. Grassroots work seeks to transform the system, while legal work seeks to navigate it.

My academic and personal interests lie in understanding how communities organize to drive paradigm shifts—ways of thinking and being that challenge dominant systems and build alternatives rooted in justice. My background as a co-chair for a campaign organized by high schoolers that fought to increase the funds for mental health at the county level taught me that change rarely starts from the top—it’s nurtured at the grassroots. At the same time, my internship at the law firm has offered me insight into how individuals seek redress and protection through formal legal channels. I’ve seen how the legal system can be both a tool for justice and a barrier, especially for people without resources, documentation, or access. This dual exposure is shaping how I think about power, justice, and agency.

There is often limited discussion on how formal systems, like the legal system, interact with or impact grassroots movements. Conversely, legal literature tends to frame individuals as clients or cases, focusing on outcomes within existing structures, but rarely questioning the broader systems that produce harm in the first place. What’s missing is a more integrated perspective—one that sees legal rights as not the end goals, but as one tool among many in the broader fight for systemic change. 

Reflecting on the roles, I would consider myself to be an organizer—a change agent. I am passionate about educating and involving marginalized communities and helping society as a whole with issues. I believe knowledge is power, and I believe organizing communities together with my experience at a law firm can help me bridge gaps with the aid of legal literacy. Ultimately, this summer is about holding space for both kinds of work. I don’t see it as choosing between them, but as learning how to bring them into conversation, and into alignment, when and where it matters most.