Thank you for joining the Law Union of British Columbia! All the work of the Law Union takes place via Working Groups.

Join a Law Union Working Group to take action on pressing legal issues. Legal training useful but not required—activists welcome!

We are always open to proposals for new working groups to address evolving social justice challenges.

Overdose Crisis and Police Accountability

The Overdose Crisis and Police Accountability Working Group is working to build strategies to end the criminalization of drug users in Vancouver. The working group has started researching efforts to lobby the police and municipal representatives to create a “sanctuary city” for drug possession. We welcome participation from lawyers, activists, and community members in this effort. We are also interested in potentially hosting a hackathon to develop an app responding to a community need with regard to police accountability or drug use.

Movement Legal Support & Housing

The Movement Legal Support and Housing Working Group (MLS) is building legal support capacity for movements, including Indigenous land & water protection and housing activists. Projects include:

• the feasibility of a dedicated hotline for activists to access legal support for actions and causes; and,
• approaches for campaigning against the use of injunctions to stifle dissent, including mobilizing the broader activist community to encourage elected representatives to pass anti-SLAPP legislation.

Access to Justice

The Access to Justice Working Group (A2J) is researching how barriers to legal services are experienced by affected communities and service providers.

Anti-Prisons

This Working Group discusses how the Law Union can challenge incarceration as public policy. It makes its explicit aim to abolish all forms of state-ordered detention, including but not limited to jails and prisons, mental health, and immigration.