Pat DeCarlo

     Pat DeCarlo, in 1974, was the brand-new Managing Attorney at Camden Regional Legal Services’ Bridgeton, NJ office, the first woman of Puerto Rican descent to graduate from the Univ. of Pennsylvania Law School, and a classmate of Ira’s.  (See Tribute before.)

Before I got a job working with Pat, she observed that all the secretaries and paralegals were African-American or Puerto Rican and all the lawyers, except her, white.  The vast majority of clients were also not white.  Given the high demand for legal services, Pat thought all the staff, not just the lawyers, should decide which cases to take, and which to turn away, and so she organized the staff into a steering committee.  A majority of the committee wanted the white lawyers to quit spending so much time on high-profile cases*, and more time dealing with cases affecting people’s daily lives, like not getting evicted.  The lawyers, not liking being told what to do, quit, and I was one of the first replacements – thanks to Ira’s recommendation.

*At that time the Mount Laurel case was on its way to the New Jersey Supreme Court arguing that lily-white suburbs, like Cherry Hill, NJ, had to take on their fair share of affordable housing.  But the secretaries and paralegals said, “We don’t want to get dispersed to the suburbs.  We like our concentrated political power.”  The lawyers who left the office formed a non-profit firm that successfully argued the case, which became a national precedent.  Good for them.

As a steering committee, now with me on as well, we dealt with the problem of having more clients than we could handle.  We decided to prioritize the landlord/tenant cases for those in the local tenants’ union, and prioritize welfare fair hearings for those who joined the national Welfare Rights Organization.

captions:  Bridgeton, NJ is literally and figuratively below the Mason-Dixon Line  with “Whites Only” signs into the late 60’s.  That’s the Courthouse where I tried my first cases and the one where Pat was held in contempt for wearing a pants suit.

Helping poor folks organize led to many positive changes – better state-wide landlord/tenant laws, how the local welfare boards conducted fair hearings, and, eventually, electing the first Black, Pauline Boykin, to the Bridgeton School Board.  Thank you Pat DeCarlo for showing me how important it is to involve the people in dealing with systemic injustices, how to think about the law as part and parcel of organizing, how to be much more than just a lawyer helping one client at a time.

Ronald Reagan was later elected President, and our tiny little legal services office became Exhibit A in his successful quest to limit what federally funded legal services offices can do.  Pat (still a life-long friend) left legal services and helped organize the highly successful Norris Square Civic Assn. in a down-trodden part of Philadelphia, getting folks into jobs, home ownership and civic engagement.  Reagan’s limiting legal services for the poor to just doing “band-aid cases” led to privately funded legal services advocacy projects across the nation.

caption:  In 1976 Pat helped organize the “Bicentennial without Colonies” alternative celebration in Philadelphia.  Read more about that in the Anne Conley chapter coming next.