9 - Linking Legal Action and Economic Development: Tensions and Strains

Summary

I feel very strongly that in community struggles lawsuits can only be used as one arrow in your quiver…. I saw using the lawsuit as a leverage for development. We were too late to be a factor in saving the community as it was…. [T]he court suit has been able to make real the concrete work that needs to be done.

Jim Chapman, legal counsel, SASNC

For the SASNC, as for many community organizations, a lawsuit is a strategy of last resort – and it was so in this case. The SASNC refocused the demands of their 1989 lawsuit, first to seek reparations from the Illinois Sports Authority, the White Sox, and the City of Chicago for the destruction of their neighborhood local businesses (see Zhang Wright, 1992); second, to implement an economic development plan for the rebuilding of their neighborhood. Coalition members believed that, for justice to be served, the redevelopment funds should come from the White Sox Corporation and the state and city governments. Supporting this opinion, Mrs. Larimore, who had been a vital opponent of the White Sox relocation, argued:

I want money to come from the White Sox. That's where I want the money to come from. Because they the ones that destroyed what we had. And I think that they should be … responsible for building back some of the things that we had…. Give us the money so we could start [re]building.