In 1987, a time when the prevailing response to the exploding AIDS epidemic was fear, hysteria and intolerance, Chicago attorney James Monroe Smith took a more level-headed approach. He recognized that people with HIV faced unique legal problems: workplace discrimination, insurance denials, confidentiality breaches, illegal evictions. School children were being kicked out of their classes. People with AIDS were falling through the holes in our nation’s “safety net” of public benefits; the syndrome was so new and misunderstood – especially in women – that government agencies weren’t properly evaluating disability claims.
Jim assembled a group of volunteers who were committed to making a difference in the lives of people with HIV. With backgrounds in law, health care and social service delivery, these volunteers came together and started the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago in the living room of Jim’s North Side apartment. When it first opened its doors, with a staff of only two – Jim and his secretary – ALCC was among the very first organizations in the country devoted exclusively to protecting the legal rights of people with HIV, a mission it would pursue by providing free legal help, education and public policy advocacy.
In a few months, thanks to many generous donors, the Council moved into its first real office in the South Loop. The chairs, desks, file cabinets and folding tables were cast-offs from many of the city’s best law firms. The phones, with their wires hanging out of the ceiling, were donated by a grateful client. Jim hired a legal director. Not long after, he hired a case manager. This bare-bones staff organized a team of volunteer attorneys from all over the city who took on the kinds of cases that would set important legal precedents for the rights of people with HIV in Illinois.
Over the years, growing demand led the Council to continually develop new programs to keep pace with the epidemic and reach those in greatest need. In 1991, the Council opened a James Monroe Smith Outreach Office on the campus of Cook County Hospital where it could better serve uninsured individuals seeking care at its two HIV clinics. Many of these clients were African-American and impoverished, living in the south and west sides of the city. Four years later, with HIV beginning to impact a greater number of Latinos, ALCC hired its first bilingual attorney and began working more closely with Latino-centered organizations, marking the beginning of the Council's Latino Outreach Project. Currently six of the Council’s thirteen staff members are Spanish-speaking.
In 1997, when new advances in HIV treatment gave many people with HIV new leases on life, the Council initiated its Return-To-Work Project, counseling individuals who want to rejoin the workforce on their rights as employees, confidentiality issues, job accommodations and the impact that new employment could have on their Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare benefits. The same year, ALCC initiated its Family Options Program to counsel HIV-positive parents on guardianships and other long-term planning for their minor children.
In 2002, the Council started its HIV-Positive Immigrants' Rights Project to provide linguistically- and culturally-appropriate legal assistance to foreign-born individuals living with HIV. Recognizing that immigrants with HIV not only face unique bars to legalizing their status, but also often face singular difficulties to accessing justice, health care and stability, the Council's staff underwent extensive training in the area of immigration law and made ALCC the first legal organization in the Midwest offering HIV-specific legal assistance to foreign-born individuals with HIV, regardless of their immigration status. Today, ALCC is accredited by the Board of Immigration Appeals to represent its clients before the Department of Homeland Security. Since beginning the Immigrants’ Rights Project, the Council has served clients from more than 80 countries.
Most recently, the Council has launched education and outreach programs aimed at assisting individuals with mental health disabilities, women and youth. In response to the lack of legal information for teens, the Council started a Youth Legal Rights Project in 2004, with paralegal Dale Green spearheading workshops for teenagers at schools and health fairs around the area. High-school interns from various Chicago-area schools have been recruited to help with the program and together they develop and present HIV-themed skits to their peers.
After 20 years, the Council has delivered free legal services to many thousands of people from every neighborhood in Chicago and virtually every community in Cook County, helped draft important legislation, testified before various legislative bodies, and trained thousands of service providers across the state. ALCC is a United Way member agency with an annual budget of nearly a million dollars. In just the last 10 years, the Council’s caseload has doubled.
While the agency may have “grown up” from those early days in Jim Smith’s living room, it has refused to give up its grassroots approach to service delivery. The Council responds immediately to calls for help. ALCC has never needed to put clients on a waiting list. Council staff are available every day to address callers’ concerns; intake appointment are never necessary. And every week a Council attorney or paralegal is rushing out of the office to meet with clients who cannot leave their homes or hospital rooms. As AIDS Legal Council of Chicago looks to the future, it will never forget its past.
It’s been 20 years since ALCC opened its doors to help people with HIV fight discrimination and overcome the barriers that impede their access to employment, public benefits, stable housing and other vital needs and services. Started in December 1987 by a concerned group of volunteers, the Council has grown significantly over the years, and today has a legal staff of nine assisting hundreds of clients annually at two office locations. Recalling the early days of the Council’s history, when stigma and fear were rampant and medical treatments for HIV were virtually nonexistent, paralegal Justin Hayford describes how the Council’s staff worked in a constant crisis mode. “The majority of our cases were end-of-life issues. At least once a week, we would rush to someone’s bedside to draw up a will. We also fought the flagrant discrimination that was going on. We helped people who were getting kicked out of their apartments, denied medical care, fired from employment and who experienced other unjust treatment because of their HIV status. Stigma was so intense that people were afraid to come to us. So we would meet them in abandoned buildings and all sorts of strange places. I had a client pick me up and drive around the block over and over while we discussed his case.” While the nature of the epidemic has changed dramatically since those early days, the need for legal assistance continues to be strong. At the end of FY’07, ALCC staff assisted nearly 900 clients with more than 1,370 legal cases. “Most of our work these days,” continues Justin, “is in fighting bureaucracies on behalf of people with HIV. But ALCC still delivers services the same way. We have never had a waiting list and we still rush to clients’ homes or wherever they need us to give them quick access to legal help."
180 North Michigan Ave, Suite 2110 | Chicago IL 60601 | 312-427-8990 | info@aidslegal.com http://aidslegal.com
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