Our Pledge of Allegiance ends with the words…”justice for all.”
These are powerful words, and they are the foundation of who we are as a country.
Yet, for the 1.2 million Tennesseans living in poverty, about 18 percent of our state’s population, the promise of “justice for all” can be empty.
When someone is charged with a serious crime, they have a constitutional right to a lawyer if they cannot afford one. But for non-criminal matters, there is no such right.
The consequences can be life altering. For example, you can lose your home, or lose custody of your children, and you have no right to a lawyer if you cannot afford one.
People living in poverty must often make very difficult and seemingly impossible choices with respect to their basic human needs:
Do I pay rent or buy food for my family?
Can I afford the medicine my child needs?
If I don’t have enough money left over to pay my rent, will I be evicted?
These futile choices produce legal problems that foster hopelessness and can drive people further into poverty.
Too often, low-income Tennesseans go into court without the benefit of legal representation. Getting connected to free legal help can be the difference in being homeless or not, suffering continued abuse or achieving protection from abuse, maintaining financial self-sufficiency or being driven into hopeless debt.
Mary called 1-844-HELP4TN, a free statewide legal helpline operated by Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services, asking for advice about an accommodation she needed from her landlord due to a leg injury she suffered in military service.
She described the frustrating experience of having called dozens of organizations seeking help and coming up empty-handed.
Mary was mindful that her PTSD might be triggered if she had to go to court, and she preferred to work out a solution outside of the court system if possible. (continue reading at Tennessean)