It has been five months since our meeting at the NLADA Substantive Law Conference in San Jose where we discussed a proposed strategy to coordinate race conscious advocacy in the legal services community. The fact that it took five months to follow up, suggests that the task will be challenging as we all respond to local pressures and demands that swallow our time.

Until we can fund and schedule a conference where we will have sufficient time to discuss and share the newly developing tools of race based advocacy, I would like each of us to begin to share those tools informally on line. Those tools may include:

• GIS mapping for race and opportunity.
• Social Cognition Theory and its implications on the “intent doctrine” and community discussions of race.
• Regionalism as an advocacy approach to leverage racial equity.
• Polling and focus groups reports that may guide our advocacy.
• Community based efforts to elevate discussions of race in communities.
• Review and share literature on racial issues.
• Tools for staff discussion of race.

Local advocates will determine the utility of each of these tools in their communities and hopefully share their experience and application with the group.