NEJA History

        National Equal Justice Association (NEJA) was founded in 1981 by the Reverend Arthur G. Elcombe, Ph.D., and Barbara Elcombe, as well as attorneys and other volunteer activists with decades of experience in the struggle for justice and civil and constitutional rights.  NEJA’s founders saw the need for a national effort that could back struggles for equal justice at a local level.  Toward that end they founded NEJA as an all-volunteer, independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation.  No one is paid a dime.

        NEJA works to defend the principles of the United States Constitution, primarily by providing assistance nationwide for local causes with constitutional implications.  The Declaration of Independence says that we have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; yet many Americans live under the death sentence of hunger, cold and ill health.  They will die prematurely.  The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is reduced to meaningless rhetoric where the means to maintain life are not available.  The right to secure those means becomes the focus of the struggle for equal justice.

        NEJA supports the struggle of low-income and minority workers and other community and professional groups in their struggle for justice.  A primary aspect of our mission is self-help ― those experiencing problems must be part of building solutions! NEJA provides funding, publicity and organizational advice to non- and not-for-profit groups.

        A priest for over sixty years, Rev. Elcombe was a veteran social activist and a pioneer in Pastoral Counseling, who worked as a chaplain at various hospitals, including Bellevue Hospital in New York City. After moving to San Diego, California, Elcombe helped found San Diego’s Planned Parenthood in 1962. He became the Executive Director of the Episcopal Community Services, where he promoted and expanded the multi-service programs, including social services, counseling, a rehabilitation program for ex-prisoners, vocational counseling and chaplain services for juvenile centers and for the county jail. He then founded the Interfaith Counseling Institute, serving both clergy and laity. 

        Barbara Elcombe was a long-time community activist, who helped forge Head Start in South Carolina in the late 1960s. After moving to San Diego, Barbara assisted programs aiding runaway teenagers, including becoming a foster parent to two teenage girls herself.  She worked with the Youth Crisis Intervention Center under the auspices of the Youth Authority and Runaway Prevention Program of the San Diego Welfare Department, then with EPIC, another crisis intervention center, and finally with The Bridge, a home for runaway teenagers. In the 1970’s, she and Rev. Elcombe organized low-income workers as a volunteer.

        The Elcombes traveled to the east coast and learned about other grassroots struggles for justice, including joining a nightly candlelight vigil on Long Island to support inmates on a hunger strike to demand decent health care and treatment for tuberculosis in the jail.

        Realizing that conditions were equally bad for poor and minority residents throughout the country, the Elcombes organized attorneys and concerned community residents in San Diego to build the basis for a national organization to publicize, support and provide aid to local struggles. , In 1981, they founded National Equal Justice Association (NEJA), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in San Diego. Rev. Elcombe assumed the role of NEJA President, and Barbara became Secretary of the organization.

Lying in Lyons:  NEJA’s First Nationwide Appeal

        In 1981, NEJA was contacted by the ad hoc Citizens Committee to Save Water Street (CCSWS), a group of tenants, homeowners and small business people attempting to save their homes and businesses from illegal evictions and “redevelopment” in Lyons, New York.  CCSWS’s President Abraham “Abie” Rodriguez, a seasonal worker who had spearheaded a vigorous, high profile effort to save their homes, had been framed on bogus charges meant to stop him from organizing and to tarnish the group’s efforts.  NEJA issued a nationwide appeal through its first pamphlet, entitled “Lying in Lyons,” to free Rodriguez from jail.

        The Village of Lyons had obtained a HUD grant to “redevelop” low-income areas of the town.  It used the funds to illegally displace and evict residents.  After Rodriguez began leading the charge against the Village, they arrested him for allegedly setting fire to a building on Water Street. 

        When the fledgling Finger Lakes Equal Justice Association (FLEJA) in Rochester offered assistance to show that Rodriguez could not have set the fire since he was thirty miles away at work at the time and had witnesses to prove it, the prosecution changed the charge to second degree arson, claiming that he had paid a known arsonist to set the fire.  The prosecution gained a conviction and the court sentenced Rodriguez to 14 years in prison, but on October 30, 1980 the New York State Appellate Court unanimously overturned his conviction.  He remained in prison and faced a new trial in the original venue.  Rodriguez’s retrial further polarized an already divided community.  NEJA’s assistance with national publicity shining a spotlight on the local actions was instrumental in protecting Rodriguez and the other organizers during this tense period. To no one’s surprise but everyone’s outrage, Rodriguez was again convicted after a court official walked the jury by the site of the burned-out building every day on the way to the courthouse.  That was just one example of the maneuvers calculated to reap maximum prejudice.  NEJA sponsored Rodriguez’s appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the matter.

Heimbach Decision Establishes Legal Precedent

        At the same time the attacks were going on against Rodriguez, Mark Heimbach, an organizer with a local farm worker organization that provided meeting space and organizational advice to the growing CCSWS, was evicted from his office and jailed without legal proceeding for renting premises in a building with building code violations.  Heimbach filed a civil rights lawsuit, leading to the landmark federal appellate court decision in Heimbach v. The Village of Lyons, setting precedent for suing government officials, including judges, under the civil rights statutes. NEJA publicized the gains in this case.

NEJA moves to a permanent location in San Francisco

        In 1983, NEJA moved its office to San Francisco, California, purchasing a building centrally located in the city, within walking distance of City Hall.  NEJA has functioned from this location ever since, hosting delegations and groups visiting from around the country, holding open houses and sponsoring presentations for its volunteers, other organizations and its supporters.

The Philadelphia Question

        NEJA approved an emergency disaster relief request from a local self-help service worker organization in Philadelphia the night of May 13, 1985.  That was the day Philadelphia city police, with state and federal authorities, dropped a C-4 phosphorescent bomb on a row house in the black working class neighborhood of Cobb’s Creek, killing six adult members of an organization called MOVE and five children and destroying nearly three city blocks.

        Throughout 1985 and 1986, NEJA collected and organized an all-volunteer airlift from Oakland, California of more than 20 tons of relief supplies for stricken Philadelphia, meanwhile supporting an independent Philadelphia citizens’ group investigation into what had led up to such gross violations of human rights and to multiple constitutional violations.  Local, state and federal officials suppressed information throughout their investigation, finding no city or other government official accountable.  NEJA published “The Philadelphia Question: From Rizzo to Cobbs Creek” to address these issues. The “Philadelphia Question” remains unanswered in regard to who was responsible for the deaths and mass destruction of that fateful Mother’s Day, 1985, which paved the way for later law enforcement storming of premises and killing inhabitants without adherence to constitutional due process at Waco and on Ruby Ridge.

Rodney King Protests

        In 1992, NEJA provided support to residents of Los Angeles who requested legal advocacy where thousands of people were illegally arrested during the protests after the “not guilty” verdict given the four L.A. Police officers charged with the beating of African-American motorist Rodney King.  The acquittals resulted in the eruption of the largest civil unrest in U.S. history, with protests breaking out in every major city across the county under the slogan “No justice, no peace.”  The California State legislature suspended constitutional rights for over 18,000 people arrested when it passed an emergency law more than tripling the allowable number of days that detainees could be held prior to arraignment from 48 hours to seven business days.  The inaugural issue of the NEJA Bulletin came out at that time, specifically to get the truth out about the King case and subsequent protests. NEJA helped build a chapter of Southern California Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals, a volunteer organization of lawyers, paralegals and others. The organization provides pro bono legal advice and information to low-income and minority residents to this day.

NEJA publications

        In 1995, NEJA issued an eleven-pamphlet series including “Prison Labor Today: The Crime of Modern Slavery,” and an updated version of “Lying in Lyons,” as well as papers providing critical insight into government policies and programs such as the War on Drugs, enterprise zones, health care and the press.

        Gail Williamson, a graduate of Bowdoin College, who after working as a supervisor for the legal publisher Matthew Bender, Inc., became an administrator for a variety of community groups. While working with organizing drives of low-income workers, Williamson first met the Elcombes in 1983 on a tour they were doing to the East Coast.  They told her then about NEJA and  maintained contact over the years, inviting her to volunteer with NEJA.  Williamson joined the NEJA staff as a full-time volunteer in 1998.  She also became a member of the NEJA Board of Directors, becoming NEJA's Secretary/Treasurer and now the Association's Director and the publisher of the NEJA Bulletin. 

Campaign to Abolish Prison Slave Labor

        NEJA volunteers held an informational table at the Critical Resistance conference at the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 1998, as part of expanding its Community Education Campaign to Abolish Prison Slave Labor and for Prisoner Justice.  They met representatives of dozens of prisoner and criminal justice organizations, writers, and other concerned residents interested in NEJA’s campaign, including Ruth Rittenhouse Morris, an internationally known teacher, academic sociologist, social worker, community organizer and active promoter of restorative justice NEJA also met Dorothy Proctor, the Canadian survivor of LSD and other drug experimentation in Kingston Prison for Women in Ottawa, Canada, who had filed a lawsuit against the federal government and Correctional Services Canada. 

        Morris wrote several articles for the NEJA Bulletin and joined NEJA’s Advisory Board, and in May 2000, invited NEJA’s founders to join delegates from 21 nations to participate in the Ninth International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA IX) held at Reyerson Polytechnic University and the Metropolitan United Church, Toronto, Canada. Art and Barbara Elcombe traveled to Toronto for that conference.

        NEJA collaborated with professors at the City College of San Francisco, the University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University to speak to students about the realities of prison slave labor as it affects poor and minority neighborhoods. NEJA speakers talked about the difficulties ex prisoners have finding living wage jobs, and the other economic impediments they face.  They then detailed what it is going to take to achieve justice for prisoners. On September 28, 2014, NEJA spoke to the Contra Costa County Central Labor Council about prison slave labor, gaining several new supporters. The Peace, Justice and Hunger Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of California supports this campaign. (For more information see Campaigns: Prisoner Justice).

            NEJA supported Prison Policy Initiative’s (PPI) victorious nationwide campaign to cap fees that phone companies can charge prisoners and their families under monopoly contracts they have with jails and prisons. NEJA is now supporting PPI’s ongoing campaign to end prison gerrymandering and to fight restrictions on in-person prison and jail visitation.

Victory for Migrant Workers

        NEJA provided support to farm workers organizations and an all-volunteer organization of legal professionals to sue the State of California for illegally doubling the rents on state-run migrant housing camps in 1996 and 1997, affecting 12,000 migrant farm workers.  This decade-long, historic class-action lawsuit resulted in recovering the overcharged rents for a majority of the migrant workers, plus interest, as well as funding upgrades to the migrant housing camps for the workers and their families.

Ongoing Support Efforts

        NEJA is assisting groupings in multiple regions of the country to develop long-term, programmatic solutions. NEJA supports and promotes efforts for farm worker justice, health care access, disaster relief, alternative press and independent publications, community renovation and office reconstructions projects and prisoner justice: For example, NEJA has supported:

• Programs providing free legal advice and information to low-income workers, homeowners and small businesses facing foreclosure or eviction, as well as legal assistance to residents of Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.

• Grassroots organizations built by and for migrant and seasonal farm workers with self-help survival and supplemental benefit programs addressing everything from employment discrimination, unpaid wages and the right to medical care and to potable water, and clean and safe housing while tackling the root causes of growing poverty among low-income and minority workers.

• Budget programs to narrow the growing income/expense gap plaguing low-paid temporary, domestic, in-home attendant care and other service workers unable to keep food on the table while also paying their water or utility bills and rent.

• Programs providing free-of-charge general medical, dental and optical sessions as well as medical education and information sessions stressing preventive health topics for uninsured and underinsured Americans lacking access to preventive medical or dental care.

NEJA Community Partner of University of San Francisco

        On October 11, 2011, NEJA was designated a Community Partner by University of San Francisco’s (USF) Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, expanding its ability to provide opportunities to USF students for participation and learning.  NEJA and the Center developed the relationship after NEJA Secretary-Treasurer Gail Williamson, with NEJA volunteers and USF students, met with McCarthy Center representatives.

The Dangers of Fracking

        On September 28, 2012, NEJA launched an Environmental Film Series to educate communities about the dangers of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” starting with a showing of the documentary Gasland, as part of NEJA’s campus campaign to locate and further involve students and others interested in the struggle for social and environmental justice. Gasland graphically depicts the devastating effects of fracking, to extract oil and gas using high pressure water and chemicals to break up rock. Fracking poisons millions of gallons of water and contaminates the land and air with the release of methane gas, causing illness and even death to people and animals.

        Rose Braz, Climate Campaign Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, contributed an article to the Winter 2013 issue of the NEJA Bulletin, “Fracking Boom Threatens California:  Dangerous Drilling Technique Endangers State’s Air, Water.”

        This environmental campaign has expanded into a Community Education Campaign for Social and Environmental Justice to build awareness and inspire action toward converting to 100% renewable energy and to implement sustainable development. NEJA joins together those in low-income communities hit hardest by environmental degradation with the scientists and organizers leading the environmental movement in a comprehensive approach, including an end to fossil fuel extraction and to the provision of living wage jobs.

        In 2014 NEJA partnered with the Environmental Studies Department at the University of San Francisco in showing Gasland and holding a question and answer period afterwards.  NEJA representatives are continuing to speak and hold informational tables at university and colleges, and to attend regional, national and international conferences and forums and other community events and rallies.  The Foundation for Sustainability and Innovation has supported NEJA’s environmental campaign since 2014, and in 2016, The Shugar Magic Foundation joined NEJA’s campaign as well. (For more information, See Campaigns: Campaign for Social and Environmental Justice).