Advocacy Award 2007
Constance L. Rice—Co-Director
The Advancement Project Los Angeles

Connie Rice, co-director of The Advancement Project Los Angeles, is a civil rights lawyer known for successfully tackling problems of inequity and exclusion in unorthodox ways. She will be will be honored as the Advocacy Award recipient for her dedication and successes in improving the lives of disadvantaged Los Angeles communities and her work in expanding opportunity and advancing multi-racial democracy.

As a litigator, Rice has filed and won traditional class action civil rights cases redressing police misconduct, race and sex discrimination and unfair public policy in transportation, probation and public housing. She filed a landmark case on behalf of low-income bus riders that resulted in a mandate that more than 2 billion dollars be spent to improve the bus system. And in 1999, Rice launched a coalition lawsuit that won $750 million for new school construction in Los Angeles—money previously slated for less crowded, more affluent suburban school districts. In her legal work, Rice has led multi-racial coalitions of lawyers and clients to win more than $10 billion in damages and policy changes. Added to the non-litigation work, Rice and her colleagues have led campaigns and bond initiatives that transferred over $25 billion into systems that support the poor.

In her non-litigation work in the 1990s, Rice served as counsel to the Watts gang truce and spearheaded a statewide campaign to save equal opportunity programs. Mayors Tom Bradley and Richard Riordan appointed Rice to the governing board of Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power. In 1998, Rice helped lead a successful campaign to place aggressive reformers on the Los Angeles Unified School District board in order to develop a competent school construction authority to build new schools. In 2003, Chief of Police William Bratton asked Rice to re-investigate the biggest police corruption scandal in Los Angeles history. Rice has also recently been involved with Chief Bratton and Mayor Villaraigosa working on “A Call to Action: A Case for a Comprehensive Solution to LA’s Gang Violence Epidemic.”

Rice is a co-founder of the Advancement Project, a public policy and legal action group that supports organizations working to solve community problems and address racial, class and other barriers to opportunity. Hallmarks of her work include solving problems, reducing conflict, turning opponents into allies, and winning.

Connie has been a friend of Peace Over Violence for many years, and we could not think of a better person to present with the Humanitarian Award in the category of Advocacy.