La Comunidad Hispana seems like a fairly run-of-the-mill community center. Sitting on a rural highway just outside Kennett Square, Pa., in Chester County, its one-story building has the concrete-and-stone look of a doctor’s office, complete with a waiting area stocked with toys and hushed speaking tones. In fact, La Comunidad contains not only a health care facility, but also social services and adult education. Those programs draw most of its visitors, typically Hispanic workers from Chester County’s mushroom-farming industry. But on one rainy Thursday morning, a woman walked in to inquire about whether her 3-year-old son’s severe autism made him eligible for disability benefits.
Why would she ask this question at a community center? Because she was a client of La Comunidad’s twice-a-month legal clinic. Convening client-by-client in a small conference room that contains a round table and a white-board with a scrawled red outline of the state and national governments focusing on the judicial branches, the legal clinic consists of La Comunidad’s attorney, John Winicov, dressed in a suit and carrying a laptop; an interpreter culled from La Comunidad’s predominantly Hispanic staff; and the client, having undergone an intake interview and waiting list in order to finally get a chance to speak to “el abogado.”
