What's in a name?
Every nonprofit needs an origin story.
With Maxwell Commons, we have an opportunity to address the justice gap in the U.S. immigration system using a hub-and-spoke model, where community-level innovation is powered through coordinated, collective action. Simply put: we want to solve a national crisis of inaccessible legal services through local initiatives.
With that in mind, we’ve embedded local immigrant history—and the values we’ll work to uphold as an organization—into the name, through reference to Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market. For one, we’re starting this journey from my home in Chicago, so a local nod to the “Ellis Island of the Midwest” felt appropriate. But even more so, the Market and its history is a uniquely American story of immigrant entrepreneurship, cultural exchange, and community-building that’s worth sharing.
As for Commons: it represents a commitment to professional collective action. A traditional commons was a set of community-managed resources, often in the form of ‘common land’ used mutually by local residents for cattle grazing, fishing, foresting, etc.
In a modern context, data and digital commons are an intriguing option when developing a solution that requires access to sensitive or privileged data (e.g. medical technology). These frameworks will help as we build and share tools, knowledge, and services that are 1.) easy to access, 2.) transparent in development, and 3.) permissive in their use.
More Than a Market
Maxwell Street first appeared on a city map in 1847, built by Irish immigrants while constructing the area’s first railroads and named after Dr. Philip Maxwell, an Army surgeon who was stationed at Fort Dearborn the previous decade. The fort was a precursor to the city’s founding, located at what is now Chicago’s Magnificent Mile (near the intersection of Michigan and Wacker) before it was decommissioned by the Army in 1837.
Just a few miles southwest of Fort Dearborn, Maxwell Street started as a simple commuting road made of wood planks. But from this humble origin, it evolved into a multi-cultural, inclusive neighborhood district where economic opportunity was widely accessible and diversity was celebrated.
The market was first established in the late 1800s by Jewish immigrants who had fled persecution in Eastern Europe, and by the 1920s it was one of Chicago’s largest, most diverse economic centers. Along with newly-arrived immigrant communities, the area attracted southern Black families who moved to Chicago during the Great Migration.
Everything Dope
What made Maxwell Street so remarkable wasn't just the stuff sold there, but the human connections it encouraged and the knowledge shared. As Chicago historian Shermann “Dilla” Thomas likes to say: “Everything dope about America comes from Chicago”—and the Maxwell Street Market is no different:
Products and businesses that developed in the area include Vienna Beef, a local favorite that supplied the kielbasa for the namesake Maxwell Street Polish, and other encased meats, sold by many of the market’s food vendors.
The ‘Chicago Blues’—an amplified version of acoustic blues music that used new, electric instruments—was championed by artists like Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley, and eventually evolved into rock n’ roll. Famously, Maxwell Street merchants invited Black musicians (many of whom had migrated from areas like the Mississippi Delta during the Great Migration) to play in front of their shops—and even hook up their instruments to the stores’ electricity!
The market embodied American innovation at a fundamental level. It drew would-be entrepreneurs, and represented a shift as the spending power of immigrant and minority communities gained recognition. Importantly, the market was “A multi-cultural phenomenon, immigrants could take their cash to where they were welcomed and accepted.”
As Phil Ranstrom, a documentarian of Maxwell Street, noted:
"You could walk down Maxwell Street in its heyday during the 1920s to the 1940s and you'd hear 50 different languages being spoken. Here we had the integrated neighborhood in the most segregated city in the country."
This history parallels our mission at Maxwell Commons. Our goal is to create spaces where individuals—immigrants in particular—can access justice in the U.S. regardless of immigration status, background, income level, or geographic location. A modern, legal parallel to what Maxwell Street provided for previous generations.
Understanding the Commons Approach
A commons is a way of organizing community resources that exists "beyond market and state.” This ‘third way’ of managing collective action across our society and economy differs from both market-based and bureaucratic government organizations. Applied to a legal system and the people involved, the commons framework gives us an intriguing alternative to traditional legal services delivery and professional education programming.
The digital and information commons concepts are particularly relevant to Maxwell Commons' mission—the shared information, knowledge, and cultural resources created and maintained online. Unlike physical resources that can be depleted through overuse, digital commons often become more valuable when widely accessed and contributed to. Examples like Wikipedia, open-source software licensing, and open-access research repositories show this is possible.
“Studies on the commons include the information commons with issues about public knowledge, the public domain, open science, and the free exchange of ideas -- all issues at the core of a direct democracy.” – Digital Library of the Commons, Indiana University Libraries
With Maxwell Commons, we want to blend three overlapping prongs of a ‘legal commons’, specifically designed to address the justice gap in the U.S. immigration system. In an upcoming post, we’ll look at these 3 prongs in more detail to understand how an open exchange of information, and collective knowledge-sharing, is core to this plan.
Why the Commons Framework Matters
The current state of the U.S. immigration legal system is a result of failures in collective action. The private legal market, supported by poorly-funded ‘safety net’ legal aid services and pro bono volunteer work, can’t adequately meet needs. As the access to justice community has documented, millions of low-income people appear in civil courts each year without legal representation and with little information or data to help navigate these systems and the many decisions involved.
The commons approach can serve as a third option—and an ethical beacon that challenges the scarcity and zero-sum mindsets that are prevalent in law. By building shared resources, technology infrastructure, and service delivery models that operate outside traditional constraints, we can grow system-wide capacity in legal services by actively rejecting the artificial competition for limited resources.
From Local to National Impact
Just as Maxwell Street created economic opportunities for generations of Chicago immigrants, we want to build a national infrastructure that supports immigration legal services regardless of geography. Our three-pillar approach creates a shared foundation to encourage further collective action and community-building.
The current shift in technology development related to ‘legal work’ allows us to take a new approach to access to justice, where we can create tools to support the millions of legal issues that go unaddressed in the U.S. every year. By applying commons principles to these innovations, we can better ensure they stay focused on public interest needs, rather than on solely commercial incentives.
A Collective Resource
Just as Maxwell Street brought together diverse communities through commerce and culture, Maxwell Commons will serve as a collective resource hub for connection and innovation. We acknowledge the justice gap in U.S. immigration isn't just about lack of resources—it's about their uneven distribution and inequitable access.
While the original Maxwell Street Market has undergone many changes over the decades, its core spirit of providing welcoming opportunity for newcomers is just as relevant and sorely needed today. With Maxwell Commons, we want to help carry this legacy forward.
Join Our Community
The problems we face are national in scale, but the solutions must be both local and scalable. Just as Maxwell Street created opportunity for thousands of Chicago immigrants, Maxwell Commons will work to ensure that immigration legal resources are available to the communities where they're needed.
I invite you to join and support us in building this commons—a shared space where innovation meets equity, and where access to justice becomes part of our collective responsibility.
Maxwell Commons is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in formation based in Chicago, with a mission to increase access to immigration legal services in underserved communities through professional education, technology, and affordable legal representation.