“[Santa Clara is] the Center of What’s Possible, so Let’s Make [Coops] Possible” - Councilmember Debi Davis 

On Tuesday night, over fifty coop members and supporters from all over the Bay Area gathered for a learning session requested by the Santa Clara City Council who later unanimously voted to support the development of worker cooperatives in their city! It was standing room only in the council chambers as a result of Kirk and Marguerite Vartan’s dedication and energy to get this session on the council’s agenda as well as partner and support organizations from across the South Bay. Kirk Vartan is the Founder and General Manager of A Slice of New York, a pizza shop that converted to a worker-owned coop nearly two years ago. Vartan created an impressive and engaging line up of speakers including Hillary Abell of Project Equity, our own Ricardo Samir Nuñez, Sue Lopez, a baker of 19 years from the Arizmendi Bakeries, and Rendell (Ren) Boguiren, a founding member and the board secretary of A Slice of New York pizzeria.

By Sophia Leswing, Law Center Summer 2019 Intern

What does it mean to invest with a reparations lens?

As a UC Berkeley undergraduate student minoring in Public Policy and passionate about racial justice, I frequently peruse the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society website for the latest research on inequity and policies. Last year, I stumbled upon Richard Rothstein’s book: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, which outlines a history of both de facto and de jure government-sponsored racial disenfranchisement in the United States that has resulted in the staggering wealth gap between whites and blacks today. I found the book to be extremely compelling and deeply disturbing. I felt that if politicians [*cough cough* Mitch McConnell] today would only read this book in tandem with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations”, they’d without a doubt understand the need for reparations. 

I’ve become frustrated with the inaction to explore reparations at the national political scale, so I was very energized to hear about people pursuing reparations through their own personal investing habits.

How can we apply our retirement savings to nurture the communities and planet where we plan to retire? 

We are thrilled to announce the launch of TheNextEgg.org, a community of people learning to self-direct their retirement savings into investments that repair injustices, sequester carbon, nurture local enterprises, and create a world that will sustain us into retirement and for generations to come.

The Next Egg is a project co-stewarded by Sustainable Economies Law Center, LIFT Economy, and author Michael Shuman. 

Part of our blog series where our Summer Interns introduce themselves to our communities.

By Tracy Bindel, Law Center Summer 2019 Law Clerk

My name is Tracy Bindel and I grew up in a large family in rural New Mexico. I'm currently a night school student at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, MA where I am studying to become a Cooperative Lawyer. During the day, I am a Spiritual Director working to support white people spiritually who are waking up to their whiteness through a collective called Freedom Beyond. My dad, a long time IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) member, instilled in me and my brothers the importance of valuing labor from a very young age. His influence and growing up near two family farms roots me in the wisdom that people and our planet are always more important than programs or profit. This wisdom has guided me throughout my life and even to intern at the Law Center this summer.

By Jacqueline Radebaugh, Staff Attorney with ABLE Law and Law Center Legal Fellow

Most of you may already know about Sustainable Economies Law Center's Resilient Communities Legal Cafe program, the Law Center's innovative drop-in legal services clinic that happens 3x a month throughout the Bay Area.

What happens when you take the Legal Cafe model and replicate in a mid-sized town in Southwest Ohio, in a community that has never heard of it?

This is the story of how I was able to pull it off, the lessons I learned along the way, and how YOU, too, can launch a Legal Cafe to provide legal support to community-owned enterprises in your town. 

Part of our blog series where our Summer Interns introduce themselves to our communities.

By Savannah Wheeler, Law Center Summer 2019 Law Clerk

My name is Savannah Wheeler and I am a rising second year student at Berkeley Law. I am excited to be joining the Sustainable Economies Law Center team this summer as a legal intern, assisting the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative and the Law Center with legal research and community legal education.

By Erin Baldassari of East Bay Times

Kirk Vartan, co-founder of A Slice of New York, puts a slice of pizza on a plate at his pizza restaurant in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, June 28, 2019. Berkeley will be adding worker co-ops to businesses eligible for loans, providing a new lifeline to companies that have a hard time securing financing any other way. The Santa Clara City Council will host a study session to consider what it can do to support worker-owned businesses. Vartan is hoping Santa Clara will then follow in Berkeley’s lead. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group) 

Excerpt: While employee-owned businesses are a small minority of all companies in the Bay Area and in the nation, it’s a model local cities are increasingly eyeing as one to invest in and sustain. The city of Berkeley became one of the first in the Bay Area earlier this week to directly support the worker-owned business model, when its City Council voted to approve $100,000 over two years to help existing companies as they transition to employee-owned entities. And on Tuesday, Berkeley’s Loan Administration Board will consider changes to a revolving loan fund to make it easier for worker coops to take advantage of the funds, too.

In the South Bay, Vartan has been pushing the Santa Clara City Council to do the same. He helped organize a study session for July 9 that will feature presentations by Project Equity and the Sustainable Economies Law Center, among others. In addition to working with Berkeley and Santa Clara, the law center helped spearhead efforts in Oakland in 2015 that resulted in the city formally recognizing worker cooperatives. A push for financial support from the city is currently stalled, said Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, the law center’s policy director.

Read the full article here.

(Originally published June 30, 2019.)

BERKELEY, CA (June 26, 2019) — Last night, Berkeley City Council adopted a two-year budget committing $100,000 to local worker cooperative development programs and services. The funds will go toward vastly expanding a worker cooperative development pilot program that was launched by the City's Office of Economic Development earlier this year. 

Almost 30 worker cooperative members and advocates attended the City Council meeting to demonstrate their support. 

By Mike Lasusa of Law360

Excerpt: Yassi Eskandari, an attorney and policy director at the Sustainable Economies Law Center in Oakland who completed an apprenticeship in 2017, says her work at the center has included advocating and raising awareness about legal apprenticeships. She often gets emails and phone calls asking about them, she says, but she doesn’t recommend them in every case. “I would caution people who are interested in doing this,” she said. “It’s really challenging.”

An additional obstacle for would-be apprentices is simply finding someone willing to be a mentor. “It is hard to find other lawyers to do this,” Janelle Orsi, the executive director and co-founder of the SELC, told Law360. “It’s a big commitment.”

Read the full article here.

(Originally published June 16, 2019.)

Part of our blog series where our Summer Interns introduce themselves to our communities.

By Sophia Leswing, Law Center Summer 2019 Intern

As a kid I have fond memories walking down the abundant aisles of the local Marin County Civic Center Farmers’ Market with my mother every Sunday. Most mornings were either bright and crisp warmer months or gray and rainy in the Winter and Spring seasons - typical Northern California weather, always mild. I would wander about absorbing the sensory experience - watching my mom chat with Sunny, her favorite mushroom vendor, tasting Tomatero’s famous strawberries, and listening to this week’s local musicians jamming out their favorite tunes.

By Sara Stephens, Law Center Staff Attorney

One of the biggest hurdles cooperatives face is finding legal and accounting help from professionals who understand their business and governance model. Meanwhile, attorneys and accountants who want to support cooperatives have few places to turn for education and mentoring in cooperative law. To address these gaps, we're fiscally sponsoring the Cooperative Professionals Guild!

The Cooperative Professionals Guild's New Horizons and Best Practices for Cooperative Professionals Conference brought together attorneys and accountants for three days to learn from one another’s practices, initiate newcomers into cooperative law and financial topics, and dig into legal and accounting challenges confronting our clients. Our agenda was packed with six sessions ranging from innovative structures for worker ownership and cooperative real estate investment, new tax bill implications for cooperatives, securities law implications of having members in multiple states, and more!

By Tia Katrina Taruc-Myers, Law Center Director of Legal Education

On June 5th, 2019, Yassi Eskandari and Ricardo S. Nuñez of the Sustainable Economies Law Center presented on their experience as apprentices and discussed how to skip law school and go straight into changing the world! We discussed California's Law Office Study Program and reviewed the requirements, lessons learned, and shared resources on becoming an attorney through "reading the law." Check out the video below:

Part of our blog series where our Summer Interns introduce themselves to our communities.

By Nicole Giles, Law Center Summer 2019 Intern

I am a 21 year old Black womxn and the youngest of two children, born and raised in the Bay Area. I graduated from UC Irvine in June 2018 with a double major in Business Economics and Social Policy & Public Service. My interests include philanthropy, policy, nonprofit work and critical race theory. 

While in college I organized political actions at a number of different conferences including the United States Student Association Conference in D.C. and the Students of Color Conference in Irvine. Additionally, as a member of the Black Student Union Demands Team, I helped put forth demands for police abolition on UC Irvine’s campus as a tool for both promoting political education and starting conversations surrounding what fundamental safety and equity looks like for Black students on campus.

By Cameron Rhudy, Law Center Staff Attorney

We launched a network of legal and tax practitioners at law4economicdemocracy.org to cultivate a new landscape that supports community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment.

BERKELEY, CA (May 29, 2019) — Last night, Berkeley City Council approved a budget referral that would commit $80,000 per year for two years to worker cooperative development services. The final number is still subject to change until the budget process draws to a close on June 25th. If adopted, this will be the City’s biggest investment in worker cooperatives to-date.

Sustainable Economies Law Center and partners preparing for public comment. Left to right: Yassi Eskandari (Policy Director at the Law Center), Foresta Sieck-Hill (Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives), Laura Smoot (US Federation of Worker Cooperatives), Alison Lingane (Project Equity).