At a time when immigrant communities are facing multiple threats and vulnerabilities, it is critical to fill the gap in resources for immigrant cooperatives and to support the leaders who are building economic resilience for their communities.

What if you were forced to leave everything you had ever known and move to a completely new place? What if this new place didn't value your contributions and demonized your community? Unfortunately, that's what's happening now. There is an increasing hostility toward immigrants in our workforce and in our communities. This resentment is pushing immigrants to find new pathways toward economic stability and self-determination.

In the past few years, immigrant-owned worker cooperatives have emerged as a vehicle for asset building and community resilience. Cooperatives are unique in their legal, financial, governance, and management structures, and they need regular support just like conventional businesses. Around the U.S., the growth of immigrant-owned worker cooperatives have outpaced that of cooperatives owned by non-immigrants! Those cooperatives, and more in formation, are seeking technical and legal support but finding little to none.

Immigrants have started building cooperative economies, but they lack culturally relevant and accessible resources to scale. That's why we're collaborating to fill the gap.

Sustainable Economies Law Center and Prospera, two backbone organizations supporting immigrant-owned worker cooperatives, have joined forces and began mapping out how to meet the needs of our immigrant-owned cooperatives! Read here about some of our past work with Prospera. 

Prospera has helped establish more than a dozen immigrant-owned worker cooperatives over the past decade, and in recent years, has developed a range of programs to train and support immigrant leaders and entrepreneurs in developing cooperatives.

The Sustainable Economies Law Center is one of the only organizations in the U.S. that provides free or low-cost legal services and resources to worker cooperatives, and the Law Center is widely viewed as a leader in developing legal structures, policies, and other strategies to support the growth of a worker cooperative movement.

Prospera and the Law Center are now collaborating to develop trainings, events, support networks, clinics, and resources to meet the initial and ongoing legal and technical support needs of immigrant cooperatives. We are planning on rolling out these resources for Spanish and Tagalog speaking cooperatives in the Bay Area that will then be replicated for cooperatives across the country.

Prospera and the Law Center are planning on:

• Building leadership and training peer support providers: We plan on training Spanish and Tagalog speaking cooperative members on legal, financial, governance, and operational matters essential to the success of cooperatives. This will provide a growing team of cooperative members the ability to provide leadership within their own cooperatives and support their peers in other cooperatives. In addition, the Law Center will provide substantial legal training to one or more members of Prospera’s cooperative development team.

• Training lawyers and other professionals to support cooperatives: We plan on providing training to Spanish and Tagalog speaking lawyers and other professionals, in order to begin growing a network of technical support providers. The Law Center has provided similar training to lawyers across the U.S., helping the legal community gain cooperative literacy, but have been unable to connect with bilingual or multilingual lawyers to serve our immigrant communities.

• Hosting regular gatherings and events to serve as a “one-stop-shop” for immigrant cooperative members seeking legal support: At least every six weeks, cooperative members and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area will be invited to attend an event that will combine workshops, discussions, a legal advice clinic, and a space in which cooperative leaders can build community, support their peers, gain access to a wide variety of resources, and build power for a growing immigrant cooperative movement. The Law Center has already provided legal advice to more than 700 entrepreneurs during similar events (called “Legal Cafes”) over the past four years. Early this year, the American Bar Association gave the Sustainable Economies Law Center the Louis M. Brown Award for Legal Access, in recognition that this model of service provision has been highly effective in meeting legal and other needs of low- to moderate-income entrepreneurs. Now, Prospera and the Law Center will collaborate to host similar events in which most or all content and advice will be delivered in Spanish.

• Developing multi-lingual trainings, webinars, videos, online resources, and sample legal documents for immigrant cooperatives: Prospera and the Law Center are collaborating to develop a suite of linguistically and culturally appropriate resources for immigrant cooperatives across the U.S., including highly accessible and engaging legal documents, such as this cartoon LLC Operating Agreement, which was created by the Law Center for a cooperative incubated by Prospera. Resources will be made available on both organizations’ websites and on Co-opLaw.org (a resource site maintained by the Law Center).

• Providing direct, ongoing support to immigrant-owned cooperatives: Both organizations plan on providing critical legal support and technical assistance to cooperatives in the Bay Area and beyond. This would include assistance with matters such as employment law, contracts, entity structure, financial operations, tax, governance, management, member training, workplace culture, and enterprise development.

• Providing support to other cooperative development organizations: A growing number of community-based and economic development organizations have been reaching out to Prospera and the Law Center for help to develop programs to support or incubate cooperatives in immigrant communities. We plan on continuing to provide training and assistance to these organization as they develop their programs.

To address the root causes of wealth inequality and institutional racism, we need to put ownership and control back in the hands of those most marginalized by the dominant economy. We are working with communities across the Bay Area and beyond to create new models of equitable development that build community wealth (not just individual wealth), empower everyday people as agents of positive change, and embed democratic control in the very fabric of the economy. 

Photo Credit: Boss Tweed

In the Bay Area, for example, there is currently no native Spanish speaker providing legal services to immigrant-owned cooperatives and there is no where immigrant cooperative members can go for legal advice, technical assistance, or peer support. Across the U.S., there are very few Spanish-language legal resources, guides, and sample documents for cooperatives. We are here to change that and build the cooperative economy that is centered on those marginalized by our current legal and economic systems.