Happy summer! Here are 10 ways to make Sustainable Economies Law Center part of your summertime fun...

1. Take Action on Homemade Food! The tech takeover of homemade food is up for debate in the California Senate! We are fighting to democratize homemade food, not Uberize it. Read our Op-Ed about it in the Los Angeles Times here. Can you write a letter or make a few phone calls to help us fight the Uberization of homemade food? Click here.
   
   
2. Cook up some food policy with us on July 10! Everyone has policy ideas, including you, right? Want to bring your ideas to life by sharing them, gathering feedback, and strategizing with some seasoned policy advocates? Or maybe you just want to learn and get new ideas? Click here to RSVP for our Food Policy Cafe happening July 10. It’ll start with a DIY Food Policy Teach-in where you will meet experienced food policy advocates, learn about current food policy issues, and find out ways to get involved and make change on a variety of issues impacting the food system. Then we’ll break into groups to discuss ideas and get advice from our policy mentors.
   
   
3. Learn the Law on July 13! We’re building a movement of legal professionals trained to serve the needs of local sustainable economies, so we’re hosting an all-day training called Social Enterprise Lawyering. Come learn how to advise worker cooperatives, nonprofits, food enterprises, social enterprises, and more! This training is pending approval for 5 MCLE credit hours.
   
4. Hang at our Happy Hour, Meet Our Interns, July 18! Come have a beer at our office after work at our Summertime Happy Hour, July 18th, 5pm to 6:30pm. You’ll get to meet our summer interns and learn a little about some of our summer legal research adventures into realms like 401(k) law, finance lender laws, food donation laws, solar tax credits, and so much more!
   
   
5. Meet Our New Superhero, Tia Katrina Taruc-Myers! We can’t believe our luck in having hired Tia Katrina Taruc-Myers to be our new Director of Legal Education! She is already turning our Legal Cafes into a thing of beauty, improving every aspect including volunteer recruitment, training, educational resources, events, and more! Tia is passionate about redistributing power and wealth, and outside of the Law Center, she has been spending her time promoting participatory budgeting (through the Community Democracy Project), worker-owned cooperatives, and economic justice for domestic violence survivors (through Alipato Project, which she founded). Come to one of our events and meet Tia!
   
   
6. Meet our homegrown lawyers: Three of our staff just became lawyers without going to law school, after 4+ years of apprenticing with our staff attorneys! Congratulations to Yassi Eskandari, Chris Tittle, and Christina Oatfield! We believe it’s important to train a new generation of legal professionals to be tuned into the needs of our grassroots economies. Our movement is growing its own lawyers! You can read more about our journey into legal apprenticeships here and meet our new lawyers as they give legal advice in our Legal Cafes! Speaking of that...
   
   
7. Legal Cafes and Teach-Ins: We’ve advised 900 cooperatives, nonprofits, grassroots groups, and micro-enterprises at our Resilient Communities Legal Cafe, and we’ve trained hundreds more with our teach-ins. Need legal advice or want to attend an upcoming teach-in? Here’s our calendar of upcoming Legal Cafes, with cafes coming up July 2, 17, and 31, and August 14 and 28. Many of these Legal Cafes will include teach-ins. For example, on August 14, we’re hosting a Compost Law & Policy Teach-In and Discussion!
   
8. Join Our Legal Professionals Network, NextLegal.org: Across the U.S., legal professionals are emerging to serve the needs of cooperatives, land trusts, urban farms, and other enterprises that create thriving local economies. Now, we’ve created a space for many of those legal professionals to find each other, share ideas, share resources, and build a legal knowledge base to serve the next economy. If you are one of those legal professionals, please join us on NextLegal.org!
   
   
9. Geek out on Permanent Cooperatives: Permanent cooperatives are organizations that spread wealth and power by engaging everyday people in the development and stewardship of critical assets like renewable energy, housing, farmland, and technology. The Law Center is incubating 4 of them! Check out our Concept Paper entitled: Permanent Cooperatives: Piloting Essential Models for Movement-Building and Just Transition.
   
   
10. Binge-watch cartoons: And for the cool summer evenings, curl up with some tea and enjoy some cartoons: The Beatles Economy, Pathologies of Homeownership, Law as Commons, Don’t Uberize Food!, Permanent Community Energy Cooperatives, Community Energy Legal Puzzles, Economy Sandwich, Awkward Conversations With Babies, The Legal Roots of Resilience, People Powered Economies, and Everyone is a Policymaker!
    

We hope to connect with you this summer!