We envision a world where every person has a choice in how they work — where our survival is not dependent on our labor; where cooperation and liberation are embedded in the workplace; where the expansion of care is a universal, unconditional social good.

We honor the labor that invigorates and replenishes life and relationships and makes work more pleasurable and meaningful. We dream of a future where our work nourishes all life.

Over the past few years, there’s been a surge of energy and organizing to increase worker power. Despite the hopeful growth of unionization and worker coops, the forces of extractive capitalism continue to shape our choices in how we labor and how we can organize to meet our needs through collective action. The dramatically shifting landscape of labor rights and worker power inspired the Law Center’s Labor Circle to spend the past few months in study, discussion, and play to explore a transformative vision of labor. Our explorations have seeded the discussions, trainings, and offerings we will share with our community through #TheFutureOfWork events in May. 

We hope you will join us to explore topics such as:

• Building values-aligned, worker-directed organizations through the Nonprofit Democracy Network.
• Immigrant-led cooperatives creating safe, flexible work, by co-owning and managing their own workplace. 
• Holistic approaches to work focused on both waged and unwaged labor. 

As part of our grassroots fundraising campaign, starting on May 1st, the Law Center will be hosting a month of events for movement lawyers, labor organizers, social justice organizations, law students, legal apprentices, solidarity economy practitioners and activists who are interested in learning about ways we can create supportive structures for liberatory workplaces within the labor and cooperative movements and beyond. Sign up now to join us for these May events!

Also in May, we’ll be working to raise $25,000 to support this important work. 10% of your support during our May campaign will go directly to our Solidarity Partner, Somos Tierra Campesino Collective!

Somos Tierra Campesino Collective (Website Coming Soon!) is a group of migrant campesinos in Sonoma County, California, working to incubate a farmworker-owned farming enterprise and acquire the land base for long-term worker-empowerment and sustainability.

The Collective has three goals:

1) Creating a culturally appropriate entity that can hold land.

2) Securing and transferring land to the collective as a form of reparations.

3) Supporting the land-endowed entity to design and build a culturally appropriate worker-led organization that will farm and steward the land.

In California today, the bulk of agricultural workers are migrant farmworkers.  The sustainable agriculture movement often overlooks these farmworkers as critical partners in the journey towards food systems transformation. Liberating labor is a form of liberating the land. When farmworker communities are allowed to determine their own work and synchronize it with the health and wellbeing of the land, then our food systems on the land will be truly transformed.

Please check out our calendar of events and forward this email to anyone you think would be interested in joining.

We hope to see you there!

Special thanks to #TheFuturOfWork Sponsors!