Chris is a facilitator, organizer, and attorney focused on land and housing justice, participatory governance, and co-creating liberatory futures. He is Director of Land and Housing Justice at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a democratically-run nonprofit supporting communities to create and control their own sustainable sources of land, labor, and capital. At the Law Center, he co-leads or contributes to the Law Center’s Housing, Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits, Farmland, and Radical Real Estate Law School programs.

He trained to become a lawyer without going to law school through the California Law Office Study Program, passing the California Bar in 2018. Prior to training as a barefoot lawyer, Chris completed an MA in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College, an international transformative learning center near Totnes, UK. His dissertation explored commons-based and community-determined responses to climate disruption in the Global South.

Chris also organizes with grassroots coalitions including the South Carolina Housing Justice Network and Lowcountry Mutual Aid Fund; co-founded the Association of Legal Apprentices; serves on the Board of Directors for the New Economy Coalition and Fresh Future Farm; and facilitates the annual Law and Social Change Jam.

He previously worked with youth in the South Bronx, taught English in Japan, and explored Islam in Senegal; and in between those latter two experiences, he traversed 3/4 of the globe by way of rail, sail, foot, and thumb. He currently lives, loves, and organizes in Charleston, South Carolina.

[email protected]

Roles at the Law Center

Other Projects and Affiliations

• Radical Real Estate Law School
• South Carolina Housing Justice Network (2020-present)
• Lowcountry Mutual Aid Fund (2020-present)
• New Economy Coalition, Board of Directors (2018-present)
• Charleston Democratic Socialists of America (2018-present)
• Nonprofit Democracy Network (2017-present)
• East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (2016-present)

• YES, Jam Co-facilitator and organizer (2014 - present)

  • Emerging & Evolving Economies Jam

  • Law and Social Change Jam

• Defenders of Mother Earth - Huichin (2017-2018)
• Association of Legal Apprentices (2015-2018)

• Legal Apprentice (Jan 2014 - 2018)

  • Supervising Attorney: Neil Thapar, Sustainable Economies Law Center - Food and farm law (2017-2018)
  • Supervising Attorney: Cameron Rhudy, Sustainable Economies Law Center - Securities law (2015-2016)
  • Supervising Attorney: Scott Pesetsky, Smart Wills LLC - Wills and Trusts (2015)
    
  • Supervising Attorney: Linda Alvarez, Discovering Agreement - Contracts; IP (2014)

• UC Gill Tract Community Farm (2013 - 2017)

  • Stewardship Councilmember

• Economic Development without Displacement Coalition (2014 - 2016)

• Bay Area Rights of Nature Alliance (2014 - 2015)

  • Bay Area People’s Tribunal on the Rights of Nature

Publications and articles

• "A Roundhouse is not a gazebo: Awkward moments in radical real estate law", Law and Political Economy project (2022) 
• "Abolish landlords: Tenant organizing in the COVID-19 era", Renegade Paradise podcast(2020)
• "Mutual aid in the wake of COVID-19," Renegade Paradise podcast (2020)
  
• "Now is the time to take radical steps toward housing equity," YES! Magazine (2020)
• "Seeding a 100-year vision for land justice in the Bay Area" (2019)
• "Deepening the Nonprofit Democracy Network: Tools for Collective Self-governance" (2019)
• "Stopping displacement in Oakland through cooperative solutions" (2018)
• "Why the #DefundDAPL movement is about more than divesting from Wall Street" (2017)
• "Impact Story: People of Color Sustainable Housing Network" (2017)
• "Community Development and the Commons" (2016)
• "On the Transition to a Commons-Based Economy," CommonsTransition.org (2015)
• "Self Care, Community Care, and Systemic Change," GEO (2015)

• "Debating the Sharing Economy," Great Transition Initiative (2014)

• "Learning the Law in a Changing World," Shareable (2013)

• "California Passes Bill to Legalize Complementary Currencies," Shareable (2014)

• Development as Unfolding: Permaculture, Rights of Nature, and the Reinhabiting of Abundance (Schumacher College MA Thesis, 2012)

• Mother Nature Network, Local Correspondent (2010-2011)

Personal Interests

• Parenting

• Aikido

• Kayaking

• Direct Action

• Radical imagination
  

• Trees