As we wind down another year, it’s only natural to pause and reflect. This was yet another wildly unprecedented year that brought immense challenges for us all. So, how are we feeling about what we need to stay energized in 2026? Here at the Law Center, we spend a lot of time and resources maintaining our internal resilience. Internal resilience is a measure of our organizational capacity to take care of ourselves and our needs as workers, while building a just economy that will hopefully one day render our current capitalist system obsolete. When the resilience is high, it’s a strong, steady heart beat propelling our work forward.

Internal resilience can wane for many reasons. When colleagues are working in isolation or when conflicts we’ve worked to address, continue to fester, or spread beyond the initial conflict our internal resilience can weaken. And as government repression increases, and the unraveling of the natural world intensifies, individual staff's needs often increase due to personal hardship, which can make it difficult to show up as our best selves to the workplace.

Next year we’ll have offerings drawn from our experience building the internal resilience of democratic organizations, writings on how to practice solidarity, storytelling on how we navigate conflict, and much more. Forward this email to anyone you think might be interested in learning different ways to stay energized in 2026! 

We made so many new resources in 2025!

The need for clear, accessible legal resources was vital this year. Here are just three of more than a dozen new resources we made for our community in 2025. 

• A Legal History of Whiteness
  This workshop addressed the legal and social history of whiteness, and how that history impacts us today.  And explored how implicit biases undermine confidence in the legal system. 
• Worker Focused Cooperative Conversions
  This webinar was designed for lawyers and others interested in supporting workers converting their place of employment to a worker-owned cooperative. It included some history of worker co-op conversions and strategies to negotiate worker co-op conversions focused on the workers. 
• MCLE: The "Nonprofit Killer" Bill and How It Might Affect Our Clients
  In the face of escalating fascism and white supremacy, we engaged in rapid-response research on emerging threats like the “nonprofit killer” bill, H.R. 9495. This webinar demystified the threats posed by H.R. 9495.

If you want access to all the resources and more, check out our 2025 Annual Report! If you like what you see, please donate!

Gather Lucky Charms in 2026

January 21st, 2026 please join us for Lucky Charms for Lawyers Part 2! It will be an hour of treats: short stories, insights, practices, and contemplations to break up the heaviness of law and the legal profession. 

Join “The Future is Collective” discussion

We’re excited to host Niloufar Khonsari  in conversation about her new book, The Future is Collective: Effective Workplace Strategies for Building a Culture of Care. Together we’ll explore many hard-won lessons learned from a decade of immigrant justice organizing with Pangea Legal Services, and hear practical, concrete tools and approaches to building a movement organization that is strategic, impactful and leaderful.

RSVP here to join us January 28th, 2026 from 12pm-1pm PST on Zoom. 

A new film from POOR Magazine

Crushing Wheelchairs is a unique, feature-length film by Poor Magazine and Green Diamond Projects about homelessness in modern America. The film features a cast and crew of currently and/or formerly unhoused residents of the San Francisco Bay Area who brought their real-life struggles and stories to the screen. It is playing in Los Angeles on Wednesday, January 7, 2026  at 2220 Arts + Archives. Buy tickets here and find the location here.

People Skool Seminar in 2026

Poor Magazine's People Skool seminar is being offered in January 2026.

For anyone who would like to learn more about houselessness, and houseless people's solutions to it and how to get involved. More info and apply here. Includes a deep-dive into the medicine of poverty scholarship for folks with race/class/education privilege

We were in the news!

What is Mutual Aid, by Thalia Beaty of AP NEWS

Excerpt:

Often, mutual aid groups collect money and distribute it to people who need it or use it to buy things. Groups should consider how to handle those funds as sometimes they can be flagged as income by a payment processor. The Sustainable Economies Law Center has a guide that lays out multiple scenarios that mutual aid groups might encounter. Mohini Mookim, an attorney with the center, said rules around giving money with no strings attached are generally promising for mutual aid groups.

Read the full article here.

Winter Hibernation

The Sustainable Economies Law Center's office is closed for winter hibernation from 12/24/2025 - 1/4/2026, so we may be slow to respond until early January. We are collectively taking this week to reflect on the past year and refresh ourselves for the coming one, so thanks for your patience and understanding.

For general inquiries, please contact [email protected].