Upcoming Events

Be part of the movement for more just and resilient economies!We're always cooking up pay-it-forward legal advice, action-oriented workshops, and happy hours with engaging conversations on how to build just and resilient local economies. And we don't only provide in-person events for you to connect with us, we provide online trainings and travel across the country to support grassroots economic empowerment. Don't miss out!

Please, help us get the word out about our upcoming events. Share with your friends or networks on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn! If you're interested in an event, someone you know will probably be interested too. Share the love!

Find Sustainable Economies Law Center's events below!

  • Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at 12:00 PM PST
    Online via Zoom in Oakland, CA

    Remote Legal Cafe

    The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment. 

    If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:

    ❖ Radical real estate law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing? 
    ❖ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
     Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
     Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
     Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
     Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
     Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
     Environmental law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?
    ❖ Worker Self Directed Nonprofits:  How can you run your nonprofit organization more like a worker-owned cooperative?

    Note: We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups. If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Hope ([email protected]) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.

    Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you and your partners to fill out. 

    Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since we're based in Oakland, our event times are listed as Pacific Standard Time.

    Got any questions? E-mail [email protected]!

     

    Only one person per group needs to RSVP.

  • Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 12:00 PM PST
    Online via Zoom in Oakland, CA

    Online Legal Cafe

    The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment. 

    If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:

    ❖ Radical real estate law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing? 
    ❖ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
     Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
     Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
     Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
     Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
     Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
     Environmental law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?
    ❖ Worker Self Directed Nonprofits:  How can you run your nonprofit organization more like a worker-owned cooperative?

    Note: We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups. If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Hope ([email protected]) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.

    Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you and your partners to fill out. 

    Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since we're based in Oakland, our event times are listed as Pacific Standard Time.

    Got any questions? E-mail [email protected]!

     

    Only one person per group needs to RSVP.

  • Monday, December 02, 2024 at 02:30 PM PST · $5.00 USD · 3 rsvps
    Virtual Online

    MCLE: The Legal Ethics of Client Led Legal Work

    Photos of presenters and Event Title

    On December 2, 2024 at 2:30PM PT, we will host an activity approved by the California State Bar for 1 MCLE credit in Ethics. 

    Sustainable Economies Law Center attorneys and legal workers strive towards collaboration with our clients and consider them more like partners, collaborators, or co-conspirators in our work towards democratizing the law. But there are often ethical questions that come up for us as legal workers when our clients push us to think outside the box.

    In this webinar, we invite long term clients Homefulness and Sawalmem, to share how working with us — movement lawyers who follow the clients' lead with regard to legal needs — has been. Also, we will have the Law Center attorneys present on the ethical lessons they've learned through this approach.

    Some questions and topics we might explore during this MCLE:

    ✅ Conflicts of interest and the rules around representing multiple clients working with each other
    ✅ How do we know if we are zealously advocating for the client’s needs vs. prioritizing important relationships between our clients and their partners?
    ✅ How do we know if we are competent to handle certain topics? How do we handle situations where our clients need help and we don’t know how to help?
    ✅ How do we discuss various risks our clients face, without stifling their creativity or crushing their visionary projects?
    ✅ How do we listen to and internalize what our clients teach us about how ridiculous and harmful our legal system is?
    ✅ How do we then think creatively about how to be responsive to what our clients teach us?

    This activity is approved by the California State Bar for 1 MCLE credit in ethics.

  • Wednesday, December 04, 2024 at 12:00 PM PST
    Online via Zoom in Oakland, CA

    Online Legal Cafe

    The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment. 

    If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:

    ❖ Radical real estate law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing? 
    ❖ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
     Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
     Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
     Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
     Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
     Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
     Environmental law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?
    ❖ Worker Self Directed Nonprofits:  How can you run your nonprofit organization more like a worker-owned cooperative?

    Note: We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups. If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Hope ([email protected]) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.

    Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you and your partners to fill out. 

    Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since we're based in Oakland, our event times are listed as Pacific Standard Time.

    Got any questions? E-mail [email protected]!

     

    Only one person per group needs to RSVP.

  • Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at 12:00 PM PST
    Online via Zoom in Oakland, CA

    Online Legal Cafe

    The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment. 

    If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:

    ❖ Radical real estate law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing? 
    ❖ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
     Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
     Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
     Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
     Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
     Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
     Environmental law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?
    ❖ Worker Self Directed Nonprofits:  How can you run your nonprofit organization more like a worker-owned cooperative?

    Note: We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups. If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Hope ([email protected]) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.

    Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you and your partners to fill out. 

    Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since we're based in Oakland, our event times are listed as Pacific Standard Time.

    Got any questions? E-mail [email protected]!

     

    Only one person per group needs to RSVP.

  • Thursday, December 12, 2024 at 12:00 PM PST
    Online via Zoom in Oakland, CA

    Online Legal Cafe

    The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment. 

    If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:

    ❖ Radical real estate law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing? 
    ❖ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
     Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
     Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
     Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
     Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
     Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
     Environmental law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?
    ❖ Worker Self Directed Nonprofits:  How can you run your nonprofit organization more like a worker-owned cooperative?

    Note: We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups. If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Hope ([email protected]) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.

    Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you and your partners to fill out. 

    Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since we're based in Oakland, our event times are listed as Pacific Standard Time.

    Got any questions? E-mail [email protected]!

     

    Only one person per group needs to RSVP.

  • Wednesday, January 15, 2025 at 10:00 AM PST · $50.00 USD · 3 rsvps
    Zoom

    Creating Liberatory Organizations (Module 1a Collaborate to Co-Liberate -C2C)

     

    In our solidarity economy and social justice movement left organizations, we hold ambitious visions for building a more liberatory future.  Many of us are also experimenting with creative organizational structures that allow us to live those liberatory visions more fully.

    Join our friends at Harmonize in the opening module of Collaborate to Co-Liberate 2025 to ask ourselves: what structure will best serve us to achieve our vision in the world?  

    Learn why organizational change fits into our bigger purpose of building the more beautiful world we dream of, and explore ways to maintain equal focus on the goals of internal change and external change, without falling into the key pitfalls of overemphasis on one or the other.

    This offering is essential for:

    • Changemakers building the case for more liberatory organizational structures within their home organizations
    • Organizations committed to creating values-aligned structures in a way that doesn’t compromise their external work in the world
    • Organizations committed to a purpose-driven change journey, in order to establish a solid grounding in the core purpose of building liberatory structures

    Collaborate to Co-Liberate: Structures and Practices for Democratic Organizations (C2C) is a year-long learning journey designed for solidarity economy and  social justice movement left organizations who are building organizations with democratic, participatory, and liberatory leadership structures.  

    To join the entire year-long journey, register here instead of signing up for this one-time event.

    To view the other events in the series click here.

  • Wednesday, February 05, 2025 at 10:00 AM PST · $50.00 USD
    Zoom

    Governance and Scale: What we can learn from Ecology and Global Social Movements (Module 1b Collaborate to Co-Liberate -C2C)

    When thinking about governance in our movement homes, what can we learn from principles of ecology?  How can we build movements that can govern not just within our organizations, but at the appropriate scales necessary for truly transformative change. 

    Join Gopal Dayaneni, co-founder of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project and movement comrade in many formations (including Climate Justice Alliance, ETCgroup, the Center for Story-based Strategy and People’s Solar Energy Fund) for an exploration of core ecological principles that can inform how we build our organizations.  We’ll explore how the ecological principles of “form follows function”, “resilience, diversity and redundancy”, and others can help us think about how to build the deep democracy we need to win.  We’ll also draw on examples from global social movements, informed by eco-feminism, indigenous sovereignty, food sovereignty, land reform and peasant rights models of organizing, to see these principles in practice.

    This offering is essential for organizers, activists, and movement practitioners (new and seasoned) hoping to:

    • Build a sharper, more developed understanding of how to build resilient, effective governance into our movement homes
    • Orient strategically toward governing at different scales in our liberatory movements
    • Draw key lessons from global social  movements
    • Agitate and politicize your movement spaces to build movement organizations that are less captured by the nonprofit sector in the US

     

    This is part two of our opening module of Collaborate to Co-Liberate 2025.

    Collaborate to Co-Liberate: Structures and Practices for Democratic Organizations (C2C) is a year-long learning journey designed for solidarity economy and  social justice movement left organizations who are building organizations with democratic, participatory, and liberatory leadership structures.  

    To join the entire year-long journey, register here instead of signing up for this one-time event.

    To view the other events in the series click here.

  • Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 10:00 AM PST · $50.00 USD
    Zoom

    Holding Change (Module 2 Collaborate to Co-Liberate -C2C)

    Organizational change is hard.  Anyone who has tried to usher in changes in an organization knows that a successful change process requires more than just a new idea for how to do things differently.  

    What skills and approaches are needed to successfully steward a group of people through complex change?  How do you anticipate and navigate resistance to change?  Cna you welcome the wisdom inherent in that resistance without losing sight of the purpose for your change?

    Join our friends at Harmonize for Module 2 of Collaborate to Co-Liberate 2025: Holding Change.  Harmonize will offer concrete tools to steward organizational change processes, as well as strategies for relating to, integrating, and transforming resistance.

    This offering is essential for:

    • Changemakers looking for new, more effective ways to guide change processes in your movement homes
    • Participants in our Collaborate to Co-Liberate learning journey, who will use these tools, along with your coach, to guide change processes through the duration of C2C
    • Organizers and movement practitioners interested in learning new ways to relate to resistance to change in your movement homes

    Included is a Follow up Q&A: March 5th, 10-11:30 PT 1-2:30 ET

    Collaborate to Co-Liberate: Structures and Practices for Democratic Organizations (C2C) is a year-long learning journey designed for solidarity economy and  social justice movement left organizations who are building organizations with democratic, participatory, and liberatory leadership structures.  

    To join the entire year-long journey, register here instead of signing up for this one-time event.

    To view the other events in the series click here.

  • Wednesday, March 19, 2025 at 10:00 AM PDT · $50.00 USD
    Zoom

    People-Centered Facilitation (Module 3 Collaborate to Co-Liberate -C2C)

    From campaign meetings to town halls, student encampments to board retreats, gatherings are crucial spaces across the Left in the U.S. where discourse happens and decisions are made. What happens in our meetings has a direct impact on our material wins because we rely on the conversation to shape the group’s priorities, analysis, and planning. How can we facilitate skillfully to support full and broad participation in our meetings, guide groups to resist compromising with each other out of avoidance, and make transparent and agile decisions?

    Join our friends from AORTA for Module 3 of Collaborate to Co-Liberate, to learn concrete skills for people-centered facilitation in organizations practicing liberatory governance.

    This offering is essential for:

    • Activists, organizers and changemakers who want to build skills to attune to the way power and identity operate in group processes in your movement homes
    • Organizations practicing liberatory governance who want to enhance their facilitation toolbox in order to hold group processes with more ease

    Includes a Follow up Q&A April 2, 10-11:30 PT 1-2:30 ET

    Collaborate to Co-Liberate: Structures and Practices for Democratic Organizations (C2C) is a year-long learning journey designed for solidarity economy and  social justice movement left organizations who are building organizations with democratic, participatory, and liberatory leadership structures.  

    To join the entire year-long journey, register here instead of signing up for this one-time event.

    To view the other events in the series click here.

Thanks to our Partners and Collaborators: