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!
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Find Sustainable Economies Law Center's events below!
Wednesday, August 27, 2025 at 01:00 PM PDT · $5.00 USD
WebinarMCLE Ending Zoning’s Focus on the Family
An MCLE webinar addressing zoning law’s exclusion of non-family groups, proposing policy changes to support inclusion of non-family groups, and showing how this policy change can support California’s housing production goals.
This activity is approved by the California State Bar for 1 MCLE credit.
Please email [email protected] for accessibility needs and/or if you can't afford the ticket price.
Presenters
Jay Cumberland - SELC's Labor and Housing Attorney
Jay believes political theory, social movement theory, and an international perspective must inform his work supporting housing cooperative conversions and worker cooperative conversions. These conversions are, after all, political exercises happening in social spaces around the globe. Learning about Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi somewhat immediately propelled Jay into this work. He believes there’s a thick relationship between that introduction to cooperative economics and politics and the way he approaches his present work. Jay’s approach finds less excitement in creating things from scratch than in making existing things different. In a world without unoccupied political space, he believes it is not only exciting but also necessary to learn to travel through what exists to arrive at our imagined futures.
Jay received a B.A. with a double major in Philosophy and Religion from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama and a J.D. with a Social Justice and Public Interest Concentration from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He misses intermittent and unexpected Mississippi thunderstorms but has grown to love the ever-steady cycle of fog and sun in the Bay. He loves working with his hands (typing doesn’t count). He comes by that honestly. His dad insisted he be equally good at stringing barbed-wire fences and at stringing together words. Hopefully that combination helps Jay play a role in creating a world, as the Zapatista’s say, in which many worlds exist.
This event is sponsored by:
Wednesday, September 03, 2025 at 12:00 PM PDT
Online via Zoom in Oakland, CAOnline 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, September 17, 2025 at 10:00 AM PDT · $50.00 USD · 1 rsvp
ZoomFundraising (Module 9 Collaborate to Co-Liberate -C2C)
Often, fundraising roles in our movement homes and nonprofit organizations can be a site of unspoken power accumulation. As we lean into practicing more liberatory collective governance, how do ensure our fundraising practices align with our governance practices? How can we acknowledge how power is concentrated by those who are closer to money in an organization , and what ways can we consider to share or distribute that power when possible? How do we talk to funders about our shared leadership structures? And how can we share the work of fundraising collectively?
Join our friends from Justice Funders for Collaborate to Co-Liberate Module 9: Fundraising. Together we’ll explore models for fundraising within collectively managed organizations, and how to think about distributing power and responsibility as it relates to fundraising without compromising our ability to resource our critical work.
This offering is essential for:
- Activists and changemakers with organizations who want to demonstrate new ways of fundraising that align more closely with aspirations for collective governance
- Organizations practicing liberatory governance who want to align their fundraising strategy and practices with their shared leadership goals
- Resource mobilizers and folks in fundraising/resourcing roles within liberatory organizations who want to more meaningfully share and distribute power in these roles when possible
Includes a Follow up Q&A Oct 1 10-11:30 PT
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 view the other events in the series click here.
Thursday, September 18, 2025 at 12:00 PM PDT
Online via Zoom in Oakland, CAOnline 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, October 15, 2025 at 10:00 AM PDT · $50.00 USD · 5 rsvps
ZoomConflict Resilience (Module 10 Collaborate to Co-Liberate -C2C)
We’ve all experienced it - conflict in our movement homes that drains collective resources, overwhelms our ability to serve our collective purpose, and at times tears us apart. For many movement organizations practicing liberatory self-governance, lack of conflict resilience is one of the biggest barriers to organizational health, striving, and impact.
What is conflict resilience, and how can our solidarity economy and movement organizations build a comprehensive conflict resilience strategy that can hold many different kinds of conflicts? How can create right-sized conflict processes for different conflict needs? And how can we prepare ourselves to hold escalated conflicts - those conflicts that often require immense organizational and interpersonal resources - without losing our resilience?
Join our friends at Harmonize for Module 10 of Collaborate to Co-Liberate 2025: Conflict Resilience. Harmonize will overview their well developed comprehensive conflict resilience approach, and then focus on offering skills, approaches, and resources for holding escalated conflict in our movement homes.
This offering is essential for:
- Organizations practicing liberatory governance who have struggled with internal conflicts and are looking for new, clear, and effective approaches for holding conflict well
- Conflict workers, changemakers, organizers and activists who want new frameworks and tools to steward movement groups through conflict
- Movement practitioners committed to building organizational resilience in the movement left, so our movement homes can be strong, effective and impactful
Includes a follow up Q&A Oct 29, 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 view the other events in the series click here.
Wednesday, November 12, 2025 at 10:00 AM PST · $50.00 USD · 4 rsvps
ZoomLeadership Growth and Development (Module 11 Collaborate to Co-Liberate -C2C)
Spreading leadership and responsibility across our organizations through the practice of democratic governance is one key way to break down hierarchies and counter the historical concentration of power in a few hands. At the same time, leadership is a capacity that must be intentionally nurtured and developed - and intentional leadership development often requires clearly defined developmental hierarchies. How do we navigate these tensions in our movements and organizations committed to liberatory practices and democratic governance? What tools and approaches can we practice to ensure that everyone in our movement organizations receives support and accountability to support their own growth, without relying on old models that equate “leadership” with an outdated hierarchical “power over” model?
Join members of the Momentum Community of practice, bringing their learnings from work in the IfNotNow Movement and Movimiento Cosecha, for Collaborate to Co-Liberate Module 11: Leadership Growth and Development. Together we’ll explore tools and frameworks you can use to nurture an explicit set of leadership development practices throughout your organization and movement, in both 1:1 and group contexts. We’ll explore how to get explicit about what leadership means in your context, grounded in your people and values - in particular, we’ll discuss how to identify the skills that are needed for success in your workplace or movement, and how to articulate plans for ensuring your members develop these skills effectively. We’ll also explore the broader conditions and culture that we believe is needed in your movement and/or organization to support ongoing and robust leadership development.
This module is essential for:
- Activists, organizers, and changemakers within organizations who want to democratize leadership while ensuring clear, meaningful pathways for leadership development
- Organizations practicing liberatory governance who have experienced the tensions of dismantling hierarchies in ways that created leadership gaps
- Movement practitioners who want to strengthen their understandings of how to build leaderful movements
To view the other events in the series click here.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025 at 10:00 AM PST · $50.00 USD · 6 rsvps
ZoomStrategic Visioning (Module 12 Collaborate to Co-Liberate -C2C)
Are the tools we commonly use in nonprofit strategic planning processes – inherited directly from the corporate sector and military – serving us? How often have you experienced lengthy or time intensive strategic planning processes that produce plans that quickly become outdated or irrelevant, or are rarely referenced after completion? Or, alternatively, have you been part of a movement that eschews strategy more broadly, abandoning visioning and planning in response to the urgent immediate needs of our movements?
In this final module of Collaborate to Co-Liberate, join Gopal Dayaneni, co-founder of Movement Generation and movement comrade in many formations (including Climate Justice Alliance, ETCgroup, the Center for Story-based Strategy and People’s Solar Energy Fund) to explore how can we learn to think differently about strategy and strategic visioning in our movements. Learn new frameworks and metrics, informed and guided by liberatory politics rather than military strategy, to consider and measure key strategic concepts like goal setting, capacity assessments, and how to relate strategically as a movement to false promises, real solutions, and what’s politically realistic in our current movement moment.
This offering is essential for:
- Visionaries and strategic thinkers who want more liberatory models for planning and visioning
- Liberatory organizations who have struggled to create impactful, effective strategies to guide their movement work
- Organizers, activists, and movement changemakers who want to sharpen their understanding of strategy in their movement spaces
To view the other events in the series click here.