October is Filipino American History Month, Cooperative Month, and Domestic Violence Awareness Month!

This is Tia here, writing my first blog post for the Law Center! And you know I'm writing about Filipino American History Month for my Fil/Am fam. So here goes. 

Did you know that the Philippines has a strong history of cooperative economics, pre-dating Spanish colonization? For example, bayanihan is the practice of an entire town working together to build or move a house!

At the Law Center, we have three Filipino Americans in our squad! To celebrate Filipino American History Month, we're highlighting our own work, which just so happens to be work that also commemorates Co-op Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month!

Adrien Salazar is one of our board members. He wrote a blog post about Filipino Americans and the cooperative movement back in 2016 when he was still interning with us. Read his blog post to learn about more examples of pre-colonial shared labor agreements in the Philippines as well as examples of current efforts by Filipino Americans to harness the energy of coops!

Our Staff Attorney Charlotte Tsui is a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines, and she joined our team to provide legal support to immigrant-owned cooperatives. She has helped us make our Resilient Communities Legal Cafes more accessible to immigrant communities by contracting with Spanish and Mandarin translators, creating Tagalog translations of our legal resources, and by hosting Legal Cafes in partnership with other community-based organizations like Prospera in Fruitvale and Asian Inc. in San Francisco.

I'm our Director of Legal Education and I identify as Filipina American. Before joining the Law Center, I founded the Alipato Project, a nonprofit org dedicated to raising awareness about domestic violence laws. This month, I organized a teach-in at our Legal Cafe with the Alipato Project to present on Workers’ Rights for DV Survivors. Check out the teach-in video below. 

The password for the video is Janani. 

If you want CLE credit for watching this video, please donate here. 

Also, on October 30th, I'm hosting a Legal Cafe at the San Francisco Women Against Rape office. RSVP here if you need legal advice on how to start a co-op, non-profit, or other social enterprise! 

To help Charlotte and me continue to host our Legal Cafes, please consider becoming a Law Center Community Member by making a monthly donation today!