This MCLE workshop will deal with the recognition and elimination of bias by discussing the legal and social history of whiteness and how this impacts us today on a legal, economic, social, and spiritual level. We will also focus on implicit bias and share bias-reducing strategies that can address how unintended biases regarding race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics undermine confidence in the legal system.
After setting up a framework for how whiteness developed during early periods of settler colonialism in the United States, we will look at how legal rulings have upheld those notions of whiteness and it's relationships with protecting white property, wealth, and power structures. We will also share our thoughts about how the legal profession as an institution perpetuates white supremacy and some ideas about what we can do about it. We will also hold space for a discussion about how our own consciousness around whiteness and white supremacy culture shape our workplaces and lives. Bringing the historical and the spiritual together, we will imagine how we could exist beyond the systems of white supremacy, starting with our daily interactions with out clients, in our workplaces, and elsewhere, and how we are already doing it.
This activity is approved by the California State Bar for 1 Elimination of Implicit Bias MCLE credit.
Please email [email protected] for accessibility needs and/or if you can't afford the ticket price.
Presenters
Ricardo Samir Nuñez
Ricardo is a worker cooperative ecosystem development specialist supporting cultural practices, policies, organizations, and systemic changes that allow communities to build beyond the interlocking systems of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. He is currently the Director of Economic Democracy and a Staff Attorney at the Sustainable Economies Law Center where he collaborates on educational programs, legal services, policy advocacy, and regional and national ecosystem development to restore human labor to right relationship with people and the planet. He is board president of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and an at-large board member at the California Center for Cooperative Development and the Southern California Focus on Cooperation. He also became a lawyer without going to law school through California’s Law Office Study Program! Check out Ricardo's Favorite Cooperative Resources here!
Tia Taruc-Myers
Tia is the Sustainable Economies Law Center’s Director of Legal Education. She mostly represents Indigenous land return groups and radical real estate projects, but sometimes provides legal advice to nonprofits who want to adopt the worker self-directed model.
Tia helps organize the Law Center's teach-ins, webinars, legal cafes, MCLE seminars, online resources, and more! Passionate about redistributing power and wealth, Tia spends her time promoting participatory budgeting and community control of resources.
