To the vast majority of people, the word “democracy” evokes electoral politics and voting booths. But what about our day to day experience living in a democratic society? Maurice Mitchell sums up the limitations of our current understanding of democracy in this Nonprofit Quarterly article:

“If most of our waking hours are spent in a hierarchical workplace at work, that isn’t democracy. That is the definition of capitalism. And there should be a tension there between a democratic society and capitalism.” - Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party

The tension is at a breaking point: Amazon warehouse worker organizing squashed; worker unionization on a decline; income inequality at an all time high. And still, what we see across popular culture continues to deify billionaires and grind culture. 

Democratic values must permeate every layer of society because we can’t simply wait for election season to vote our way to liberation. Because bosses control so much of our lives, the most impactful place to start is in the workplace. Worker control and power is a way for people to practice democracy every day.

We’re spending the last week of September questioning workplace hierarchies, discussing shared leadership in the workplace, and more! We’re calling it #Coopalooza Week and we hope you’ll join! 

In the opening to her book “Braiding Sweetgrass”, Robin Wall Kimmerer invites us into the mythic Potawatomi story of Sky Woman. She accidentally falls from Sky World towards dark water below, animals witnessing her distress and offering help in whatever way they could. The result of her fall is the co-creation of our world; a place where the interdependence of humans, plants, and animals could flourish.

Recently, Wall Kimmerer revisited this story and offered different perspectives: 

“In one version, she was pushed. In another she was thrown—not from malice but because she was needed for the sacred task and needed ‘help’ in leaving her beloved home for the next...

What does it take to abandon what does not work and take the risks of uncertainty? We’ll need courage; we’ll need each other’s hands to hold…”

Is our society flailing in free fall or actively jumping into the unknown, agents of our own future? Whether or not Sky Woman jumped or fell, her future might have ended terribly if not for the assistance and care the animals gave her in that moment of crisis. We at the Law Center choose to imagine ourselves as courageously jumping towards a future we choose, despite the uncertainty, because we are “Living the uncertainty, together” as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said. Part of our intention with Interdependence Month is to bring our interdependence into wider focus so we can live into the uncertainty of the future, with the possibility of co-creating a better one.

Imagine a bustling neighborhood where the local grocery and cafe is cooperatively owned. It’s a hub, a meeting place, a point of connection where people come to shop for the week's groceries but stay to chat over a cup of tea. All the investors in the store are neighbors and the worker-owners know them by name. The co-op hosts a yearly fiesta where neighbors and investors get to meet the farmers who grow the food for the coop.

A beautiful image of a sustainable community that’s interconnected and nourishing itself, right? Because we all know that a sustainable economy centers relationships, not transactions. 

Interdependence has been a recurring concept at the Law Center that has evolved into a closely held value. So much so, that we’ve decided to offer a series of events and happenings next month to explore how we rebuild lives, communities, and legal systems on a foundation of interdependence. This will be a space to conjure images like the one above, and more!

As a prelude to Interdependence Month, we’re narrowing in on the individuals in our web of interdependence. Who are the people that hold the Law Center up, push us to strive and think creatively, and support us in all we do?

What can we do to support communities facing anti-Asian violence?  Our colleague Alejandra Cruz took the time to sit with this question after a discussion came up at the Law Center about the increased incidents of violence over the past few weeks.  Many ideas emerged: We could do more to uplift movements working to end anti-Asian violence; we could bring in speakers and educators on the subject; and we could share the history of anti-Asian laws here in the US.

Ultimately, through her reflections, Alejandra reminded us that solidarity across race, ethnicity, class, and gender is fundamental to the solidarity economy movement. We’ve always been doing the work.

In campaigns to liberate housing from the speculative market,
In the inclusive and democratic bylaws of worker co-ops we support,
In the space we hold for other worker-self directed organizations,
In the spirit of all our teach-ins, workshops, webinars, and legal cafes, 
In the political advocacy for marginalized communities to own and control their own energy and power sources, 

Solidarity is integral to the DNA of this organization and this movement.

It’s been an exhilarating month at the Law Center. One of our clients, Jocelyn Foreman is now the first renter in California to purchase her home through the new state law SB 1079! When her home went up for auction last month, Wedgewood Inc. made the $600,000 winning bid to purchase. Wedgewood is the company synonymous with artificial housing scarcity thanks to the organizing efforts of Moms4Housing. Luckily, Jocelyn’s well on her way to raising the funds to match Wedgewood’s bid, which will ultimately allow her to own her home because of SB 1079.

We’ve made it to a new year, bringing hard earned wisdom from 2020.  One insight Law Center staff are holding tightly: Life will never go back to “normal” and this moment is our window of opportunity. As world leaders fumble and traditional power structures fail, space for new ideas and new systems is made possible. We’re stepping up, ready to help shape a more just world. The Law Center is ever more committed to banning land grabs, helping grow cooperative ecosystems, supporting mutual aid efforts, staying attuned to the emergent needs of our community, and much more. So much is uncertain; but we’re facing our work with determination, grounded in solidarity. 

How to remain calm as we move deeper into The Great Turning?  A favorite grounding practice at the Law Center is reading! Here's a list of a few of our favorite books from last year. These books inspired us, fed our spirits, and even made us laugh.

Remember when the pandemic first started? So many of us in the solidarity economy movement were excited to explore and share alternatives to our current extractive and exploitative system. Mutual aid projects popped up all over the United States. We saw pictures of empty freeways under clear blue skies. We put a halt on evictions and foreclosures. Boxes of masks and other medical supplies were sent from Japan to China and then from China to Italy. And those masks came with poems!

Thanksgiving is one of the few times in the year we collectively acknowledge the contributions indigenous people have made to this country, as well as the genocide and land theft they’ve experienced through colonization. But we know acknowledging the indigenous people of this land and their stewardship of this place shouldn’t be a once a year thing. The Law Center’s growing work around re-matriation, banning land grabs, and radical real estate law school is an attempt to center indigenous land rights in all land justice work we do. (And on that note, if you’re an SF East Bay resident, make sure to pay your Shuumi Land Tax!)

How should we even begin to wrap our heads around land reparations and indigenous solidarity? Luckily our friends at Resource Generation made this toolkit (which includes our Brief Guide to Transferring Land) as a place to begin.

The Law Center is overjoyed to welcome four incredible apprentices into the fold. Over the next four years, through learning and practice, our Radical Real Estate Law School aka RRELS apprentices, will work to change how communities access land and housing through a radical reimagining of the law. Their vision is to democratize, decolonize, and decarbonize land and housing, and give life to a future where land justice and universal housing are reality.