🚨 BIG NEWS: California could finally legalize communal living! 🚨

The Housing Choice for All Act is here! A bold statewide proposal to remove outdated zoning restrictions that punish people for how they live and who they live with.

This legislation would end legal discrimination against non-family households, shared housing, and co-living communities by eliminating the distinction between “dwelling units” and “group housing”, and we’re proud to help lead the charge. Sign on to support here!

A group of twelve people of diverse ages, genders, and backgrounds pose together outdoors on a sunny day, smiling and relaxed. They are standing and kneeling on grass near trees, with a red woven blanket and bones in the foreground. A wooden garden structure and lush greenery are visible in the background, suggesting a communal or rural setting.

Before I became a lawyer, I was a full-time farmer. I had always dreamt of a world where my farming could be embedded into a larger vision of environmental justice based on  rematriation. Rematriation, as many of us have learned from Sogorea Te Land Trust’s definition, is not only a return of land, but more importantly, a return of sacred Indigenous relationships to the land. And it’s one based on Indigenous-women led work, which is meant to highlight the sanctity of nurturing life and connection. During my time as a farmer, a campaign for land access for young farmers was ramping up, and there was virtually no talk about how this campaign would advance rematriation. Instead, many folks envisioned a land access campaign that could take us back to the harsh homestead days, which was only made possible through the forceful removal of Indigenous people and Indigenous cosmologies. It paired well with small-scale farms, which was seen as the ideal mode of production. Homesteading was also the antithesis of Indigenous-women led work. It was a property system that saw survival in isolated self-sufficiency and patriarchy. I was so horrified with this vision that I decided to transition careers by becoming a lawyer to support farming embedded in rematriation and environmental justice. I needed to learn how to create the conduits for giving the Land Back, and, alongside others, learn how to change our relationships to land altogether. Since becoming a lawyer, I’ve refined my vision, though it hasn’t come exclusively through my legal training. A combination of organizing, research, and lots of listening has reshaped my vision, along with asking myself this question: What does intimacy mean when thinking about the land?

Back to the Land

I came to the land because I felt disconnected from my own sustenance. At that time, small-scale farming was the most accessible avenue for me to feel connected. It also felt like an obvious antidote to large-scale corporate farming, with its labor and environmental exploitation, and the feeling of alienation I felt towards my food. There’s an old idiom that says “the farmer’s footprint is the best fertilizer.” I had come to believe that I needed to live this idiom by focusing on a small-scale farm that I could travel, in its entirety, by foot. In a sense, I thought this is what connection to my sustenance meant. But as I began to feel a deeper sense of connection with the landscape beyond the four corners of the property, I started to believe that I could feel something more expansive. I traded my limited feeling of connection with the farm for a larger feeling of intimacy for and with the landscape.

(Background image in title banner drawn by the author)

“Tabi tabi po,” I mumbled to the Filipino forest spirits or “duende” around me as we walked down a dark trail on Isla Verde, Batangas City. I was walking with my two year old daughter and six other Filipino American delegates sent by the Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (FACES) to the Philippines to learn about the campaign to protect the Verde Island Passage. During our five-day visit, we attended six listening sessions organized by Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ). 

“Tabi tabi po,” isn’t something I tend to say while hiking back home in California, but everyone around me was saying it, with an almost religious fervor. It felt too risky not to say it too. The path from our home base to our next meeting was dark, verdant, and overgrown with densely tangled foliage. This is the territory of the duende from whom we were asking for permission to pass. We ask permission by saying “tabi tabi po,” Tagalog for “excuse me.” 

A few hours before we walked down the dark trail on Isla Verde, our host, Ate Diane, gave me a red bracelet. With urgency, she told me I should wear it for “protection.” I learned that unlike most people, Ate Diane can see duendes. She said some of the duendes took a particular interest in my two year old daughter and as her mother, I needed protection. Rubbing my goosebumps away - because how spooky does that sound, right? -  I wore my new red bracelet and showed my respect by saying “tabi tabi po,” like everyone else.

Growing up in the Philippines, I was taught that duendes are fierce protectors of the land. If you honor their kinship, they can help you find food and water. If you disrespect them or their territory, they can make you sick. I have since learned that many Indigenous cultures ask permission from similar mythical beings.

Resisting and Healing from Violence in Our Housing System

The Law Center supports healing from legacies of violence that pervade our housing systems. We do this by partnering with visionary organizations led by poor, houseless, Indigenous, Black and other POC communities usually excluded from power. Informed by those relationships, we envision policy changes and develop legal tools that allow diverse communities (including non-traditional families) to stay rooted in place.

Wood Street Commons Community (https://woodstreetcommons.org/; check out their Instagram too)

Wood Street Commons provides vital sanctuaries of housing and healing for Oakland’s houseless population. It empowers houseless residents to lead, organize, and create dignified solutions for the housing crisis. 

During my 20 years in the legal profession, I’ve had an ever growing feeling that the work of lawyers is disrupting something that should not be disrupted. I don’t believe it can be expressed in words, but I see it expressed everywhere. Perhaps I can offer a picture: 

Last year, I found myself quite captivated by a goose sitting on her eggs. I was struck with how, inside of an egg, liquid was slowly turning into a live gosling. I was struck by how the mother goose herself came into being in the same way, as part of an unbroken chain of millions of years of life creating and nurturing life. 

Whether you view this as divine unfolding or simply as biological facts, this is a flow, a pattern, and a force that we likely all agree should not be disrupted. A goose does not design and assemble her gosling. Rather, she lets life come into being, under her gentle and protective warmth.

By Mohit Mookim, Alejandra Cruz, and Tia Taruc-Myers

In 2024, the Law Center emerged with a new and expanded team of land justice legal workers. As four new staff attorneys were onboarded in mid-2023 — all of whom are passionate about land return work — our team created space to collectively and individually reflect on our land work through a six-month discussion series titled “Becoming the Land.” In that space, and in our regular “Land Eagles” meetings (where we surface strategic and high-level questions about our land work), one theme consistently emerged: the relationship between law and decolonization.

The Law Center strives towards decolonization. We use law to support movements for decolonization, moving with deep respect. But we also aspire to decolonize law itself. How do you decolonize law? Isn't "law" as we know it inextricably linked with colonization? Good questions...

On Sunday August 25th, 2024, the Law Center invited our closest Land and Housing Justice clients, collaborators, partners, and friends to join us for an afternoon of art making at the 510 Firehouse, located in Oakland’s Chinatown.

When we were deciding what to screen print, Law Center Staff Attorney Veryl Pow shared that Sarah Augustine — co- founder and Executive Director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery — told him about a prayer she says every morning, “Thank you creator for the land, our body,” which is inspired by a prayer from the Nez Perce tribe. Members of the Law Centers Land Stewardship Circle agreed “The Land Our Body” was a value our community shared that we could screen print. Sarah Cauich holds up a screen print while Sandra De Leon (Somos Tierra) is to her left setting up for another round of printing.

We, at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, condemn Sheng Thao’s recent enthusiastic response to Governor Newsom’s cruel and unconscionable Executive Order N-1-24, from July 25, 2024, justifying the escalated and aggressive sweep of our unhoused Oakland neighbors in the wake of the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson decision by the Supreme Court. At the Law Center, our work focuses on building an inclusive and democratic grassroots social ecosystem by supporting land and housing justice and solidarity economy movements.

On May 23, the Law Center held a labor-focused community appreciation event at Kinfolx Cafe in Occupied Huchiun (aka Downtown Oakland) where we invited some of our collaborators to come enjoy each others’ company for an evening. Our guests of honor that night were poverty scholar teachers from Poor Magazine, a poor people–led/Indigenous people–led, grassroots, non-profit arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, art, education, and advocacy to silenced youth, adults, and elders in poverty across Mama Earth.  The Law Center has been supporting Poor with legal advice on land and housing. Some of us have also attended Poor Magazine’s twice-annual People Skool seminar, which is coming up on August 24 and 25 (find out more here). That day, we invited folks at Poor to share their scholarship around labor.  We deeply appreciate them for sharing it.

By Keith Schneider, The New York Times