Defining the Sustainable Economies Law Center
The Sustainable Economies Law Center is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California that fosters a new legal landscape to support sustainable economies. The Center’s mission is to inspire and cultivate grassroots law and policy solutions to support local, equitable, and sustainable economies. Its vision is to be a world-class resource for people who want to control their own housing, food, energy, and economic development. The Center has a program area devoted to research and education on new laws and policies that support sustainable economies through projects such as the Urban Homestead Project and Mediators Beyond Borders (an international organization dedicated to conflict resolution and mediation) . With its open law curriculum, the Center also helps educate legal practitioners at the forefront of the new economy.
The Center was founded in 2011 by Janelle Orsi and Kalima Rose, and it provides grassroots and community-based legal services for organizations, businesses, and people who want to create a more just, equitable, and environmentally sound economy. The organizations that the Center provides legal services for focus on ways to sustain community resources, educate community members on what the law has to say about various topics, and use existing legal and economic strategies to redistribute wealth and resources. The Center is a project of the Tides Center, Inc. and operates from the Tides Advocacy project also housed there.
Areas of Research and Practice
The Sustainable Economies Law Center concentrates on five broad practice areas: food systems, cooperatives, energy, housing, and grassroots economic strategies.
Food Systems
The Center’s food systems work primarily involves helping food entrepreneurs who face barriers to access in the current legal system. The Food Lab incubator, for example, is currently developing a "cottage food" database that will help small businesses comply with various artisanal food laws, such as the California Homemade Food Act. Under the Act, entrepreneurs can sell homecooked products like pickles, jams, cookies, or artisan bread. The Center is also working with other organizations to improve access to various loans and grants created to help artists, community members, and entrepreneurs purchase and develop properties within a particular community. The Center’s expertise in the legal field, especially with non-profit, co-operative, or hybrid business legal structures, is beneficial as it leads to a better understanding of the barriers that entrepreneurs may face while trying to access these programs. For example, most government programs and public funding for social enterprises are limited to non-profit organizations or non-profit corporations. The Center provides free consultations to food business owners to help them understand what structure is right for them and what their regulatory requirements will be.
Cooperatives
The Center helps small business owners understand business structures and helps them determine what structure works best for them, not only from a business standpoint but also a legal perspective. The Center provides a free one hour consultation to small business owners on what structures might be best for them. Entrepreneurs may choose from a single-member LLC structure, a multi-member LLC, a corporation, or a non-profit. The Center acts as a resource center for small business owners looking to form or to invest in cooperatives as well. By using its publication "Raising Money to Start a Cooperative Business," the Center helps entrepreneurs answer the questions they have about how to start and fund a business cooperative.
Energy
The Center notes that the average American spends $400-800 per month on utilities and energy costs. As many people in the community are spending a substantial amount of their monthly income on energy, the Center works to find opportunities for individuals to collaborate and seek to lower their utility costs. Through co-ops or community groups, community members can collectively bargain for a wholesale price for utilities. Any savings that result would be shared by all participating members of the co-op.
Housing
Housing has become a major issue throughout the Bay Area in both local and state politics. The Center has actively campaigned for local energy loan programs such as PACE Programs which could make energy repairs more affordable or accessible to the community. According to the Center, "with new legislation to allow California cities to introduce Clean Energy Loan Programs, thousands of citizens in California are looking for new ways to finance home energy upgrades." The Center helps citizens navigate these programs and learn about how to best use them.
Raising Money for "Social Enterprises"
Funds for social enterprises are extremely limited at the moment. The "social enterprise" model is still relatively new and many funding and grant programs have not yet adapted to this model of doing business. The Center is currently engaged in research to address some of the challenges and barriers that social enterprises face when attempting to fund their business. Currently, the Center offers "Grassroots Economic Strategy Training" to help educate the community on financing and lending for businesses.
Groundbreaking Legal Strategies
Given these circumstances, organizations like the Sustainable Economies Law Center are increasingly examining legal approaches that facilitate and support new modes of economic organization. Innovative legal work is being done in a variety of areas to address persisting legal barriers and carve new spaces for sustainable economic models in the new economy.
Law can also play a vital role in dismantling old economies that persist in their virtual form, even after a more sustainable model for organizing an industry has emerged. As more individuals are —or choose to be— engaged in contractual relationships with "new economy" companies like AirBNB, drivers for ride-sharing apps, or workers for crowd labor platforms, they are increasingly exposed to legal loopholes, loopholes that this innovative legal work seeks to plug. These workers often have no legal protections or security to speak of, and while some platforms are trying to address these concerns, too many of the major tech companies have long been hiding behind outdated legal frameworks that consistently favor established forms of organization.
To address these issues, the Sustainable Economies Law Center is developing innovative approaches to the problem of worker vulnerability in new economies. The types of cooperative workplaces that may offer workers greater protection are systematically disfavored in the United States —itself a legal legacy of minimum wage laws that were implemented at the height of World War II, with the goal of getting women and people of color out of the workforce. Innovatively reviving what is sometimes known as a "cooperative commonwealth" —or, what is now more commonly known as a "worker cooperative"— the SELC is collaborating with entrepreneurs to help them set up worker co-ops, provided them with free resources on how to do so, and is working on creating and distributing legal templates for entrepreneurs to use in their establishment of cooperatives.
So much of the fix to the legal vulnerabilities that users and workers of new economies face lies in law itself, and while much of the legal framework that supports the new economy is outdated or misconceived, many organizations are working to ensure that the bad ghosts of the past don’t come out to haunt us.
Education, Outreach & Engagement
The commitment to education and community engagement is a core principle in the work of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC). As a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, its mission is "to help people build a new legal foundation for their economies" through legal education, research, advice, and policy advocacy. Designing its legal and policy work to be "open-source" is part of its belief that creative legal efforts should not be the exclusive domain of attorneys, but available for public dialogue and action to build grassroots solutions such as worker cooperatives, food policy councils, local currency systems, and urban agriculture. Legal and policy materials developed by SELC draw on in-depth research and local fieldwork and are intended to be used by communities who want to make the basic building blocks of law and democracy accessible and relevant. Thus many SELC projects have an educational phase, raising public awareness of economic issues and fostering citizen leadership. Particularly noteworthy in this area is its cooperative business development program, which provides workshops to residents and local organizing groups to raise awareness of the potential for cooperative businesses in communities and train residents to form productivity and consumption cooperatives or multiple-owner businesses.
SELC has developed dozens of educational materials, including booklets, guides, summaries, and toolkits in addition to the accompanying and related legally-focused "Counsel to Come" series circulated across California. These materials have been developed in collaboration with community leaders, movement organizers, and co-op advocates and are housed on the Center’s website for all to access: www.thelemonadeclarion.org.
Successes and Notable Studies
One noteworthy success story is the forming of key partnerships that have resulted in several community-driven projects. For instance, the Sustainable Economies Law Center partnered with the Richmond Housing Authority to help guide the development of a community land trust in the East Bay region. This collaboration not only provided legal assistance but also established a model for future partnerships between local government and legal service organizations. Another example of successful collaboration can be seen in their efforts to address issues around worker cooperatives and informal economies. The Center worked with Bay Area organizations to create legal resources that support the growth of cooperatives , including innovative legislation that promotes the use of cooperatives in the housing and energy sectors. They have also played a key role in legislative advocacy. The Center has been a strong voice for policies that encourage the growth of the solidarity economy—an economy that prioritizes social impact over profit. Through research, legal expertise, and strategic coalitions, they have influenced local, state, and national policy on various issues ranging from fair housing to sustainable agriculture. The sustainable economies law center’s transformative work continues to empower individuals and communities in the pursuit of a new sustainability driven economy. By forming strategic partnerships, pioneering legislative change, and providing invaluable resources, it has fostered innovation, entrepreneurship, and engagement in the quest for a more just and sustainable future.
Challenges and Areas for Growth
In the midst of an ongoing economic crisis, the values and missions of the Sustainable Economies Law Center are more in vogue than ever. However, the legal issues pertinent to the Center’s work are continually evolving in step with technological and social developments. On November 14, 2013, in a lively discussion during the Center’s annual fall event, Executive Director Carson met with SLG’s Richard Brisbin and Robert Reed to explore the challenges and future directions of the Center’s work.
Among the challenges discussed was the shifting definition of "cooperatives" in the law. Requirements for such business entities have evolved from it being strictly about ownership to an emphasis on how the organization interacts with the surrounding community and coordinates with other cooperatives. "It’s important to identify the incentives that are motivating the operational and structural change for cooperatives," Carson explained. "And we also need to be aware of what regions have the greatest success with cooperative models."
Another important challenge exists in the Center’s own shifting role in addressing legal issues. "We are quickly moving into the role of a policy maker," Carson said regarding the new role of the Center in Sacramento and Washington D.C., including providing guidance on a bill on sharing economy regulation in California and helping to provide legal analysis for the White House Council on Environmental Quality in Washington. "Lawyers want to urge government to enact good laws, but we also need to be at the table with whoever is advancing these initiatives and be a force of good."
As the legal and socio-economic landscapes rapidly change, the Sustainable Economies Law Center has had to shift and adapt accordingly. According to Carson, the key to moving forward is to remain rooted in their principles and values, such as community democracy, community wealth building, and community resilience. "We continue to ask ourselves, what are we doing practically in the world that is shifting, and also makes the world a better place?"
Opportunities to Engage and Support
Whether you’re a practitioner interested in collaborating on a project, a law student or attorney looking to volunteer or extern, a policy maker seeking help or guidance, or simply someone looking to make a donation to support our work, we’d love to hear from you!
If you’re interested in partnering with the Sustainable Economies Law Center, please complete this form so that we can follow up with you .
If you’re a law student or recent law graduate interested in volunteering, externing, or interning with the Center, first peruse our current advocacy priorities to find an area that you would like to support (e.g., neighborhood entrepreneurship, land reform, new economy, equitable land use and ownership). Then follow this link to learn more about volunteering opportunities.
We also post opportunities for short-term volunteer and internship opportunities on the blog.
Check back regularly for updates about ongoing volunteer, extern, and internship opportunities with SELC!