Sustainable Economies Law Center

The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) supports community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment by providing essential legal tools — education, research, advice, and advocacy — so communities everywhere can develop their own sustainable sources of food, housing, energy, jobs, and other vital aspects of a thriving community. This grant will support SELC’s fiscally sponsored project, the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC), a land and housing organization that facilitates BIPOC and allied communities to organize, purchase, and steward land and housing in Oakland and the East Bay. This grant to SELC will support EB PREC’s pilot project, Esther’s Orbit Room Community Acquisition and Cultural Revival Project. This grant advances the strategic priorities of the Racial Justice Initiative and Serving Bay Area Communities, as well as the Performing Arts Program’s Communities Strategy, by preserving cultural space in an historically black neighborhood, and by supporting local arts and cultural leaders in their programming of that space.

The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) cultivates a new legal landscape that supports community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment. This nonprofit provides essential legal tools — education, research, advice, and advocacy — so communities everywhere can develop their own sustainable sources of food, housing, energy, jobs, and other vital aspects of a thriving community. This grant will support SELC’s fiscally sponsored project, Repaired Nations, which creates redress for historic trends of oppression through cooperative training and development for collective ownership. It also focuses on building wealth in Black communities by giving youth the tools needed to remain rooted: access to land and access to capital. Additionally, the center sponsors book clubs, workshops, and trainings to educate and inspire communities to engage in cooperative effort, while giving grounded, practical skills for collective ownership.