Sustainable Economies Law Center Launch Party

Oakland-based Sustainable Economies Law Center has been hard at work for about a year now.  In fact they have been so busy helping to facilitate and shape the new economy that they haven’t yet had a chance to celebrate–until now.  Come out November 8 to celebrate and meet the folks at the cutting edge!

 

When: November 8th, 6:30pm

Where: At The Hub, 2150 Allston Way, 4th Floor, Berkeley

Please RSVP by emailing Janelle Orsi at Janelle.SELC@gmail.com

* Featured Speaker: Michael Shuman, author of The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Competition, and Director of Research and Economic Development at BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies)

* Cartoons: A cartoon guide to Sustainable Economies, presented by Janelle Orsi, SELC Co-Director and author of The Sharing Solution

* Starting a Movement: What SELC is doing and how you can collaborate, presented by Jenny Kassan, SELC Co-Director and CEO of Cutting Edge Capital

* Free Books and Flamboyant Squash: Yes, squash! Take home books on sustainable economies and beautiful winter squash from local farms!

* Food: Seasonal salads, snacks from local artisan chefs, and other treats!

What are we celebrating? The Sustainable Economies Law Center is facilitating the explosion of new economies enabled by sharing, cooperatives, barter, local investing, community-supported enterprises, local currencies, cohousing, and urban agriculture! This year, we began laying the organizational groundwork, along with a team of interns and a growing network of collaborators. We are now preparing to launch SELC into many more years of developing resources and serving communities in the transition to sustainable economies!

Plant the Seed: Bay Area People’s Movement Assembly

As part of the Social Forum process various regions hold People’s Movement Assemblies as a space to coordinate and cross-pollinate ideas and prepare to attend the USSF 2010 in Detroit:

You and your organization are invited to participate in the Peoples Movement Assembly session taking place in San Francisco, California.  This session is a “kick off” of the process to get organized and to get to the US Social Forum II taking place June 22-26, 2010 in Detroit, Michigan.

Saturday, March 13, 2010
2pm – 5pm
Poder Office
474 Valencia St #120
San Francisco, CA

WHAT IS A PEOPLES MOVEMENT ASSEMBLY?

A Fun-Filled Fall

There’s no doubt about it: this fall is going to be an exciting one for the nation and the Bay Area.  Dare I say, it’ll be one for the history books.  In my magic clairvoyant mirror hanging just inside my imagination, I can just make out the writing in some future account of the Fall of 2009, “As the dog days of indian summer bore down upon a populace, things were astir in a nation conflicted with itself…”

Or something like that.

On the national scene we will be witness to–and participate in!–the heated political and economic battles over health care. Single-payer will be voted on the House floor this month for the first time. It won’t win, the White House says its off the table, and the media doesn’t seem to want to utter the phrase; but that doesn’t mean people aren’t going to keep putting it back on as part of the discussion. Witness the Mad As Hell Doctors, who are taking off from Portland, OR on a super-roadtrip across the country in an RV (joined by a ‘Care-a-van’) next week to take a message of universal health care for all to the White House and Congress. They will be stopping in 26 cities along the way and they will deliver their message and have a protest event on the Capitol steps on October 1. That’s the way to do it! And they even have a theme song!

But let us not be too consumed by the drama to forget some underlying crises that also need as much or more attention and struggle, such as corporate abuse, socialism for the wealthy, unsustainable economics, climate change, and militarism.  In the next couple months we’ll see