The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) facilitates the growth of sustainable, localized, and just economies, through legal research, professional training, resource development, and education about practices such as:

· Cooperatives
· Community-supported enterprises
· Barter
· Sharing
· Local currencies
· Intentional communities, ecovillages, cohousing
· Affordable housing and limited equity housing
· Urban agriculture
· Community-based renewable energy
· Community land trusts
· Social enterprise
· Microlending
· Local investing
· Co-op banks/credit unions

In addition to creating and making available resources to the public, SELC provides training to legal professionals, student interns, and others, empowering them with tools to bring about more sustainable, localized, and just economies.  SELC also convenes special working groups, bringing together experts and practitioners from various fields, for the purpose of investigating, collecting resources for, and developing resources in specialized areas.

Based in Oakland, California, SELC is a fiscally sponsored project of Community Ventures, a California 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. All SELC projects are currently managed by volunteer attorneys.

Here are some of the answers:

• Petty issues that get people angry and make them shut down to cooperation
• Zoning issues and codes that don’t support sustainability
• Hyperindividuation
• Egos
• People who are unpredictable, irrational, and uncontrollable 
• The digital divide (the fact that poor and marginalized communities do not have access to the online community-building tools that many others have)
• Large communities that are hard to organize; it’s difficult to create a unified voice or vision

As usual, the general sentiment is that sharing would be great…if it weren’t for the other people. Conflict, difficult personalities, egos – it seems like everyone has a story about how they got burnt in a sharing plan or cooperative effort that went sour.  Honestly, this does seem like the biggest barrier to the sharing revolution. But those of us who are mediators, or who have taken classes in non-violent communication or powerful non-defensive communication, know the potential for any conflict situation to transform into something positive and constructive, so we feel confident that this barrier is entirely surmountable. 

While talking to Bioneers conference attendees, we also brainstormed ideas about ways to manage our differences, including:

• Hear people out. Even if you think they are “unpredictable, irrational, and uncontrollable,” they will probably be much easier to talk to if they feel they are being listened to.
• Remember that what we interpret as “unpredictable, irrational, and uncontrollable” may actually just come from a miscommunication.
• Remember that most people are well-intentioned. Most of the time if someone is acting “unpredictable, irrational, and uncontrollable,” it’s because they feel their needs aren’t being met.
• Use meeting facilitators to talk through difficult topic.
• Postpone discussion of issues that tend to trigger people, and start by finding common ground on other issues.

Of course, whole books could be written on this topic. For now I just wanted to share some of the thoughts we collected at Bioneers.

* Tools
* Plants
* Produce
* A dog
* Music parties!
* Yerba mate
* My/our kitchen
* Homeschooling
* Myself in the service of the planet
* Garden
* Humor
* Yoga and dance studio space
* Orchard
* Water
* Food
* Child care
* Time
* Money
* Energy
* Crying
* Intuition
* Love

Cooperative grocery shelves

EcoSalon posted a nice piece today: “Sharing: It’s not just nice, it’s necessary.”  I love the “rundown of the 15 coolest sharing concepts.”

Post-its

In my next few blog posts, I’ll list some of the ideas that we brought home on post-it notes attached to out brainstorm boards. First, here are some of the ideas we collected in answer to the question: “How do we create STRONG COMMUNITY in our neighborhoods?”

* Remodel the suburbs
* Reclaim your suburban neighborhood!
* Set up a barter system, produce share, and clothing swap
* Neighborhood kiosks and bulletin boards
* See what City Repair did
* Draft ethics and agreements that the whole group creates and supports, creating a sense of ownership/accountability to the community
* Front yard and safe active common space
* Connect food and home. Agriculture where we live.
* Collaboration between landlords and tenants.
* Create unity among tenants of rental housing.
* Get out from under the hypnosis of consumerist society and realize a new world is possible.
* Foster multigenerational communities: children and elders together!
* Map the skill base of your neighobrs (find out who are the painters, builders, doctors, lawyers, gardeners, massage therapists, etc.)
* Regular annual food-based house parties
* It’s all about architecture
* Foster compassion toward yourself and extend it to others.
* Imagine you’re an ecosystem nurtured by “THANKS!!!!” from the future. (We thank Paul Horan of Young Ecosystem Scholars Support Services for sharing that piece of wisdom.)
* Bring together a community and ask: What are we going to do that is EXTRAORDINARY?
* Feast together!

A memorable moment was when attorney Jenny Kassan boldly suggested that we need a local stock exchange to serve as a source of finance for small local businesses and to keep our investments in the community (as opposed to putting our savings into mutual funds and financing who-knows-what kind of companies). It’s really a genius idea – it could create a simple way for each of us to share in owning and nurturing the businesses that serve us. We would choose to finance the businesses we feel could successfully enhance the character of our neighborhoods, provide a needed local service or product, create local jobs, and be accountable to the community. Most folks trading on the New York Stock Exchange don’t take any of this into consideration.

Jenny Kassan cited Michael Shuman, author of The Small-Mart Revolution. Shuman recently blogged about the concept of local stock exchanges. A major reason we don’t have local stock exchanges now, Shuman points out, is that securities laws have made it prohibitively expensive for small businesses to make a public offering. Shuman writes:

“The regulations prohibit the average American from investing in any small business, unless the firm is willing to spend $50,000 to $100,000 on lawyers to prepare private placement memorandum or public offering–thick documents with microscopic, ALL CAPS PRINT that no human being has ever been observed actually reading.”

But Shuman suggests some simple changes to the securities laws, that could make it a lot easier for small businesses to seek investors. For example, he suggests that we could exempt from securities regulation any small businesses that issues $250,000 or less in total stock, offers the stock only to people living in the state, and allow each investor to purchase no more than $100 worth of stock.

In the same way that many of us have made micro-loans through organizations such as Kiva, we could make investments of a comparable size in businesses locally. We’ll see the returns in many ways – not only in the growth of our investment money, but in the growth of flourishing businesses all around us.

It would be wonderful for every community to have a public sewing workshop. It would encourage people to repair damaged clothing rather than throw it away. It would also help us all develop our skills, give us a space to socialize with others, and save many resources — both personally and for the planet.

Along the same lines, it would also be great if every community had:

• A public woodworking shop
• A welding center where anyone can go to repair broken metal items
• A bike repair station where we can use specialized tools to repair our own bikes, like the Missing Link in Berkeley, where I once replaced my brakes
• A place where we can go learn about and change our own car oil, transmission fluid, and so on
• A tool lending library
• Large commercial-scale kitchens that people could use for the day if they are helping to cater a one-time event or do a fundraising bake sale. Shared kitchens, such as Kitchen Chicago are also great for small-scale food enterprises.

There are probably plenty of other great ideas along these same lines. If you have any ideas or would like to tell us about a cool community program of this sort, please email us at sharing (at) janelleorsi (dot) com. Thanks!

Social and Personal Benefits. These are some of the ways that your life, and society as a whole, will be better because of sharing. For example, sharing can help everyone:

• get to know our neighbors and make neighborhoods safer
• make friends
• find resources and referrals more easily
• find new ways to relate to friends, relatives, coworkers, and neighbors
• lighten our load of responsibilities
• create more free time
• meet the needs of seniors and people with disabilities
• increase resources and opportunities for low-income households
• support small businesses and buy locally
• access better nutrition, and
• access higher-quality goods.

Environmental Benefits. Sharing is kind to the planet, because it:

• uses space, energy, and resources more efficiently
• reduces consumption
• reduces waste
• reduces energy use
• helps us invest in green products, alternative energy, and durable goods
• shrinks your carbon footprint
• sets a green example for others, and
• helps take cars off the road.

Financial Benefits. The financial benefits of sharing really add up. Through sharing, you can:

• spread the cost of owning high-quality and durable goods
• reduce the cost of caring for a child or other family member
• reduce the cost of food, fuel, and supplies
• accomplish home repairs without paying for labor
• spread the risk of loss, damage, and depreciation
• share homeownership and build equity
• save money through collective buying, and
• get access to luxury items you couldn’t afford alone.