Janelle Orsi, on the Future of Economic Democracy
Hi, I’m Janelle, co-creator of: Sustainable Economies Law Center. We help communities take control of their sources of energy, finance, jobs, food, and housing.
Home base: Oakland — one of the country’s most rapidly gentrifying cities, with accompanying social problems and also many emerging solutions that are quite beautiful to see and encourage.
10 years ago: I had a private law practice supporting clients with various sharing arrangements like housing cooperatives, worker-owned cooperatives, car sharing, and urban gardens. I co-founded Sustainable Economies Law Center in 2009 to work on structural issues, to remove barriers to sharing.
Today, I say: Sharing is critical to our survival on the planet. And land and real estate are especially key. Land underlies everything — even worker cooperatives won’t survive if the land is pulled out from underneath them. I’ve come to focus on models that permanently remove land and housing from the speculative market so communities can flourish and plan long-term.
Surprising facts: 1) In the short period between 2000 and 2013, 38,000 Black Oaklanders (27% of our Black community) left the city, largely due to rising housing costs. 2) In our neighboring city of Richmond, more than 40% of homes are being bought up by investors, not by families who plan to live in the homes. 3) In 2048, there might be no seafood! In other words, we are in an entirely new game, facing economic and environmental catastrophes. We need to question all the conventional wisdom about planning for the future, about things like land assets and how to plan for retirement. We have little time to make dramatic changes in society and chart a new course.
Trends I can’t stop talking about: 1) Community ownership of land with a reparations and racial justice lens, like the work of my client, East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative. I love them so much I made a cartoon about them. 2) People moving their money from Wall Street to local investments. One of my favorite projects, TheNextEgg.org, is working to spur thousands of people to move their retirement savings. 3) Further afield but I’m starting to get obsessed: composting, healthy soil, and making sure we strive for long term land tenure so people can steward and replenish their soil, a long process. Soil in California is losing the capacity to absorb water — no wonder we have fires!
On my bookshelf: Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy and new book Pleasure Activism that are informing the particular movements I’m in. I pick them up almost daily and get so much juice from them. Also, Brown is a great writer!
Changemaker who inspires me: At the moment, Wangari Maathai. She inspired a movement in Kenya and beyond to restore green spaces and support local economies. I learned about her from this On Being podcast episode. Thinking about her fuels my motivation.
What I want to learn/get better at: Finance, spreadsheets, tax law, accounting. Understanding how money flows into and out of organizations is a core competency for democratic institutions. Not understanding these things is one of the biggest handicaps of justice movements.
Advice to 15-year-olds: You do not have to be good. (That’s the first line of a Mary Oliver poem.) You don’t have to prove anything. The most important thing is to find what makes you feel good and happy on a day-to-day and moment-to-moment basis. If you do this, you’ll have a life well-lived and you’ll be a role model for others seeking contentment in the face of a highly uncertain future.
I’m tagging next: Vivek Maru, Raj Jayadev, Lam Nguyen Ho. They are all opening the law and making it accessible to people of all walks of like, like community paralegals abroad and immigrant families here in the U.S. They are all Ashoka Fellows!
Janelle joined Ashoka in 2014. Read more about her and her innovation here. Follow Sustainable Economies Law Center on Twitter @TheSELC and follow Ashoka @AshokaUS
Ashoka comment: Something else about Janelle: she takes shared ownership seriously in theory and in practice. She and her 13 colleagues — some attorneys, some not — use a transparent and equal-pay salary structure. You can learn more here.
Selfie on request — thanks Janelle for sharing a peek inside the Law Center!
