As a BIPOC led org, we're thrilled to add another badass and brilliant Black staff member to our cooperative! Meet our new Community Engagement Director Chi Chi Okonmah. Chi Chi is an active, licensed Real Estate Broker serving residential buyers and sellers in the Bay Area since 2013. With years of experience as an educator, Chi Chi is committed to supporting her community in building a legacy of sustainable wealth through home ownership.

[Pictured above] Chi Chi leading Coop 789's Workshop Zero! She helped the Resident Owners practice a round of democratic decision making. To do this, she started with a simple but super important question: what's the best sandwich for this group?

After the group voted on the best sandwich, Chi Chi dove right into the problems of extractive real estate and offered up a bunch of solutions for the Resident Owners to consider! Check out our blog post Notes from Workshop Zero: The Politics of Co-Ownership for more information. If you want to meet Chi Chi - trust us, you do! - then RSVP to one of our orientations below!

Upcoming Events

Join us TODAY at NOON for our first webinar orientation of the decade! 

NEXT MONTH

Good Reads! 

National African-American (Black) History Month: February 2020
Did you know that the first time the US officially celebrated Black history was on February 12, 1926? Back then, we only got one week! It fell on the second week of February to coincide with the birthday of abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Read more about Black History Month in this article published by the United States Census Bureau. BTW The Census is hiring thousands of people to assist with the 2020 Census county!

Democratize Decolonize Decarbonize
Check out the Law Center's three-part essay series about how to #DemocratizeDecolonizeDecarbonize Land and Resources. Their Food and Farm Lawyer Neil Thapar made a pretty bold statement in his essay How to Win Land Justice in A Decade... According to Thapar, buying and selling land as a commodity is a crime. 

Read the rest of Thapar's argument here and let us know what you think!

You can own your favorite neighborhood cafe!
Alchemy Collective Cafe, a majority Black-owned worker cooperative cafe and roaster in South Berkeley is copying our model and is now taking Community Investors! Read all about it here.

Moms 4 Housing Reclaim MLK
The Community Democracy Project published a blog post about how a people's budget relates to the Moms 4 Housing struggle. Click here to read about alternatives to the status quo, which is failing to provide real solutions for the unhoused people of Oakland.

Too busy/ distracted for full on books and articles? 
Follow Ijeoma Oluo on Twitter! She's the bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and her tweets are 🔥. 

ATTN: Community Owners and Investor Owners

SAVE THE DATE Thursday, March 19! BOARD ELECTIONS & 2020 Member Meeting

2020 Member Meeting & BOARD ELECTIONS
Thursday, March 19 | Location TBD

5:30 Mingling & Dinner ...plus Dessert Potluck!
6:30 Meet the Candidates & Vote
7:30 Community Building
8:30 Closing & Collective Cleanup
9pm out!

We'll be voting on the Board positions of Governance Director, Financial Director, and Community Director. All member-owners of EB PREC can vote on Governance Director and Financial Director seats; only Community Owners may vote on the Community Director seat.You need to be a member to participate.

Not a member yet? Become a Community Owner here and/or Investor Owner here. Not sure if your membership is complete? Email secretary@ebprec.org. More details and eventbrite invitation to come! Fill out this accessibility poll to help us plan, if you haven't already.