Tune in to WOL 1450 AM and Tune-in Radio, on March 4, 10:30 am for Everything Co-op, hosted by Vernon Oakes. This week Everything Co-op Kicks off Women’s History Month with Renee C Hatcher, Assistant Professor of Law at UIC John Marshall Law School in Chicago. This year’s theme is “Valiant Women of the Vote: Refusing to Be Silenced.” Vernon and Renee will discuss what it means to bring about sustainable economic justice through community development law.
Renee Hatcher is a human rights and community development lawyer. She is an Assistant Professor of Law, and the Director of the Community Enterprise & Solidarity Economy Clinic at UIC John Marshall Law School Chicago. The legal clinic provides free legal support to cooperatives, community-based institutions, and other types of solidarity economy initiatives and projects.
The framework of Hatcher’s scholarship and legal practice operates under the solidarity economy theory. In many ways, the work she does elevates “the good news” and not “just the resist work,” she adds. This can look like people organizing around worker cooperatives, building innovative enterprises or using bartering services or time-banking, for example, to address worker exploitation.
Hatcher currently serves as a board member for the New Economy Coalition, a member of Resist, Reimagine and Rebuild (R3), Black Lawyers Solidarity Economy Network (BLESN), and a member of the Law for Black Lives Clinic Cohort Development Team. Her work and research focus on solidarity economy theory/practice and law.