LawClinic.TV

Another Take On The Ownership Society - The Vision Of Worker Ownership

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In recent posts, I have been writing about the role Fordham's Community Economic Development Clinic played in the founding of Colors, a worker owned restaurant founded and run by surviving employees of Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of The World Trade Center. 

In this final installment on Colors, Fekkak Mamdouh, one of the leaders among the workers and Saru Jayaraman, a lawyer and organizer, who founded Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), an organizing group for restaurant workers, talk about some of the ways that this worker owned restaurant differs from the typical restaurant. 

As I listened to them and saw the beautiful dining room they have created, my first thought was that they have done something very new and exciting. But as I reflected, I realized that they did something rather old and exciting.  Many of you are no doubt familiar with the very significant role cooperatives played in many aspects of American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Agricultural and electrical co-ops are probably the most familiar, but there are plenty of other examples and types of cooperatives, including many other worker owned cooperatives in America. 

Too many of us accept a monolithic view of the American economy. We might remember our history and better understand our present condition, from which I take the lesson that in our huge and very complex economy, there is plenty of room for diverse structures and organizational forms. This is a story about people who had the daring and courage to think differently. They have changed many lives already and they have not, by any means, exhausted their courage or daring.

-- Ian Weinstein

Fordham, Law School, Clinical Legal Education, Law Clinic, Pro Bono Work, Legal Education, Legal Pedagogy, Teaching Law, Student Lawyers, Law Student, Windows on the World, Community Economic Development, World Trade Center

Community Economic Development Lawyering - Empowering By Listening

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In this clip, my colleague Professor Brian Glick and two students in Fordham's Community Economic Development Clinic, Diana Adams-Ciardulo and Juan Carlos Stolberg, talk about their experiences with the founders of the worker owned restaurant Colors.

Brian runs our Community Economic Development Clinic, which assisted the group in a variety of ways, including helping them line up financing and drafting their complicated operating agreement. Brian's commitment to giving voice to his clients, rather than dictating outcomes consistent with his own views, is reflected in his use of the translation metaphor in his comments. Many clinical legal educators will recognize the translation idea from Clark Cunningham's classic piece, The Lawyer as Translator.

As I listen to Brian's comment about translating across the great gulf of power and wealth that so often separates Brian's clients from those with whom they often need to make a deal, I am struck by how hard it is for many of us to listen well enough to our clients so that we are able to represent them, and not just our idea of who we might want them to be.

As Diana and Juan Carlos talk about their work, I think you can get the sense of how much time they invested in talking through a wide range of complex issues with this very diverse group of people. My sense is that the diversity of languages, backgrounds and viewpoints was both a challenge and a source of strength for the group.

I think that Brian's strong commitment to a process that both encouraged and structured broad participation was very important, but I also think that he would be the first to remind us that as much credit as he and the students deserve for their thoughtful work, we should remember that Colors is the result of the vision, talent and hard work of the restaurant workers, not the lawyers.

-- Ian Weinstein

Fordham, Law School, Clinical Legal Education, Law Clinic, Pro Bono Work, Legal Education, Legal Pedagogy, Teaching Law, Student Lawyers, Law Student, Windows on the World, Community Economic Development, World Trade Center

Teaching From The Back Of The Room - Brian Glick's Clinic And Colors, The Worker Owned Restaurant

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In this clip, Fekkak Mamdouh, one of the workers who founded the worker owned restaurant Colors, Saru Jayaraman, a lawyer and organizer, who founded Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), an organizing group for restaurant workers, Diana Adams-Ciardulo, a Fordham Law Student and Juan Carlos Stolberg, also a Fordham Law Student, talk about the work Fordham Law Clinic students did on behalf of the worker cooperative and how Professor Brian Glick supervised the work. You won't see Brian in this clip, but that captures how he went about this task.

Mr. Mamdouh is so typically perceptive as he describes Brian sitting in the back of room at meetings, giving the leading role to the students in his clinic. I know how much work went into preparing for those meetings. Sure, Brian could have run the meetings instead of the students, but that is not the way we usually do things in clinical legal education and it is very much not the way Brian operates. Indeed, on this project, it would have been particularly ironic if a worker cooperative, which stresses participation, had been brought into being with the help of a traditionally hierarchical lawyer, but ironies abound. After all, the shoemaker's children are proverbially barefoot.

Brian's commitment to putting his students out front is only one part of his broader commitment to democracy and pushing power down to each and every member of any group. He lawyers and teaches the way he lives and I admire him greatly for that consistency. This clip gives you a good sense of just how successful Brian was, and is, at teaching from the back of the room. The students' smiles say so much as they describe how much the work they did means to them. I am also so moved by the students' evident commitment to, and deep respect for, their clients, something I know Brian powerfully modeled.

Here, Brian and his students talk about the work they did with the workers who formed Colors. We hear them talk about taxes, leases and operating agreements, the daily fare of the transactional lawyer. Too often we think that deals are the province of the rich, but Brian is a very experienced transactional lawyer who has always worked on these issues from the perspective of the poor and disenfranchised. He has helped to transfer a lot of wealth in his career, moving resources to those who most need them and paying attention to process as well as outcome and leaving many people and organizations much better than when they first met him.

-- Ian Weinstein

Fordham, Law School, Clinical Legal Education, Law Clinic, Pro Bono Work, Legal Education, Legal Pedagogy, Teaching Law, Student Lawyers, Law Student, Windows on the World, Community Economic Development, World Trade Center

Fordham's Community Economic Development Clinic Helps Restaurant Workers Realize Their Dream

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Colors, the wonderful worker-owned restaurant in New York City, was started by some of the surviving workers of Windows on the World, the restaurant that was atop one of the World Trade Center towers. 

My colleague, Professor Brian Glick, was instrumental in the creation of Colors, along with the students in his Community Economic Development Clinic. In this clip, Brian and two clinic students, Juan Carlos Stolberg and Diana Adams-Ciardulo, talk about their work.

Brian is a deeply experienced community development lawyer with great legal insight and extraordinary judgment. He came to Fordham after a storied legal services career representing community groups in Brooklyn and earlier in his professional life was a partner at the People's Law Office in Chicago. He has dedicated his life to realizing social justice through the law. I so admire him and his work.

Here, Brian and his students talk about the work they did with the workers who formed Colors. We hear them talk about taxes, leases and operating agreements, the daily fare of the transactional lawyer. Too often we think that deals are the province of the rich, but Brian is a very experienced transactional lawyer who has always worked on these issues from the perspective of the poor and disenfranchised. He has helped to transfer a lot of wealth in his career, moving resources to those who most need them and paying attention to process as well as outcome and leaving many people and organizations much better than when they first met him.

-- Ian Weinstein

Fordham, Law School, Clinical Legal Education, Law Clinic, Pro Bono Work, Legal Education, Legal Pedagogy, Teaching Law, Student Lawyers, Law Student, Windows on the World, Community Economic Development, World Trade Center

Challenging The Restaurant Business and Changing the World

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In this clip, Fekkak Mamdouh, one of the founding members of the worker owned cooperative restaurant Colors, and Saru Jayaraman, a founder of Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY),  an organizing group for restaurant workers, talk about the role Professor Brian Glick, and his students in Fordham's Community Economic Development Clinic played in the challenging process of creating a worker owned restaurant. Mr. Mamdouh and Ms. Jayaraman had a wonderfully creative vision, but making it a reality was quite a task.

The restaurant business is very tough and competitive. While they had the benefit of a pool of tremendously talented workers who had helped create a truly great restaurant at Windows on the World, their vision went way beyond the food and the dining experience. They envisioned Colors as a place where all the workers would share in decision making and profits; a fine restaurant that would also help to change the world.

This was the challenge they set for themselves and shared with Brian and his students. Here they talk about how important it was to get the legal aspects of this new venture correct and to use the structure the law and lawyers can provide to help them through the difficult and largely uncharted waters upon which they set sail. These two very dynamic and creative people had a powerful vision and found just the lawyer they needed in my colleague Brian Glick, about whom I will say more in my upcoming post.

-- Ian Weinstein

Fordham, Law School, Clinical Legal Education, Law Clinic, Pro Bono Work, Legal Education, Legal Pedagogy, Teaching Law, Student Lawyers, Law Student, Windows on the World, Community Economic Development, World Trade Center

Colors: The Worker Owned Restaurant That Grew From The Ashes Of The World Trade Center - With A Little Help From The Fordham Law Clinic

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This is the story of a group of surviving workers from Windows on the World, the restaurant that was at the top of one of the towers of the World Trade Center, and how they created a wonderful worker owned restaurant in tribute to and memory of their colleagues. Fordham's Community Economic Development Clinic had the privilege of working on this groundbreaking project and helping the workers realize their bold plan.

Fekkak Mamdouh, who we first see in this clip, lost many friends on 9/11, when the restaurant, in which he had worked for years, was destroyed while breakfast was being served. In this clip he talks about how the vision for that new restaurant, Colors, formed in the days after the attack, as he and Saru Jayaraman, a lawyer and organizer, struggled, like so many New Yorkers, to imagine the post-9/11 world. Out of their conversations came Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), an organizing group for restaurant workers, out of which Colors grew.

As Fekkak, Saru and Diana Adams-Ciardulo, a Fordham Law Student describe, Colors developed into a worker owned cooperative restaurant, whose members mirror the tremendous diversity that characterized the people who worked at Windows on the World and virtually all restaurants in New York City. In this, and a series of other posts, it is my privilege to share the story of Colors and the assistance my colleague, Professor Brian Glick and his students in Fordham's Community Economic Development Clinic provided as the restaurant took shape. There is a fascinating story behind the fabulous food and beautiful decor at Colors Restaurant.

-- Ian Weinstein

Fordham, Law School, Clinical Legal Education, Law Clinic, Pro Bono Work, Legal Education, Legal Pedagogy, Teaching Law, Student Lawyers, Law Student, World Trade Center, Windows on the World, Community Economic Development