Trust is the Only Currency

TimeBank & Trust: The Mira Luna Interview

2012-01-25T20:48:00.000-08:00

TimeBank & Trust: The Mira Luna Interview
Planetshifter Magazine
by Willi Paul
01/16/2012

Big dictators.
Speculators
Senators
And Agitators,
They tell what all they gonna do,
When they get
Into their office,
See what they can
Take off of us,
Take from me and take from you.

Finance-man
He frisk us, frisk us
Lawyer man,
He won't protect us,
Where O where is a honest man
Barber-man, he
Clip your whiskers
Money-man, he
Clip your sister.
Banker man, he take your land.

Can’t beat finance,
Man and weather,
Workin’ man got to
Get together,
Have a big meetin' down in town
Workin’-man gotta
Take the groceries
Feed the widows,
Feed the orphins.
Pass the groceries all around

Corn Song by Woody Guthrie + Blackfire

* * * * * * *

Interview with Mira by Willi

Give us an integrated economic vision for a local bay area city in 2025? How are you developing and sharing such a vision?

I think there are tough times ahead, a lot of crises that will likely climax in the next 10 years. We need to build the infrastructure for the new economy while trying to imagine all the things that could go wrong. That's not easy or fun to do. The best way to deal with so many factors in flux is to design relatively simple and diverse solutions. Simple solutions leave less to go wrong and diverse solutions provide resiliency.

What would this look like in terms of economy? A more simple economy with more direct flows from producer to consumer and vice versa. Less complicated goods to manufacture that can easily be produced locally by many people in many different ways. More services that directly meet our needs, rather than 5 middlemen, with many people being able to provide those services. We need to rapidly start replacing imports with local manufacturing and cottage production.

Let's take medicine as an example. Right now, you go to a doctor that had to go through a very expensive long training, she runs fancy tests and prescribes medicine. There are few people that can prescribe medicine, few companies who make the testing devices, few who do the tests and few that make the medicine. All of its expensive and there is a lot of scarcity in conventional medicine and too narrow flow channels for how many people are unwell. So if we had many people trained in barefoot medicine, like herbalism, traditional Chinese medicine, massage, homeopathy, nutrition, Qi Gong, saunas and sweats, yoga, Ayurveda, etc. then we would have a lot of direct flows and a lot of diversity. I would approach all of our economic needs that way. There's many ways to convert solar energy into usable energy for humans. I think the region of the greater Bay Area is a good, realistic size for a sustainable economy that can provide the variety of goods that most people need.

In the future, we will be shifting back to a relationship-based and to some degree peer-to-peer economy. This means that the economy will look more like vast, intricate web, with many interconnected functions, nested and overlapping. It looks inefficient to the capitalist, but efficient towards what? A web supports you much better than a single line or two of thread. One thread breaks and that's it. The Timebank is helping to develop this web through exchange and connected unconnected groups to help each other. The Network of Bay Area Worker Coops is doing this by creating a web of relationship and exchange within the network. Just Alternative Sustainable Economics, is a project we started to tie together all the pieces of the alternative economy to support each other at the regional level. The US Solidarity Economy Network attempts to do this at the national level.

What are the hurdles in your personal strategic plan as you promote your transition to localization?

There isn’t a lot of funding for the work that needs to be done – developing alternative economic projects, taking them to scale, and building community. Funders are behind the curve. In the meantime we need to build a realistic bridge to the new economy so that people can survive while doing it. It's challenging for people who still have to have jobs for health reasons, a mortgage, family, etc. The Timebank is great for building that bridge because it rewards people with hours for the work of building the new economy and therefore that work is more sustainable. Another hurdle is the psychosocial habits we have that hold us back in the old economy - distrust, separation, competition, fear of scarcity, etc. In order to get there, we need to reduce our dependency on the old economy as much as possible. Right now it holds so much power, take away ours, and keeps us treading the hamster wheel in old habits that are destructive.

Are you attracting potent partners these days? Who are the strongest?

There is a lot of interest from potential partner organizations in the Timebank and other alternative economic projects. Seniors, people with disabilities, low income communities of color. These groups all need the new economy and so are the most eager to pioneer. Their lives depend on a new economy. Environmentalists are interested, but because many are white, middle class, able bodied people they are still living comfortably in the old economy and haven’t been as willing to step up to the plate in general as much as I’d hoped. There is less of an urgent push from them although they seem to definitely seem to get it.

What qualities in permaculture do you see as critical to building an alternative economy?

Biodiversity is something that is lacking in the mainstream economy. We get our needs met through fewer and fewer channels. This is a big problem for resiliency. If one avenue fails, we have catastrophe. The more elements we have the same function, the better. At the same time, the most promising elements are those that stack functions – for example, a local CSA providing jobs to youth, low cost organic food in more neighborhoods, funding to expand organic farming, space for animals, delivering on bikes to reduce fossil fuel use, and healing the earth.

Zones are also helpful in thinking about the economy. We should focus most on the zones closest to us and develop them, redeveloping the local economy at many levels, but starting with zone one. The largest zone is really skewed in taking over what should be our closest zones. In thinking about how we steal from the future by a debt based and growing, malignant economy, we can reinvest in our local ecology by doing away with interest or even using negative interest so that it becomes more attractive to give your money to local sustainable projects that create real wealth.

I think the whole process of developing and planning a permaculture site, observation, visioning, mapping, etc. would be really useful for redesigning the economy. Right now we go with the flow and it’s going in all the wrong directions.

Are you pro or anti capitalism? Neither?

Anti-capitalism, but not anti-market. I am opposed to making money off money and exploiting people and the Earth, but not in aggregating money for projects for the common good. I am also opposed to the concentration of wealth that capitalism encourages, which lead to huge power inequalities. Democracy and capitalism in its current form are incompatible. Because capitalism encourages growth and exploitation, I also see it as incompatible with sustainability goals in its current form. Capitalism is a multi-faceted beast, some parts may be salvaged, while other parts need to be swiftly discarded.

Many folks decry the greenwashing in the business sector. How do you dissect corporations, organizations and individual behavior to uncover corruption?

In all my years of activism and policy work, I see working on large or distant corporations’ behavior as mostly futile. The only way to have transparency, accountability, and democratic oversight is through local and regional economies. The further from the local you get, the more corruption and the less trust.

I have been outspoken in my criticism of permaculture schools who offer costly trainings with little regard to employment support. How are your projects creating jobs? Do you have any examples?

The timebank is creating jobs with a currency called an hour that you create at the time you provide a service –it’s a mutual credit system. It requires someone else to pay an hour, but it’s really just a guarantee that the receiver will help someone else out in the future. This way people can create their own jobs by using their skills without having to wait for money to appear at a business and then apply for the job. There isn’t much money out there these days, which is ridiculous because there are plenty of workers and work that needs to be done. Worker cooperatives also create jobs and more than conventional businesses because there isn’t someone at the top making a lot of money and worker coops will usually keep their workers in tough times instead of laying-off or selling off the business. Coop housing means people invest in place and community.

Do we need new symbols, stories and/or language to engineer the new economy?

Yes, we need new stories that will be about how people are tied together by helping each other, making the whole community stronger. We need stories of collective will, heroic gifts and reciprocity. We need stories that help shift our identity from me to we and illuminate our interconnectedness.

What is the role of competition in your new economic vision?

It’s quite limited. We need to engineer the new economic system so that the most well taken care of people are those that are the most cooperative, generous, caring, community-oriented, sustainable, and so on. Reputation systems are very important in this re-engineering. Our current money system only has one reputation element – how much money you have in your bank account determines everything. It’s a very incomplete picture of social reality that leaves the best people suffering because they are defined by their small bank accounts. In the new economy, we need ways of communicating and perhaps converting into currency good deeds and reputation. The smallest unit of this model is a gift circle where everyone is witnessing each other's gifts and reciprocating directly. The Timebank is a larger scale gift circle that allows people to exchange with people they don't yet know, but may become part of their community as trust is built.

How does time work for us and against us in a timebank? Do you want government to play a role?

You can only spend what you earned in a timebank and everyone’s hour is equal. This means you can’t make time off time like in capitalism. If you don’t have time, you won’t have hours. You can save them up though for the future in some timebanks and this can be a form of social security in old age. Governments are interested in Timebanks because they can provide lots of services at a small cost and take over functions that governments spends lots of money on, like taking care of people who are ill. So sometimes timebanks get grants from the government, which is helpful to get off the ground, but can create precarious dependency. If the government wants to support the Timebank, that’s fine, but ours will always be a member governed timebank.

Tell us about the Bay Area Community Exchange (BACE). What successes can you point to? What is on the horizon for 2012?

We just passed 1000 members and trading is happening often several times daily. We are forging partnerships with all kinds of community service organizations. These partnerships can be a strong force to get more active members and provide needed services on the Timebank. Also, we have a decentralized organizing strategy, allowing anyone to organize in their neighborhoods throughout the Bay Area or as a community forming an interest group on the Timebank using our software and operating under the core principles. We are encouraging more of this organizing as autonomous but cooperating local nodes of a regional reciprocity economy. We hope to improve the geographic organizing capability of the Timebank if funding comes in to help transition to more locally self-sufficient and interdependent neighborhoods.

We also want to have more in person swaps after the enormously successful Timebank Holiday Fair. Look for a Homesteading Skillshare Festival this year and more work with the SF Free School. Carebanks for seniors and people with disabilities are on the horizon. We are working in partnership with SF’s computer access program called BTOP to expand the Timebank’s reach where it’s needed most.

During the Great Depression, in the US, hundreds of thousands of unemployed people that got together to form Timebank-like exchanges to provide the currency to support clinics, foundries, mills, schools and so on. One in Oakland, was called the Unemployed Exchange Association. It definitely can be done though it's a little harder because we are so dependent on big banks. Of course, that's all just an illusion. We don't need banks for anything. They don't do anything but enslave us to their scarce, debt-based money.

Are there unique urban and rural needs and solutions to the present unsustainable economy?

Personally, I don’t think urban living is sustainable in the long run. It relies too heavily on resource import and export of waste. Most people employed in urban areas are inadvertently exploiting elsewhere in order to be able to have a job that provides no needed goods or services to society in a kind of pyramid structure. They are also disconnected with nature and cannot sense their disharmonies with it. The ecological feedback loops are missing in an urban culture. In the meantime, we need to build community in urban areas to make the transition. That is true for rural communities as well. Both have been disconnected and we need to be working together towards the transition. Urbanites need to start learning survival and homesteading skills and how to work with nature. These skills have almost been entirely lost in urban culture. Again, it’s a crisis of resiliency. We now have less than 1% of people that know how to grow food. We need training programs that train trainers in all the neighborhoods.

“New Hydrids: Paths to 21st Century Socialism from the Bottom Up” and a piece on OWS are on the home page of the US Solidarity Economy Network. Are you a supporter of Occupy? What is your understanding of their economic strategy?

Yes, I am a supporter of Occupy, although all OWS camps have their own ideals. I do think we need to occupy what’s ours collectively to build the new economy. We will need those resources. Some Occupiers are now moving from occupying the streets to occupying their economy – homes, workplaces, schools, clinics, etc. Although this phase is just beginning, US SEN is supplying information about alternatives to Occupy groups to move this initiative along.

How do you critique Wilson Riles’ Radical Alternative Currency System for Oakland?

Regular people need to be able to earn currency through work, otherwise the currency will not help much to eliminate problems of scarcity and unemployment. This needs to be built into the currency system to a greater extent. In particular, you need a way for low income people to get their hands on ACORNS without having to have cash. All of this can be easily changed in the design of issuance or by hiring lots of people to work for ACORNS on public projects that don't have jobs and accepting the ACORNS in taxes. For a similar model that was wildly successful, see the miracle of Woergl, Austria during the Great Depression.

Greensboro Banks on New Currency

2012-01-19T20:39:00.000-08:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: Greensboro Currency Project
Date: January 18, 2012
Contacts: Signe Waller Foxworth, Greensboro Currency Project Facilitator, 336-379-7342
Bonnie Ross, Bank of Oak Ridge Marketing Director, 336-662-484

Plans for Local Currency Move Forward with New Community Partnership

The Greensboro Currency Project is pleased to announce the signing of an Exchange Services Agreement with Bank of Oak Ridge. The signing of the agreement will take place on Wednesday, January 25, 2012, at 10:00 AM, at the bank's Lake Jeannette branch at 400 Pisgah Church Road in Greensboro. The bank will provide banking services to support the creation and circulation of a local currency. This community partnership marks an important advance toward printing and circulating a complementary currency to boost small and medium size businesses in Greensboro and to foster economic resilience in the Greensboro area.

Recently incorporated as a North Carolina nonprofit corporation, the Greensboro Currency Project is one of over 200 alternative currency projects in the United States. Since 2009 community members have come together in Greensboro to discuss alternative means of economic exchange. Project facilitators Signe and Bob Foxworth point out that high unemployment and underemployment, consumer and student debt, the rising costs of goods and services, among other economic realities, have left many people without enough money to meet their basic needs. A complementary currency can potentially expand the available options and promote economic equity and empowerment for poor and struggling communities.

A main goal of the Greensboro Currency Project's efforts is to help local businesses thrive. Most federal reserve notes, or dollars, leave the area and end up at out-of-town corporate headquarters. The complementary currency, on the other hand, will remain in the Greensboro area, recirculate and stimulate commercial transactions. Money that is issued and controlled locally has the potential to alleviate poverty and unemployment.

In July 2011 the project began building a Network of Trading Partners. A trading partner is a company, business, merchant, tradesperson, organization, professional or individual with goods or services to offer in trade and a willingness to accept local currency as full or partial payment and to recirculate the currency. A modest annual fee of $100 covers administrative costs and includes online and print advertising for trading partners. A deposit of an additional $100 will be returned in the equivalent amount of local money.

A minimum of fifty trading partners (the Founding Fifty) was set as prerequisite to launch the project. Members view fifty as a “critical mass” helping to ensure that the network's size and diversity make trading in the complementary currency practical.

To indicate its full support of the project, Bank of Oak Ridge became one of the founding fifty trading partners last July. “We stand deeply rooted in the communities we serve,” said Tom Wayne, the bank's CFO. The bank's commitment to encourage local commerce and increase economic opportunities for local residents, including those with low and moderate incomes, accords with the goals of the project.

Plans are underway to print and circulate the currency this Spring. The Greensboro Currency Project is reaching out to the community to participate in naming and designing the local currency which, initially, will be set in parity with the dollar. This exchange rate, as well as all other matters, will be subject to frequent review by the trading partners as part of a democratic process to be followed in all decision-making.

For more information about becoming a Founding Fifty Trading Partner, visit www.greensborocurrencyproject.blogspot.com or send an email to greensborocurrencyproject@gmail.com .

Occupy food: College co-op advocates gather in Berkeley

2012-01-14T19:19:00.000-08:00

January 6, 2012
by Sarah Henry
from Berkeleyside

Taking matters beyond burritos, pizza, and beer, a boot camp for college food activists from across the country kicks off today at Berkeley Student Cooperative‘s Cloyne Court Hotel. The intensive, three-day retreat is designed to help train students who want to run campus co-op food cafés and stores stocked with wholesome foods for college kids seeking something other than a steady diet of fast food.

The event, dubbed “Occupy Your Plate,” is sponsored by the year-old Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (CoFED), a Berkeley-based program that was inspired by the launch of the Berkeley Student Food Collective (BSFC), across the street from campus on Bancroft Way. Speakers at the training include People’s Grocery executive director Nikki Henderson; cookbook author Mollie Katzen; CoFED supporters include Cal professor and author Michael Pollan.

We spoke with CoFed co-founder and UC Berkeley graduate Yoni Landau — who was instrumental in getting the BSFC up and running and, in 2009, lead a protest to keep the Chinese fast-food chain Panda Express off campus – about what’s cooking with the CoFED crew this weekend and in 2012, which has been dubbed the International Year of Cooperatives by the United Nations.

What were some highlights from CoFED’s first year?

At the University of Seattle students secured a rent-free café space for a co-op cafe in their nutrition sciences department. At UC Santa Barbara, students received funds for a mobile-powered solar food cart. And at George Washington University in DC, CoFED training attendees won the top student enterprise grant on campus. These things happened within six months of these students being inspired to start a food co-op at a CoFED training.

Raising our first 200k, having Forbes.com list us as one of the top five ideas in food and sustainability, a Huffington Post nod, and electing the dream team board of directors was also pretty great.

Probably the most lasting highlight: when we had a one word, “how do you feel” check-out at the end of our very first workshop and the quiet kid said, “inspiregized.”

Who is coming to the training this weekend?

College students from all over the U.S. and Canada who want to learn how to create cooperative, sustainable food enterprises will attend. They are grad students and freshmen, economics majors, geography majors, sustainable agriculture majors and nutrition sciences majors. For the most part, they are ambitious, idealistic and won’t take no for an answer. They want to help the world around them get to a great big “yes.”

Why hold the training here in Berkeley?

If you want to learn how to play jazz, you go to New York — it’s not like that’s the only place that jazz is played. Berkeley is an incubator for the food movement.

Can you give us an update on the Berkeley Student Food Collective?

Sales have steadily grown at the new storefront towards break-even, leadership has turned over, the education and event planning is thriving. Maybe most surprising: several fridges broke in the first month the store was open. At its November fundraising gala (and one-year anniversary for the store) over 100 people dropped 50 bucks a head to watch students sing the food co-op fundraising song (mainly a capella). They rule.

Are there other successful food co-ops on campuses around the country?

There are over two dozen examples on campuses in the US and Canada. Maryland’s Food Collective is one of our favorites. It’s been running since the ’70s, does over $700,000 in sales annually, and is a thriving part of the campus “scene.” Students can volunteer for an hour to get a local, organic lunch — it’s a low barrier of entry into the community.

How is CoFED funded?

Last year we got 115 people to commit to giving 10 or more dollars a month and it was a large part of our funding. This year we’re going to triple that with 212 new monthly donors.

Much of the non-profit industrial complex will come down with crony capitalism. If we’re looking to create a new world, we have to build it on foundations that are aligned with our ends. Too many non-profits are stuck in foundation worship mode — it’s a death stroke if you ask me. Not that I’m not grateful, and I love spending time with these people, they’re usually pretty wonderful.

But in five years, we plan to be primarily funded by monthly supporters and the ownership shares paid by our members.

What, exactly, is going to happen over the weekend and what do you hope to achieve?

The magic that happens at these things is hard to pin down — young people leave changed. Part of that is the weird eye contact exercise and part of it is finally finding that community of real peers that they may never have had before. Part of it is definitely learning basic accounting and business planning. Our goal is to help students leave with the inspiration and tools to create the change they want to see on their campus in the form of a cooperative, sustainable food enterprise.

What does “Occupy Your Plate” mean to you?

By occupy, we mean to remove what we don’t like and create what we do like. Western, secular culture is the first human culture to lose its dinner-table rituals. Thousands of years of cementing cultural norms over food are basically gone with us. Bringing back gratitude, honesty and empathy to our most basic social function — eating with loved ones — is the most important thing we can do to shift our culture in a holistic way.

The occupy movement has reinspired us, or me at least. It hasn’t always been easy to make every decision based on my highest values; you want to take short cuts. My friends sleeping in the cold are reminders that you can’t take shortcuts to create a more democratic, just and sustainable world. You just have to do it.

There’ll be more on CoFED’s occupy stuff coming soon — here’s a hint though, we’re being outdone by Istanbul.

Poor US Citizens Barter Their Way to Health

2012-01-10T14:17:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 9, 2012
Al-Jazeera

Maine clinic allows low-income residents to do yard work or other labor in exchange for medical help.

A clinic in the US state of Maine is using a novel way to support those who cannot afford costly health insurance.

Low-income people earn time credits from the Hour Exchange Portland website, mostly by working a variety of odd jobs like raking leaves or driving the elderly, and exchange them for time with a doctor.

Al Jazeera's John Terrett reports from Falmouth, Maine.

Just in Time

2012-01-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

My guide to selecting the best Timebank software for your context.

Just in Time on Shareable.

Co-op Power: A Model for Local Investment, New Business Development and Job Creation

2011-12-27T11:32:00.000-08:00

Cooperative Power!
BALLE's Accelerating Community Capital Webinars
Find out what is working across North America
to connect regional investors with regional businesses
Webinar pricing

Register now for this first webinar in our 2012
Accelerating Community Capital series.

• General public: $25

• Series partners: including business members of BALLE networks; investors with RSF, Investors' Circle and Portfolio 21; members of Slow Money or AEO: $15

• Staff and board of BALLE networks: Free!

Stay tuned for more details about our 2012 line up and registration process.

And please take note: The series is now on the second Tuesday of the month!
Thanks to our
ACC Series Partners

RSF Social Finance

Slow Money

Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO)

Portfolio 21 Investments

Investors' Circle

Co-op Power: A Model for Local Investment, New Business Development and Job Creation

Webinar Speaker:
Lynn Benander of Co-op Power and Northeast Biodiesel

Date and Time:
Tuesday, January 10 at 10am PT
(11am MT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET)
Coop Power
About the topic:
Maybe you know that cooperatives use their shared ownership structure and member fees to fund the cooperative itself. Join BALLE to learn how Co-op Power – a consumer-owned energy cooperative serving southern New England and eastern New York – is stretching the bounds of the cooperative structure and yielding amazing community capital returns in the process.

Co-op Power's Local Organizing Councils have:

Raised more than $300,000 in member equity, $600,000 in member loans, and $850,000 in local investment to support the development of community-scale clean energy projects.
Worked together to support a growing number of new living economy enterprises, like a 3-million gallon biodiesel processing plant.
Created more than 100 jobs over just five years.
Focused on working with communities of color and limited resource communities to build a multi-class, multi-racial movement for a sustainable and just energy future.

Explore this cutting-edge use of cooperative structure for going beyond member equity to finance local businesses and create new jobs – and how you can put the cooperative model to work in your community.

Learn more about our speaker and her organizations here.
How to use BALLE's Accelerating Community Capital Webinar Series
Gather with others from your area to participate in a "viewing party" for each Accelerating Community Capital webinar.

Hold a discussion group afterward to investigate how your community can apply what you learn.

Groups can participate using just one member's registration!

Hear firsthand about the best models working right now that you can replicate where you live.

Ask the presenters the questions you need to build local investing in your area.

Space is limited; register now!

Top 10 Ways to Save Money through Sharing

2011-12-23T12:49:00.000-08:00

From Shareable.net
By Jeremy Adam Smith
09.03.10

The members of this neighborhood group in Santa Rosa, California, save money by borrowing tools from their tool-lending library. Photo by Dustin Zuckerman, from the Shareable.net article, "Is Sharing Contagious?"

Sharing stuff and services conserves resources and builds our ties with our neighbors—but it also saves money, sometimes a lot of money. The first step is to do an inventory and look at the ways you're already sharing; I bet you'll be surprised. Then ask yourself, what else can I share?

Here are ten of our top suggestions, culled from a year's worth of content on Shareable.net—and we’d love to hear yours in a comment!

10. Tools & lawn equipment. Dustin Zuckerman in Santa Rosa, California, worked as both a librarian and a handyman. When he discovered that residents of Oakland and Berkeley could check out tools like books from local libraries, he decided to combine his two passions and start his own tool-lending library.

"Today, routers, power tools, shovels, painting kits, saws, sanders, are packed into every conceivable spot of his apartment and garage," writes Rachel Botsman. "In a camper van in his driveway he keeps weed whackers, power hoses and other bulkier equipment."

There might be a tool-lending library in your community, offered by someone like Zuckerman, or through your local library.

And while you're sharing tools, why not also save money by sharing fixing skills? The Brooklyn-based Fixers' Collective brings neighbors together once a week to share tools and help each other fix broken goods that would ordinarily get thrown away. This saves money in more ways than one! Why not start one in your neighborhood?

9. Gardens & yards. You can also share yards and gardens, which saves money on tools and food, among other things. According to attorney Janelle Orsi, "Yard-sharing has many benefits, from access to fresh food to stronger neighborhood connections to environmental sustainability." In The Sharing Solution, Janelle walks readers through all the steps to yard-sharing, from setting expectations to overcoming rules forbidding gardens in front yards.

"After all, such rules are archaic and predate our society's growing awareness of problems such as farmland depletion," she writes. "People everywhere have decided to grow food, not lawns!"

While you don't need technology to share a yard, a service like Hyperlocavore can help you manage the process, and perhaps more importantly find potential yardshare partners.

If you live in an urban area and don't have a yard to share, many cities have launched community garden programs, where neighbors share plots in a common space. But you can also start your own public, cooperative garden: When friends went to the city and asked if our neighborhood group could plant a garden in our local playground, the park and recreation department said yes, and even provided tons of support.

8. Your home. Orsi also notes that "Sharing is one solution to an unforgiving housing crisis, and it may even be a trend." Again, in The Sharing Solution she describes many examples of how people saved money and resources by sharing houses, and provides detailed, nuts-and-bolts guidelines for different kinds of homesharing arrangements.

There are also economical models for homeownership including cohousing, community land trusts, and limited equity cooperative housing that leverage shared assets to decrease costs.

There are other ways to share the costs of housing, even if you do not actually own a house. For example, if you live in an apartment building or dense urban area, there is truly no need for each household to have its own private wireless router. Talk to your closest neighbors and see if they'd like to participate in the same wireless network — you'll be able to cut your monthly bill in half, at least, and you might go in together on the cost of the router.

Another example: If you pay a monthly fee for trash pickup, for example, try sharing cans or arranging two-can pickups. Again, you'll probably be able to cut your monthly bill in half.

You can also save money on home maintenance by working with your neighbors on home repair and weatherization. The members of one "work group" in Oakland, Calif., take turns doing repair projects on each other's homes. Another group in Cambridge, Mass., has been organizing monthly weatherization "barnraisings." The barnraisings save energy and money, of course, but they also build community.

Then there's the time honored practice of taking in borders, which has been given a facelift by services like Airbnb — a marketplace for spare rooms, houses, stunning lofts, and even cabooses!

7. Food. There are many ways to save money on food by sharing, and many of them also lead to healthier food on your table. You can organize potlucks and dinner nights among friends, of course, but today there are so many other ways to share healthy food.

You can get involved in helping to grow and harvest the crops. You can join a local community-supported agriculture program or a community-supported kitchen, start a farmers market, and share beef and eggs through regional cooperatives. You might even sign up for a "crop mob" that will give you a chance to get your hands dirty for a day in exchange for a little food.

In addition, people in cities around the country have organized foraging programs that collect fruit from people's yards and redistribute them throughout the neighborhood and to people who can't afford fresh fruit. Neighborhood Fruit has a web site and an iPhone app that can facilitate your foraging.

Believe it or not, there are also restaurants around the world that allow people to barter for food. "I don't know that our five foot bartering wall will be the thing that turns this local economy in the right direction, but I do think we can make a significant impact," says Omer Orian, twenty-something co-owner of Off the Waffle in Eugene, Ore. He argues that his town possesses ample "human and natural resources" to sustain itself. "The lack of cash flow due to the economy should not stop this city from prospering."

6. Stuff. There are now dozens of websites that exist to help you share, exchange, or rent stuff, from furniture to electronics to books — almost anything you need in daily life you can get for low or no cost on the Internet. There's Craigslist and Freecycle, of course, but also start-ups like Rentalic, NeighborGoods, Closest Closet, and EcoModo.

If you look around, you'll likely also find local "really really free markets" where people meet face to face. Share Tompkins, a volunteer-run group based in Ithaca, N.Y., organizes monthly Community Swap Meets, where people give away and barter everything from homemade apple butter to original art to musical instruments. Beyond the tangible activities, writes Shira Golding, "We feel we are contributing to the creation of a social fabric rich in giving and sharing."

5. Babysitting. Parents around the country set up babysitting cooperatives, where they either take turns watching each other's kids or hire a sitter together.

It is less common for parents to share a regular nanny. A full-time nanny can earn $400-$700 per week, which is beyond the budget of many working families. Sharing a nanny cuts those costs substantially.

"Costs are split in any number of creative ways, often evenly split between the families," writes Kathleen Webb. "In a nanny-share arrangement, the nanny usually earns 10-20 percent more than her counterparts employed by a single family. Split down the middle, however, this creates a win-win situation for the families and the caregiver."

4. Knowledge. Are you an expert on homebrews, bicycle repair, or mending clothes? Do you want to know how to do these things? You could spend money on classes...or you could teach your skills to somebody else and learn something from them in the process!

Brooklyn Skillshare in New York organizes meet-ups where people show up and share their personal expertise. According to Meg Wachter, "Everyone really has something to teach, and something to learn. The seeds for the Brooklyn Skillshare began in the spring of 2009 when I attended a similar event in Boston and was inspired by the weekend-long workshops offered on a regular basis, free of charge." Today, Meg helps organize Brooklyn Skillshare events throughout the year.

And as long as you're pursuing free knowledge, don't forget libraries (the original shareable institution!) and online educational resources like the Open Educational Resources Commons.

Credit: Olli Doo

3. Clothes. My wife walked into a laundromat seeking change for a dollar, and there she discovered the "sock exchange," where customers pin single socks to a board for anyone to take and match. Such gestures make city living more fun, and they save money!

There are lots of ways to share your old duds or get your hands on someone else's recycled fashions. In addition to conventional routes — buying from or donating to Goodwill — you can swap clothes online at sites like thredUp and Freecycle. At thredUp, for example, participants list what clothes they want to share on the company's site and exchange items through the mail.

Clothing-swap parties are easy to organize and are becoming popular throughout the country — round up your old clothes, invite your friends over, and swap apparel. In New York, a group called Score! organizes mega-clothing exchanges and parties across the city. They bring DJs, artists, and fashion photographers to take pictures of attendees in their "scored" outfits. Why not organize one of these in your town?

2. Bikes. There are now almost 200 citywide bikesharing programs around the world, which use GPS and internet and mobile phone access to connect people with bikes. For example, each bicycle in Denver's new B-Cycle program can track mileage, calories burned, and amount of carbon offset — and each user is able to monitor their own fitness and see their contributions to the city's sustainability!

No bikesharing program in your city? Why not help start one? A new technology called Social Bicycles promises to unleash the promise of DIY bikesharing. For a more ambitious citywide program, Boston's official "bike czar," Nicole Freedman, says that the first step is to do a lot of research. "Learn if your city is already looking at it," she says. "City government has to be involved; it has to be a public-private partnership, because no bike sharing program can work without using public space. Anyone good in government is listening to the public; we're hired by the public, and hearing people's requests is one of the best ways to hear what's good."

And the number one money-saving shareable is (drumroll, please)....

1. Your Ride. How much does car ownership cost? Most studies estimate that the average American spends $8,000 a year on cars. Not me — I don't have a car and I spend about $1,500/year on transportation (excluding plane travel), with most of it going to public transit, cabs, and very occasional car rentals. I'm not a superhero — I'm a family man and I like convenience as much as anyone.

In fact, it's easier than ever to live without a car. You can start by exploring options like biking, walking, and public transit, which are all better for your wallet, your health, and your environment. Of course, sometimes you'll still need a car — and that's where carsharing services come in.

Between 2007 and 2009, membership in North American services like Zipcar and the nonprofit City Carshare rose by 117 percent — and is projected to hit 4.4 million members within six years.

Own a set of wheels? You can still share them. We're seeing a proliferation of new peer-to-peer carsharing services like RelayRides, Spride Share, and WhipCar, which allow both neighbors and strangers to rent each other cars. Let's say, for example, that you're visiting Baltimore, Md., for a day and need a car for touring the city. You'd look at the RelayRides website, find the nearest participant who is renting out her car, check availability and reserve the time, and then go get your ride. There are also many new companies — such Avego, Zebigo, Zimride, and Carticipate — that connect carpoolers and ridesharers over the Internet.

And there it is, our top ten list of ways to save money by sharing. I hope you enjoyed reading about them all, and hope you find a way to bring some or all of them into your own lives. If you have more suggestions or any questions about anything on the list, please do leave them in a comment!

This piece was originally written for the Wells Fargo Environmental Forum. Parts of it also appear in Yes! magazine's special issue about community resilience, on newsstands now.

Greece in Chaos

2011-12-21T19:01:00.000-08:00

From Counterpunch
by NOËLLE BURGI
December 19, 2011

“Who knows what tomorrow will bring?” people ask in Athens, Salonika and right across Greece. There’s a sense of collective imprisonment, individual uncertainty and impending catastrophe. Yet Greece has had a turbulent history, and the Greeks have always seen themselves as a gifted people, sturdy and accustomed to adversity. “There have always been difficult times, and we always made it through. But now, all hope has been taken from us,” said a small business owner.

While the austerity measures are piling up, an avalanche of laws, decrees and edicts is sweeping aside the social, economic and administrative frameworks. Yesterday’s reality is crumbling. As for tomorrow — who knows?

Greek citizens are subject to a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, with its incomprehensible, fluctuating regulations. Addressing colleagues, a civic employee in the Cyclades said: “People want to conform to the law, but we don’t know what to tell them, [the authorities] haven’t given us any details.” A man had to pay € 200 and present 13 papers and proofs of identity to renew his driving license. Salary cuts among public employees have disrupted the public sector. “When you call the police to alert them to a situation, they reply, ‘it’s your problem, you deal with it’,” said a retired engineer officer from the merchant navy. Tensions are rising. Reports show a big increase in domestic violence, theft and murder (1).

Salaries are falling (by 35-40% in some sectors) while new taxes are invented, some backdated to the beginning of the calendar year. Net incomes have fallen drastically, in many cases by 50% or more. Since the summer, a solidarity tax (1-2% of annual income) and an energy tax (calculated on the consumption of petrol and natural gas) have been levied. Further novelties include the lowering of the tax threshold from € 5,000 to € 2,000, and a property tax of € 0.5 to € 20 per square metre levied as part of electricity bills, payable in two or three instalments (failure to pay results in power cuts and penalties).

Since the start of November, pensioners and public and private employees cannot anticipate their monthly earnings. Many workers go without pay altogether. The state is reducing its workforce drastically as part of its restructuring programme. Between now and 2015, 120,000 public employees over the age of 53 have been earmarked for “semi-retirement”, the precursor to full mandatory retirement after 33 years of service, during which employees are obliged to stay at home, and only receive 60% of their basic salaries. Once fully retired, many public employees will be reduced to living on very little. A group of ex-railwaymen, aged 50 and above, said they used to earn between € 1,800 and € 2,000 a month, a relatively comfortable salary in Greece. They have now been posted to jobs as museum guards as part of a “voluntary transition” package (2) and their basic monthly income fluctuates between € 1,100 and € 1,300; semi-retirees are restricted to € 600. All are barred from taking on extra paid work to supplement their income — the penalty, immediate loss of revenue, is enforced.

’Insurance payments have stopped’

The loss of income is tearing society apart. Bills are not paid, consumption is down, stores are closing and unemployment rising. In May the official unemployment rate was 16.6% (10 points higher than in 2008) and 40% among the young. The actual rate is likely to be much higher. The social, economic and political crisis has shaken the national health service. Hospital and public health care centre budgets have been cut by 40% on average. More patients are admitted to the emergency room, others go to Doctors of the World health centres, and many choose to do without medical care altogether. People report being denied access to crucial medicine. One journalist said her father suffers from Parkinson’s disease: “His medication costs € 500 a month. The pharmacy told us it will stop supplying him, because insurance payments have stopped.”

Physical ailments (notably heart conditions) and mental illnesses are increasing at a worrying rate. Recent epidemiological studies have shown that heightened stress, exacerbated by high debt and prolonged unemployment, is generating “major depressive disorders, disruptions and generalised anxiety” (3), which account for a dramatic rise in suicides. According to unofficial figures discussed in parliament, the suicide rate increased by 25% from 2009 to 2010, with a further rise of 40% in the first half of 2011, compared to last year, according to health ministry sources. Figures published in The Lancet (4) reveal an alarming increase in prostitution, as well as infection rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (5). There are unprecedented numbers of homeless people, and they are no longer limited to alcoholics, drug addicts or the mentally ill. A recent study demonstrates that the middle class, the young and the moderately poor are now more likely to end up on the street (6).

The Greeks struggle to see a way out of what a social worker described as a return to a “barbaric” way of life. They feel abandoned and unable to cope. Strong family ties are buckling under the pressure of diminished incomes and a collapsing welfare state. Those who can leave, do so. The options for those remaining are limited. Some turn to the Church, which arranges soup kitchens and other social services. In Salonika, Father Stefanos Tolios of the Orthodox church, is swamped by desperate people looking for work. Residents of several cities (Volos, Patras, Heraklion, Athens, Corfu, Salonika) have set up community-based informal economies, based on local exchange systems. Families are bringing their elderly back from retirement homes, to recover the monthly charge of € 300-400.

No country could withstand this. Greece is worse equipped to deal with the social consequences of the austerity measures imposed with a “scientific cruelty” (7) by the national and transnational elites. Post-1945 Greece, with a weak state and clientelism, had neither the time nor means to build a resilient system of social protection. The existing safety nets are now tearing. “Everything is falling apart,” said Sotiris Lainas, a psychologist and coordinator of the Self Help Promotion Programme at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Salonika).

Who’s to blame?

The previous government, under George Papandreou, scrambled to conform to the demands of the “troika” — the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank — for instance by cutting 210 budget lines in the health ministry. No thought was given as to how the budget cuts would undermine the ability of essential (and viable) services to function, such as the day care provided by the Panhellenic Federation of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders. Thus the transnational forces, which for nearly 30 years have worked to erode the welfare state, have passed on the task to national enforcers, themselves longtime beneficiaries of a nepotic, inefficient, corrupt system.

Responsibility for the crisis has been shamelessly dumped upon the Greeks. Accused, but not tried, they have been pronounced guilty because of their association with their inept leaders. Certain sections of the population are exposed to popular fury: seen as a privileged caste, public employees are stigmatised; doctors and shopkeepers are all suspected of untruthful tax filings. But the people know that the system and their leaders are at the root of the rot. Knowledge is not power, though, and the nation is left wondering what to do next.

Patronage and corruption have historical roots. Greece has never enjoyed a modern state with a relatively autonomous bureaucracy, free from private interests, with the capacity to shape economic and social development. Nor has it had a strong civic identity. Foreign powers have imposed their preferences since independence in 1830 (8), when Greece was forcefully integrated into the world capitalist economy in a peripheral position, kept servile and buffeted by various great powers. History has superimposed an artificial political model on a fragmented society traditionally centred on local loyalties, the extended family and community values. As a result, the Greek political system has always been authoritarian and centralised, denying the separation of powers, local autonomy or real democracy (9) — fertile soil for corruption and patronage, which serve the interests and entrench the domination of the elites. The Greeks have resigned themselves to all this.

They are not naive or ignorant of their and their country’s shortcomings. But they are destitute and disempowered. What hope is there for a nation that has proved “fundamentally incapable of forming a political community” (10)? Even if it wanted to return to the pre-crisis days, “when we were living a lie”, as Lainas put it, Greece would be unable to do so. It has been hit too hard, as the repeated calls for order and control make clear. Polls initially favourable to the new government formed by Lucas Papademos, the former governor of the Greek Central Bank replacing Papandreou as prime minister, point to the belief among some Greeks that a technocratic administration might be preferable to the disgraced political class. This does not imply an adherence to the austerity measures, but rather a willingness to set matters right. For some, a strong foreign authority, mentioned by Mario Monti before he became Italy’s prime minister (11), might guarantee an honest and competent government acting in the interests of the country.

But everything points against it. Having seen off their worthless leaders, Greeks may not know who the enemy is any more. “There is no enemy to fight,” said Lainas: “You can’t fight what you can’t see. Their strength lies in abstract governments. Such as the EFSF [European Financial Stability Fund]. The enemy may be abstract, but the tragedy is real. They are stealing our lives, depriving us of a future.”

Noëlle Burgi is a researcher at the Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Sciences Politique (CESSP), Sorbonne University, Paris

(1) I Simerini, Nicosia, 16 March 2011.

(2) Part of the railway company’s preparations for privatisation, which include reducing the number of staff.

(3) Study yet to be published by the University Mental Health Research Institute, conducted February-April 2011. See Eleftherotypia, Athens, 5 October 2011.

(4) Alexander Kentikelenis et al, “Health effects of financial crisis: omens of a Greek tragedy”, The Lancet, London, vol 378, no 9801, 22 October 2011.

(5) See “Risk of HIV outbreaks among drug injectors in the EU”, European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon, 14 November 2011.

(6) Study conducted by Klimaka, an NGO based in Athens. Also see “Greek crisis creates thousands of middle-class homeless”,www.monstersandcritics.com, 9 October 2011.

(7) Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation.Originally published as The Origins of Our Time(Rinehart, New York 1944); latest edition published by Beacon Press, 2001.

(8) Following the War of Independence (1821-1830), the London Treaty (1832) imposed a monarchy on Greece. Otto de Wittelsbach, prince of Bavaria, was installed on the throne by the European Great Powers (France, Russia, Britain), which dabbled constantly in Greek affairs.

(9) See Nicos P Mouzelis, Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment, Macmillan, London, 1978.

(10) Cornelius Castoriadis, “We are responsible for our own history” (in Greek), cited in Le mouvement grec pour la démocratie directe, Lieux Communs, 2011.

(11) Mario Monti, “Il podestà forestiero”, Corriere della Serra, Milan, 7 August 2011.

This article appears in the excellent Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.

Worker-Owners of America, Unite!

2011-12-19T13:41:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times
By GAR ALPEROVITZ
December 14, 2011

THE Occupy Wall Street protests have come and mostly gone, and whether they continue to have an impact or not, they have brought an astounding fact to the public’s attention: a mere 1 percent of Americans own just under half of the country’s financial assets and other investments. America, it would seem, is less equitable than ever, thanks to our no-holds-barred capitalist system.

But at another level, something different has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing.

Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.

And worker-owned companies make a difference. In Cleveland, for instance, an integrated group of worker-owned companies, supported in part by the purchasing power of large hospitals and universities, has taken the lead in local solar-panel installation, “green” institutional laundry services and a commercial hydroponic greenhouse capable of producing more than three million heads of lettuce a year.

Local and state governments are likewise changing the nature of American capitalism. Almost half the states manage venture capital efforts, taking partial ownership in new businesses. Calpers, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local development projects; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each resident with dividends from public investment strategies as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.

Moreover, this year some 14 states began to consider legislation to create public banks similar to the longstanding Bank of North Dakota; 15 more began to consider some form of single-payer or public-option health care plan.

Some of these developments, like rural co-ops and credit unions, have their origins in the New Deal era; some go back even further, to the Grange movement of the 1880s. The most widespread form of worker ownership stems from 1970s legislation that provided tax benefits to owners of small businesses who sold to their employees when they retired. Reagan-era domestic-spending cuts spurred nonprofits to form social enterprises that used profits to help finance their missions.

Recently, growing economic pain has provided a further catalyst. The Cleveland cooperatives are an answer to urban decay that traditional job training, small-business and other development strategies simply do not touch. They also build on a 30-year history of Ohio employee-ownership experiments traceable to the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s.

Further policy changes are likely. In Indiana, the Republican state treasurer, Richard Mourdock, is using state deposits to lower interest costs to employee-owned companies, a precedent others states could easily follow. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is developing legislation to support worker-owned strategies like that of Cleveland in other cities. And several policy analysts have proposed expanding existing government “set aside” procurement programs for small businesses to include co-ops and other democratized enterprises.

If such cooperative efforts continue to increase in number, scale and sophistication, they may suggest the outlines, however tentative, of something very different from both traditional, corporate-dominated capitalism and traditional socialism.

It’s easy to overestimate the possibilities of a new system. These efforts are minor compared with the power of Wall Street banks and the other giants of the American economy. On the other hand, it is precisely these institutions that have created enormous economic problems and fueled public anger.

During the populist and progressive eras, a decades-long buildup of public anger led to major policy shifts, many of which simply took existing ideas from local and state efforts to the national stage. Furthermore, we have already seen how, in moments of crisis, the nationalization of auto giants like General Motors and Chrysler can suddenly become a reality. When the next financial breakdown occurs, huge injections of public money may well lead to de facto takeovers of major banks.

And while the American public has long supported the capitalist model, that, too, may be changing. In 2009 a Rasmussen poll reported that Americans under 30 years old were “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism.”

A long era of economic stagnation could well lead to a profound national debate about an America that is dominated neither by giant corporations nor by socialist bureaucrats. It would be a fitting next direction for a troubled nation that has long styled itself as of, by and for the people.

Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland and a founder of the Democracy Collaborative, is the author of “America Beyond Capitalism.”
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 15, 2011, on page A39 of the New York edition with the headline: Worker-Owners of America, Unite!.

From Foreclosure to Occupation: Tenants Organize To Beat Evictions

2011-11-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

From Shareable.net/Huffington Post
by Mira Luna
11/29/11

A group of low-income San Franciscans has come up with a positive, long term solution to the housing crisis that is causing millions of Americans to be evicted and some to embrace the "Occupy Homes" movement: buy the buildings.

In October 2011, residents of the Columbus United Cooperative (CUC) in San Francisco celebrated final approval of the ownership of their building as a permanently affordable, resident-owned limited-equity housing cooperative. The residents can now purchase shares in the co-op for only $10,000 in the heart of San Francisco (where most housing starts at $500,000) to become cooperative homeowners, though most earn less than 50 percent of area median income. Previous to the conversion they had been living in their building under the threat of eviction.

According to a Lender Processing Services report on November 18, "just under 6.3 million properties nationwide are either 30 or more days delinquent or in foreclosure." Another study published in June by Templeton LPA states that the number of court orders to evict tenants have risen by 9% over the last year, and the number of tenants in serious arrears with their rental payments is up by 13%, with 2.1% of all tenancies in arrears nationwide.

Long waiting lists for public housing mean that people remain homeless or in shelters longer. The
National Coalition for the Homeless reported that in 2007, before the economy went into full recession, the average stay in homeless shelters for households with children was 5.7 months . Rising foreclosures and tenant evictions have been helping to fuel the fire of the Occupy movement. "Occupy
Homes" is a new offshoot of Occupy Wall Street that links homeowners with activists in direct action to halt foreclosures in some of the local strongholds across the country of the Occupy movement. Occupy Oakland has announced it will start occupying vacant homes starting in December and Occupy Portland is already starting to move into foreclosed homes. Homeless advocacy group "Homes Not Jails" is teaming up with Occupy San Francisco to turn abandoned hotels into homeless shelters.

After Occupy L.A. organized a vigil and camp at her home and occupied the local Fannie Mae office, Rose Gudiel was able to keep her and her disabled mother's home from which they were being evicted, as the bank opened up to renegotiating their mortgage.

Chicago, New York and Minneapolis have branches of Occupy Homes, too.

Ohio Congresswoman Max Rameau, an organizer for Take Back the Land who began this work five years ago, says, "The banks are actually occupying our homes."

But in the US, squatters have few rights and face an steep uphill battle to stay in the homes they've claimed. Owners of foreclosed homes might have some ability to bargain with banks if they can afford to, but many can't, and others are being kicked out of rentals, especially as former homeowners are now moving down the housing chain and renting. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that "40 percent of families facing eviction due to foreclosure are renters and 7 million households living on very low incomes are at risk of foreclosure. Squatting isn't for everyone, in particular the sick, disabled, elderly and children, and living in substandard housing under threat of the police isn't exactly ideal. Unless the mainstream joins Occupy Homes and the government starts recognizing squats of vacant and foreclosed properties, the movement will likely remain on the fringe.

Tenant-owned, cooperative housing can provide a more stable solution to the housing crisis. When the residents of the 21-unit Columbus United Cooperative (CUC) in San Francisco converted the building to a limited-equity housing cooperative, the low income, Chinese-speaking resident families were able to stay in their homes.

Read more here.

For more more info on how to start a tenant-owned housing cooperative see http://www.shareable.net/blog/how-to-start-a-housing-coop.

Mira Luna is a community activist working to develop an alternative economy in the San Francisco Bay Area, who contributes to the fabulous online magazine Shareable.net - your guide to the new sharing economy.

Making the most of cooperation

2011-11-28T14:24:00.000-08:00

Taking a cue from a Spanish hill town, the mayor of Richmond, Calif., is recognizing worker-owned co-ops as a possible path out of the poverty and unemployment that plague her city.

Liberty Ship Cafe co-op

Concetta Abraham, a member of the Liberty Ship Cafe co-op in Richmond, Calif., dances while testing recipes at St. Luke Methodist Church. The 76-year-old native of Italy provides much of the cooking magic for the co-op, whose seven owners were drawn together while taking a class on developing cooperatives at the Richmond library. (Dean Coppola, Bay Area Newspaper Group / February 19, 2008)

By Lee Romney, Los Angeles Times
November 27, 2011

Reporting from Richmond, Calif.—
Where a hot dog stand now is the main lunchtime option for city workers in this distressed Bay Area town, soon they'll be able to choose from steel-cut oatmeal, goat cheese empanadas and white bean and kale stew, prepared in a mobile cafe. Its owners will share in the decision-making — and any profits.

Richmond Solar has trained needy residents to work as green-energy installers and now aims to transform some into bosses by forming a worker-owned cooperative.

The city's first bicycle shop has opened with similar dreams: Young men who have volunteered to learn the repair trade soon may be elevated to co-owners.

"I'm just gonna ride it out with everyone to get where we need to go," Mercedes Burnell, 19, said as he prepared to replace a crankshaft and pedals at Richmond SPOKES.

The flurry of democratic enterprise has been guided by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, a former schoolteacher who visited Mondragon, Spain, and recognized a possible path out of the poverty and unemployment that plague her city.

The Basque hill town is dominated by Mondragon Corp., a web of cooperatives that employ 83,000 workers and together represent Spain's seventh-largest business. Co-op clusters based on Mondragon's model have emerged in Cleveland and the Bronx, N.Y., among other cities.

Richmond, with a 16% unemployment rate, hopes to follow suit.

The city's industrial roots date back more than a century, when it was home to the Santa Fe Railroad terminus and a Standard Oil refinery. World War II shipyards swelled the population to nearly its current 103,000. But Richmond has struggled since and is regularly listed among the nation's 25 most dangerous cities.

Since August, Bay Area co-op veteran Terry Baird — a burly man with a gray beard and a penchant for South African freedom songs — has been on the city payroll, helping to piece together cooperative ventures in Richmond's economically barren pockets.

Mondragon Corp. was created in 1956 and fine-tuned over half a century, McLaughlin said, "but you have to start somewhere. One of the prerequisites of starting a co-op is need, and that is something that we have in Richmond."

Demand matters too. Baird aims to start small, with food and service co-ops such as a plumber's collective that won't require hefty upfront investment. Then the city hopes to bring government and other big employers on board, setting up ventures to meet their buying needs.

::

McLaughlin, a Green Party member who's been mayor since 2006, visited Mondragon last year and was dazzled by the scale of the worker-driven enterprises.

"My understanding of co-ops from the 1960s and 1970s was that they were small and interesting," said McLaughlin, who was immediately sold on the idea of replicating the formula in Richmond.

The Mondragon story began with a Catholic priest.

In 1943, Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta — who had narrowly escaped death by firing squad during the Spanish Civil War — started a technical school for working-class boys. By 1956, graduates had helped form the first cooperative to make kerosene stoves. A cooperative bank followed in 1959.

The corporation, which reported a $242-million profit last year, now includes 255 industrial, retail and financial cooperatives, with others focusing on education and research. Manufacturing co-ops churn out metal-cutting tools, washing machines and bicycles. A retail co-op runs Spain's third-largest grocery chain. A Mondragon construction venture built Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum. About 85% of the corporation's employees are co-op members.

But the original edict of one-worker/one vote remains, through an elected general assembly with representatives from each cooperative. Recently, the assembly voted to cut everyone's pay rather than risk layoffs at any one co-op. The compensation of the highest-paid worker is capped at seven times that of the lowest. Some of the corporation's overall profits go toward offsetting losses at any individual enterprise. Workers also receive a share in the corporation, based on their contributions, every year, with more money flowing into interest-bearing accounts disbursed at retirement.

The U.S. has a history of cooperative movements, beginning with enterprises organized in the late 19th century by the Knights of Labor and highlighted by the burst of food co-ops and consumer buying clubs of the 1960s. Recent years have seen a resurgence.

"It's less counterculture utopian," said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the San Francisco-based U.S. Federation of Worker Owned Cooperatives, "and more engaged with people in the economy."

Some of the growth is sector-based: Green-cleaning ventures launched by immigrant women, for example, are common. But philanthropists and community developers increasingly have focused their attention on the co-op model as a way to revitalize urban areas.

No city experiment has made more of a splash than Cleveland's. With support from universities and medical centers that border the downtown area targeted for development, the Cleveland Foundation — a donor-based organization dedicated to bettering the city — has channeled millions of dollars into the Mondragon-inspired Evergreen Cooperatives.

A solar panel installation-and-weatherization company and a green commercial laundry are up and running with a combined 50 worker-owners, said Lillian Kuri, program director of the Cleveland Foundation. An urban farming co-op is scheduled to open in the spring.

In addition to providing financing for co-op ventures, Evergreen Cooperatives makes services such as child care available to the workers and provides no-cost healthcare.

Ted Howard, an architect of Cleveland's experiment and founder of the University of Maryland's Democracy Collaborative, said worker-ownership is supplanting other forms of inner-city revival.

"When you're hiring people even in a decent job that pays a living wage — if they … have no retirement account, no rainy day savings — a job alone is not enough," Howard said.

In addition to offering the chance to share in profits, worker-owned companies are rooted in the community and won't "pack up and move," he said.

The co-op model has found interest among government officials in Washington D.C., Amarillo, Texas, and Atlanta, Howard said, but Richmond stands alone in hiring a coordinator. "I don't know any city in America that's done that," he said.

::

Enter Baird, a Richmond resident who in 1997 helped found the worker-owned Arizmendi Bakery cooperative in Oakland. The Arizmendi Assn. of Cooperatives now includes six Bay Area bakeries. All workers earn the same pay rate. Profits are distributed at year's end in proportion to hours worked.

Though he may be a co-op evangelist, Baird knows the model won't work without a product or service consumers will pay for, a decent location and a group of people who are able to work together.

During a recent tour of Richmond, Baird pointed out candidates for cooperative ventures: A vacant 5,000-square-foot building is under consideration for a handyman's cooperative. A faded onetime coin laundry near a city park could become a bakery or restaurant. Then there's the weedy lot that one woman hopes to transform into a cooperative garden and farm stand.

In the heart of the old downtown sits Richmond SPOKES.

Brian Drayton, once a junior zookeeper in Baltimore, spent years developing youth programs for a range of nonprofits, stressing art and environmental sustainability.

When he opened the community space and "bike lounge" as a nonprofit last month, young men from the neighborhood poured in to find out what he was doing. Then they rolled up their sleeves and helped lay gleaming wood flooring.

As a local artist covered the walls in vivid murals, they stuck around to learn the bike trade. Baird has been meeting with a group of five or so men to discuss a worker-owned collective.

Richmond Solar Executive Director Michelle McGeoy has secured funds for her co-op from, among others, Chevron (formerly Standard Oil and now the city's largest employer) and the California Endowment — a private foundation that seeks to promote healthy communities. The company has set an initial target of having 10 worker-owners by next spring.

Then there's the Liberty Ship Cafe, whose seven owners were drawn together while taking a class on developing cooperatives at the Richmond library. The California Endowment has helped fund this project as well.

On Dec. 1, the collective will start selling its breakfast and lunch fare at a farmers market near the civic center. The plan is to begin deliveries to government office workers soon after.

Julio Chavez, 40, studied communications in his native Guatemala before coming to the U.S. and working as an electrician. In recent months, he has joined the other Liberty Ship Cafe partners in testing recipes for sancocho — a traditional Latin American soup — and other delicacies in a rented church kitchen.

"It's a difficult time, so one has to do different things, to search for options," Chavez said.

Challenges remain.

While Mondragon is united by its Basque culture, Baird noted, Richmond is fragmented by race and class and shadowed by chronic violence.

On top of the usual cost of business, cooperatives require training — not just in job-specific skills but on how to manage a business and make sure everyone's voice is heard. "The real thing that can take a [cooperative] business down," Hoover said, "is a group that's not prepared to make decisions together."

On a recent rainy day, the Liberty Ship Cafe workers met to discuss just that.

Concetta Abraham, a 76-year-old native of Italy, provides much of the group's cooking magic. While tasting her savory pozole, the collective determined how long each member should be allowed to speak on agenda items and discussed the importance of not interrupting one another.

"We're from different countries, different cultures and are different ages," said 68-year-old Carlos Ruiller, who was born in Peru. "There's a period where we'll have to suffer and adapt. But I'm hopeful. We're all equals starting out — like soldiers."

Occupy Wall Street, Beyond Encampments

2011-11-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

Occupy Wall Street, Beyond Encampments
As winter arrives and police crack down, how can occupiers keep their movement alive—and help it grow? Veteran activists share lessons from Spain’s Indignados.
by Luis Moreno-Caballud, Marina Sitrin
posted Nov 21, 2011
from Yes! Magazine

Marina Sitrin and Luis Moreno-Caballud—participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement and Spain's May 15 movement—share their advice for Occupy Wall Street's next step.

We write this letter as participants in the movements, and as an invitation to a conversation. We hope to raise questions about how we continue to deepen and transform the new social relationships and processes we have begun … to open the discussion towards a common horizon.

The evictions and threats to the physical occupations in the United States have again raised the question of the future of the movement. The question isn’t whether the movement has a future, but what sort of future it will be. For example, should our energy be focused on finding new spaces to occupy and create encampments? Should we be focused more in our local neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces? Is there a way to occupy public space with horizontal assemblies, yet also focus locally and concretely?

A look at the recent history of a movement similar to Occupy—the Spanish indignados or May 15 movement—can shed some light on the opportunities and urgency of this new phase. It is a moment that we see as a potential turning point, and one with incredible possibilities.

There are three key elements that have made the global movements of
2011 so powerful:

1. The extraordinary capacity to include all types of people;
2. The impulse to move beyond traditional forms of the protest and contention, so as to create solutions for the problems identified;
3. The horizontal and directly participatory form they take.

Let’s look at the first element. Unlike other movements that have strongly identified with particular social groups (workers, students, etc.), both the indignados and Occupy are movements that anyone can join, just by choosing to do so. Again and again, in Madrid as in New York, we have heard the demonstrators chanting solidarity slogans to the police: “they’ve also lowered your salary” and “you too are the 99%”. In both places the movements have been able to bring out many people who had never been to a demonstration before, and make them feel welcome and useful. It is a culture and politics of openness and acceptance of the other.

The second element, the capacity to create solutions, is consistent with this non-confrontational aspect of the Spanish and American movements. Like their predecessors in Egypt and Greece, both movements began with the occupation of a public space. Rather than reproducing the logic of the traditional “sit-in,” these occupations quickly turned to the construction of miniature models of the society that the movement wanted to create—prefiguring the world while simultaneously creating it. The territory occupied was geographic, but only so as to open other ways of doing and being together. It is not the specific place that is the issue, but what happens in it. This is what we could call the first phase of the movement. Solutions began to be implemented for the urgent problems, like the absence of truly representative politics and the lack of access to basic necessities, such as housing, education, food, and health care. In Spain and in the United States, this first phase saw the creation of two problem-solving institutions: the general assemblies and the working groups.
The participants in these movements create spaces of sociability, places where we can be treated as free human beings beyond the constant demands of the profit motive.

The ways in which we organize in these spaces of assemblies and working groups is inextricably linked to the vision of what we are creating. We seek open, horizontal, participatory spaces where each person can truly speak and be heard. We organize structures, such as facilitation teams, agendas, and variations on the forms of the assembly, from general assemblies to spokes councils, always being open to changing them so as to create the most democratic and participatory space possible.

The very existence of the encampments, together with the general assemblies, was already a victory over the increasingly desperate battle of all against all that the neoliberal crisis has imposed on us. The participants in these movements create spaces of sociability, places where we can be treated as free human beings beyond the constant demands of the profit motive. In a city like New York where debates about our society tend to occur only in government institutions, and expensive spaces of limited access (universities, offices, restaurants and bars), the assemblies at Zuccotti provided a public forum that was open to anyone who wanted to speak. In addition, from the very beginning the movement created working groups designed to directly address problems related to basic human necessities. On the first day of the occupation of Zuccotti, the loading and unloading of shopping-carts full of jars of peanut butter and loaves of bread, an initiative launched by the already-functioning food committee, was the first sign of this effort to provide solutions. By the 5th week of the Occupation in New York the food working group was feeding upwards of 3,000 people a day.

spanish 15m by Ale Arillo

Protesters of the Spanish 15M movement in Seville.

Photo by Ale Arillo

In these working groups the dynamic of the second phase of these movements was already implicit. In Spain this phase began over the summer; in the United States it is beginning now. This phase is characterized by the gradual shift from a focus on acts of protest (which nonetheless continue to have a crucial role, as we must confront this system that creates crisis) to instituting the type of change that the movements actually want to see happen in society as a whole. The capacity to create solutions grows as the movements expand in all directions, first through the appearance of multiple occupations connected among themselves, and then through the creation of—or collaboration with—groups or networks that are able to solve problems on a local level through cooperation and the sharing of skills and resources. For example, Occupy Harlem is using direct action to prevent heat from being shut off in a building in the neighborhood (this action has been coordinated with OWS and Occupy Brooklyn).

In the case of Spain, this expansion began in June, when the movement decided to focus its energy more on the assemblies and the working groups than on maintaining the encampments themselves. To maintain the miniature models of a society that the movement wished to create did not necessarily contribute to the actual changes that were needed in the populations that needed them the most. Which is why the decision to move away from the encampments was nothing more than another impulse in the constructive aims of the movement: the real encampment that has to be reconstructed is the world.

This Changes Everything Book Cover
This Changes Everything: How the 99% Woke Up
Introducing the movement that’s shifting our vision of what kind of world is possible—from the new book, “This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement.”

Of course, it is true that the encampments continue to have a crucial function as places in which the symbolic power of the Occupy movement is concentrated. It is also true that the efforts to defend them have produced moving displays of solidarity. But the viability of a movement is not only defined by its capacity to withstand pressure from the outside, but also in its ability to reach and work together with people outside the space of the plaza or square. It is this—the going beyond the parameters of the plaza—which the assemblies and the working groups have already started to put into effect.

In the U.S., this might take the form of assemblies in neighborhoods, workplaces, universities, and on street corners working concretely together with neighbors and workmates, as well as then relating together in assemblies of assemblies or spokes councils in parks, plazas, and squares, sharing experiences from the more local spaces. All the while, the occupation of space and territory would continue—but with the vision of territory as what happens together, with one another, in multiple places, and then coming together to share in another geographic place. This could take places from neighborhood to neighborhood or city to city, all networked in horizontal assemblies.
While the indignado movement no longer has encampments, its presence is felt everywhere.

In any case, to return to the example of Spain, what is certain is that while the indignado movement no longer has encampments, its presence is felt everywhere. It’s a culture now, composed of thousands of micro-institutions that provide solutions through the common efforts of people affected by the same problems. There are cooperatives addressing work, housing, energy, education, finance, and nutrition, and many other things, as well as a web of collaboration that connects these cooperatives. Catalunya and Madrid already have “Integral Cooperatives” whose function is to coordinate the different services offered by various cooperatives within a particular locale, to the point that in some places in Spain it is almost possible to live without having to depend on the resources hoarded by the one percent. The movement has made it possible for these institutions, which used to be dispersed and limited, to grow and grow connected, and it has provided them with a visibility that has led to much more interest, respect, and support for their functions.

Also, the movement keeps coming back to the streets every so often in big demonstrations and assemblies that display its force and allow all of those working in the many projects associated with the spirit of May 15th to see each other, network together, and welcome more people.
The creation of alternative institutions and solutions has already begun in the United States. With or without encampments, the constructive phase of the Occupy movement is here.

The creation of alternative institutions and solutions has already begun in the United States. With or without encampments, the constructive phase of the Occupy movement is here, and all indications are that it will not slow down, as it has not slowed down in Spain. Every day on the news and on YouTube, we see the police removing the occupiers from parks and plazas, but the movement continues to grow—and to grow outside of these places. While the tumult of raids and returns jolts occupiers and the public alike, thousands of working groups around the world meet weekly in libraries, community centers, churches, cafes, and offices to share their extraordinary abilities and resources. They are already creating the schools, hospitals, houses, neighborhoods, cities, and dreams of the 99 percent.

This is the beginning of the occupation of an encampment that will never be dislodged: the world.

Luis Moreno-Caballud is a participant in the Spanish May 15th movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement. He collaborated in the formation of the NYC General Assembly before the beginning of OWS, and works with both the Outreach and Empowerment and Education working groups. He is an assistant professor of Spanish literature and cultural studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Marina Sitrin is a participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and was a part of the NYC General Assembly that helped organize OWS. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center Committee on Globalization and Social Change, and the author of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina.

Occupy Wall Street and Its Mission

2011-11-23T12:38:00.000-08:00

Some statements from Occupy Wall Street activists as it begins to clarify its goals and mission (these do not represent the entire movement):

We Envision: [1] a truly free, democratic, and just society; [2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus; [3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making; [4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others; [5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments; [6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few; [7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings; [8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible; [9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.

Ten Things We Want
A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street

1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%).

2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries when that company is already making profits in America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to make more money.

3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about 0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make the rich pay what everyone else pays.

4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks.

5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who committed any crimes.

6. Reorder our nation's spending priorities (including the ending of all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research that improves our lives.

7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers all Americans all of the time.

8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and gone by the end of this century.

9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at this idea because you think workers can't run a successful company: Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the world’s leading manufacturing exporter.)

10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots.

b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This amendment should also state that the interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations.

c) A constitutional amendment that will act as a "second bill of rights" as proposed by President Frankin D. Roosevelt: that every American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old age

Mondragon Comes to America

2011-11-15T15:00:00.000-08:00

by Jeffrey Hollender (former CEO of Seventh Generation)

Last week, my recently launched consulting firms –Jeffrey Hollender Partners and CommonWise – hosted the senior leadership team of the Mondragon Cooperative Cooperation for a discussion about the role cooperatives can play in addressing the social and economic challenges that increasingly dominate the globe.

In attendance were:

Arantza Laskurain Arteche, General Secretary of MONDRAGON Corporación;
Josu Ugarte, President Mondragon International;
Fernando Fernandez de Landa Ocharan Director of the Americas for Mondragon International; and
Michael Alden Peck, the Mondragon North American Delegate.

They joined a group of New York-based community development activists, entrepreneurs, foundations, academics and policy advisors.

We explored topics that included:

What are Mondragan’s most important accomplishments?
What can business in the US learn from the Mondragon experience?
Why is the cooperative movement so critical to a world facing an economic and social crisis?
What are the biggest challenges facing the cooperative movement?

This summer, I experienced Mondragon first-hand when I visited with members of the MIT CoLab. During that time, our dialogue centered on a commitment to human dignity that is all but absent in most of corporate America today. While we have become immune to headlines that announce 5, 10, 20 or even 30,000 employees who are scheduled to be terminated, Mondragon, a $20 billion enterprise, agonizes over the loss of a single job.

Recently, Mondragon’s General Assembly, it’s largest body, voted to reduce wages across the board for all workers rather than put the jobs of workers at one of over a hundred businesses at risk. Of equal note is the fact that the senior management of the enterprise makes no more than seven times the lowest paid worker.

As we explored the unique attributes of Mondragon, its culture and education were central and recurring themes. The integrity of the whole cannot be guarded by a small group of individuals, but only through the commitment and ongoing education of the whole community.

While cooperatives play a significant role in our global economy, most of the companies that dominate the US cooperative landscape are not worker cooperatives. Our largest cooperative businesses are producer, consumer or purchasing cooperatives. These organizations are very different than worker cooperatives, in that true cooperatives are businesses that are owned by and managed by their workers.

It is worker cooperatives that are the most effective in the broad distribution of wealth and the democratic management that runs counter to our top down, hierarchical approach to designing organizations.

Everyone in the room was deeply touched by the passion and deep commitment to business that puts people first, before profits.

Argentina: Ten years of workers' control

2011-11-14T14:08:00.000-08:00

From the Green Left
Sunday, November 6, 2011
By Raul Bassi
Workers' cooperative at the Zanon factory.

On September 30, 2001, in the midst of one of the worst economic crises in Argentine history, the owners of the Zanon ceramic factory announced plans to switch off the furnaces.

In response, union delegates occupied the plant in the southern province of Neuquen. The next day, workers arrived to join the occupation ― frustrating plans to sell off the machinery.

As Argentina's economic crisis deepened, leading to the overthrow of five presidents in one week in December 2001, this new experiment in working-class resistance (a factory without bosses) was replicated in hundreds of Argentine factories.

But 10 years on, it is fair to say that Zanon has been a unique experience.

Ceramica Zanon was opened in 1979 under a military dictatorship that lasted until 1983.

By 1983, workers had created the Neuquen Ceramic Workers and Employees Union (SOECN). They won their first important victory in 1996 when factory delegates organised a strike to stop a worker being sacked.

However, by 2000, the first signs of financial troubles began to appear in Zanon. The next year, many workers had their jobs suspended due to the "lack of basic goods”.

Workers responded by staging a 34-day strike, forcing management to pay workers for lost working hours.

On August 4, 2001, the union called for a national meeting of workers to discuss a unified response to the growing economic crisis.

In Zanon, this took the form of a workers' occupation.

Factory occupied

The company sacked all 380 employees, but workers burned management's letters and marched on state parliament to demand justice.

When the company locked out all workers, they responded by occupying the plant.

In 2002, a committee was established with Zanon workers, representatives from the unemployed workers' movement, and delegates from unions representing education, public sector, health and building workers.

By March, workers had restarted four furnaces. The first 20,000 m2 of tiles were produced under workers' control.

With production expanding, the workers' cooperative employed ten more workers in April. They were selected from the unemployed workers' organisations.

Zanon workers were also present at the first congress of occupied factories organised in Buenos Aires that month.

In 2003, 30 more jobs were created and production reached 120,000 m2 of tiles a month.

On April 5, an attempt to remove workers from the factory was repelled by a mass community mobilisation.

A proposed bill, ”Expropriation under workers management and control", was handed to state parliament during 2003. The bill was supported by 50,000 signatures.

Nationwide alliance

In 2004, a nationwide alliance of occupied factories was formed, Factory Without Bosses(FASINPAT). Another proposed bill was presented to the national parliament, and a permanent tent was establish in front of the parliament.

In 2005, a spate of death threats against Zanon workers and their families, including an attack against one workers' wife, threatened a bleak year.

However, a swift response in the form of strikes and demonstrations organised by unions, the convening of a National Workers Summit in Zanon in April, and statutory changes to SOECN turned the situation around.

By the end of the year, Zanon was declared bankrupt. Temporary administration of the factory was officially handed over to the workers' cooperative.

In 2006, parliament failed to live up to its promise to deal with the proposed bill to expropriate the occupied factories. Workers responded by handing over a new, more radical proposal.

In October, the government extended the temporary administration rights granted to Zanon workers.

Two big events marked 2007: a teacher was killed at a protest against the state government and a witness involved in the trial of a key figures in the military dictatorship was kidnapped.

The factory workers took part in demonstrations and strikes around these issues.

Production at Zanon continued to grow steadily, reaching 400,000 m2 of tiles a month. This allowed the workers' cooperative to expand the number of workers to 470.

In 2007, Zanon began exporting tiles.

The period of temporary administration by the workers' cooperative officially ended in 2008, but the government and courts did not intervene. The workers increased their struggle for Zanon's expropriation.

In 2009, another ceramic factory, Ceramica del Sur, was closed by its managers. Workers reopened it on the basis of Zanon‘s experience.

Today, those workers are part of SOECN and have established a cooperative to run the factory.

In August, the state parliament passed a bill expropriating the company and handing it to the workers' cooperative to manage.

Laboratory of workers' control

This “laboratory of workers control” is a beacon of hope for workers in Argentina and internationally.

Zanon workers have shown it is possible to take over factories and replace bosses with collective decision-making in the form of workers' assemblies.

It has also shown the importance of building solidarity networks. Zanon's survival was due not only to the workers' determination, but also active community support.

Solidarity has been a two-way street: of the roughly 400,000 m2 of tiles produced each month, 10% is given to those in the local community who need them most. The factory has provided jobs to 230 unemployed people.

The workers' cooperative also helped build a medical centre in a poor suburb in 2005, which the government had been promising for 20 years.

As a result of these community links, two leaders of the Zanon workers' were elected to state parliament this year as candidates from the Left Front ― an alliance of far left groups.

SOECN assistant secretary Raul Godoy, one of those elected, said: "Our experience has been a very good one for the workers but a very bad one for the bosses and the political powers.

“In Zanon, we have demonstrated that there is an alternative: we don’t have to put up with sackings, suspensions and unemployment. The only condition is understanding that a factory should not be run for profit but for social good.

"We didn’t invent the idea of workers' control, instead we learned from previous experiences [around the world] ... Self-management is taking over the production and planning and ensuring everything that occurs is the result of a democratic decision.

“That was exactly what was lost in the Soviet Union, were workers' control was replaced by a bureaucrats.”

Godoy said: "All of this took time, and the main problem was to break the mental chains that exist in our head. When you can see that things can be done, workers' creativity begins to appear.

“You always have to be patient, not everyone breaks the mental chain at the same time. Some still are waiting for the boss to tell them what to do. It is a permanent struggle to ensure that the control belongs to the assembly.

"We had to discover many secrets, production, commerce even finance. But the main message is 'yes we can'. We have demonstrated that we don’t need bosses, owners, supervisor or bureaucrats.

"We didn’t want this factory for ourselves, but as a social good. We don’t want to become bosses, we want to be workers that produce to serve the community.

"We know that we can’t liberate ourselves alone. Our destiny is united with others like us. We, the workers, are not responsible for the crisis. We can’t get in a race to survive by destroying other workers’ life.

"Our struggle is political. In the assembly, there are different thoughts, but we have a common enemy that is political ... We want to change this society based on exploitation.

“It is unjust because it is geared towards a few making profits, not the needs of everyone. Everyone is sinking in the crisis, but there too few boats. This crisis is also affecting Zanon, but we have principles that we respect."

Alejandro Lopez, the other MP elected from Zanon, added: “These 10 years of Zanon have meant a change in consciousness for everyone ... In the beginning, we fought for the positions, but we were learning the principle of class solidarity.

"We are writing part of the history of the working-class movement, about the power of organised workers."

From GLW issue 902

Beat the Bank: Five Community-Driven Alternatives

2011-11-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

Beat the Bank: Five Community-Driven Alternatives
From Shareable.net
By Jessica Reeder
11.01.11

Bank Transfer Day is this Saturday, and even if you're not preparing to close your bank account right away, you may well be rethinking your financial relationships.

What if your money, instead of sitting shackled in a fee-laden bank account, could be out making the world a better place? If your meager savings could make a difference, would you share them?

Alternative economy activist Mira Luna recommends investing in tangible things to benefit yourself and the people you love.

"Money...is a representation for energy and where it flows or is stored. A sustainable and healthy community is the best investment...You will have a more joyful, healthy and abundant place to live. Rather than bottling up energy and hoarding it in bank accounts, community currencies facilitate the flow of energy and wealth."

There are many alternative ways to put your money to work improving your sphere. Here are a few options worth looking into.

1. Credit Unions

If you want to hang onto (and maybe increase) your funds without handing them over to a banker, you can't do much better than a member-owned, not-for-profit credit union. Credit unions represent local communities, geographic regions and even cultural groups. They often have lower fees and higher interest rates than banks. Every member can vote on how the union's money is invested. And it's all guaranteed by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, which is backed by the U.S. Government and has a higher insurance fund capital ratio than the FDIC.

Find a credit union near you! And here's a field guide to making the switch.

2. Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs)

CDFIs can be banks, credit unions, loan funds, venture capital funds, or other financial institutions. Their uniting trait is that they offer credit and financial services to underserved communities. One leading CDFI is the Center for Community Self-Help in North Carolina, which provides home and business loans to rural, low-wealth and minority borrowers. Another, Chicago's ShoreBank, is African-American owned and focuses on developing and serving urban communities.

By placing your money with a CDFI, you increase their ability to complete their mission. Within the United States, your savings are guaranteed by the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, a function of the U.S. Treasury.

Find a CDFI near you!

3. Peer-to-Peer Lending

The most direct way to invest in people is to simply loan them your money. Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending is more formalized than simply handing $5,000 to a stranger, but still manages to cut out bank involvement.

P2P brokers like LendingClub and Prosper screen loan applicants' credit backgrounds, giving you more assurance that you'll be paid back. At the same time, these for-profit companies still offer better-than-bank rates -- often around 10% for lenders and as low as 6% for borrowers.

4. Microfinance

A cross between P2P and CDFIs, microfinance lets lenders pool their money to fund small and community-driven projects, often sending money to entrepreneurs in improverished areas. Want to help a Guatemalan woman build up her apron business to give her children better opportunities? Even if you don't have much money to share, you can contribute to her business fund -- and hundreds of other funds like hers.

Microfinance sites like Kiva and Microplace do not take a profit, and don't pay interest to lenders. They both have multiple safeguards in place to help make sure your money comes back to you.

5. Alternative currencies

In this uncertain financial climate, it's not uncommon to hear of people investing in gold or foreign currencies. In the past few years, another alternative has surfaced: international digital currencies, including Ven and Bitcoin. Don't be too quick to write off digital coin as something only useful to SecondLifers: Earlier this year, TechCrunch called it "the end of currency as we know it."

Bitcoin is traded via a decentralized peer-to-peer network, and is often used to pay for services. It can be transferred into traditional currency, and like any currency, its value fluctuates with the market. Ven, a newcomer to the scene, is the first digital currency to be tracked by global financial markets. Thanks to a partnership with Thomson Reuters, you can trade and purchase Ven as you would any other currency. The only difference: You can't stuff it in your money belt.

It may only be a matter of time before money belts, big banks and spiraling consumer debt are things of the past. How fast they fade away is up to us. Whatever you choose to do with your money, let it be an informed choice that takes into account the potential effects on your life and your community at large.

The Great Money Migration: Just how effective was Bank Transfer Day?

2011-11-11T11:48:00.000-08:00

From Yes! Magazine
by Mark Engler
posted Nov 07, 2011

This past Saturday was “Bank Transfer Day,” a day of action in which thousands of people moved their money from “too big to fail” banking titans into credit unions and smaller regional banks. While it’s hard to tell precisely how many people followed through on their threats to close accounts on Saturday itself, over the past month credit unions have added 650,000 new members (as opposed to 80,000 in a regular month), resulting in more than $4.5 billion in new deposits.

As Sarah Jaffe at Alternet noted, ABC News aired a remarkable report calling the exodus of customers a “bank revolt” and stating, “as of today, 1 million consumers are hurling a lightning-bolt warning at the big banks, moving their money out in protest.”
“$4.5 billion here, $4.5 billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money, even for JPMorgan-Chase.”

Now, a lot of the impact of closing accounts might have been symbolic, and $4.5 billion might not be all that much money relative to the size of the banking system as a whole. But, as Salon’s Andrew Leonard writes, riffing on an old joke, “$4.5 billion here, $4.5 billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money, even for JPMorgan-Chase.”

All in all, Bank Transfer Day was a pretty powerful expression of collective disgust by Americans fed up with the goliath banks. Right?

Well, not everyone agrees. Leave it to the New Republic to publish a piece of smug nay-saying in which the writer shows himself to be far smarter than all those who had the nerve to take collective action.

In this case, Simon van Zuylen-Wood, a reporter-researcher for the magazine, penned an article entitled, “How Bank Transfer Day Will Help the Banks It’s Trying to Hurt.” He argued:

"[I]f the executives at the country’s biggest banks have circled Bank Transfer Day on their calendars, it’s probably not out of anxiety. Whatever the intentions of its organizers, Bank Transfer Day may end helping the very one percenters they mean to punish.

"At the root of the problem is that many Bank Transfer Day enthusiasts have overestimated their value to the banks they patronize: Ultimately, not all bank customers are made equal.... According to Jennifer Tescher, President and CEO of the consultancy Center for Financial Services Information, banks typically earn at about 80 percent of their deposit revenue from the top 20 percent of their customers."

In his post, van Zuylen-Wood goes on to explain that maintaining small checking accounts can actually cost big banks more money than the accounts generate in profits. And, owing to the passage of the Dodd-Frank bill last year, banks are limited in the amount they can charge in overdraft or “swipe fees” that they previously used to make small customers worthwhile for them. He continues:

"Bank of America’s early October proposal to supplement its lost “swipe fee” revenue using a five dollar per month charge to holders of debit cards should probably be understood in that context. It was designed to be a win-win proposition for the bank: either it earned $60 per year from each debit card customer with a checking count under $20,000...or it would drive unprofitable customers away from the bank entirely (or at least toward Bank of America credit cards, which have become more profitable than debit cards), to the benefit of the bank’s bottom line."

If the article were meant merely as an analysis of the business of handling small checking accounts, I would say that it makes some perfectly fair points. But it’s framed as something more than that—as a piece that analyzes the efficacy of a political action and that argues that those taking the action are naive. In that capacity, it is model of crap contrarianism. If I had a dollar for every self-satisfied commentary written (even by ostensibly sympathetic liberals) about protests being misguided and ineffective, I’d no doubt be able to join the wealthy elite that the #Occupy movement has been targeting. And I expect that I would earn about 80 percent of my deposit revenue from the New Republic.

The fact of the matter is that, if the big banks wanted to expel customers, they could easily do so. (Why not a $20 monthly fee for debit card use?) But far from receiving an eager farewell at bank branches eager to shed small-time depositors, many of those who have descended upon institutions such as Citibank demanding to close their accounts report encountering bank managers who tried to convince them to change their minds.

Of course, the “move your money” effort is not only a matter of individuals’ decisions about their personal finances. In the context of larger Occupy Wall Street mobilizations, many people were coupling the closing of accounts with demands for political change. That’s why others who have swarmed in as part of group actions have encountered police threatening (or even conducting) arrests.

Overall, Bank Transfer Day was part of a wave of public outrage, defiance, and protest that is doing significant damage to the banks’ reputations—which they evidently value. As van Zuylen-Wood himself notes:

"Ultimately, the Bank of America and its competitors chose not to go ahead with the five dollar charge, deciding that the hit to their PR wasn’t worth the potential gains to their bottom line. As Diane Casey-Landry, a former CEO of the American Bankers Association told me, the public outcry against BoA was enough of a 'reputational kick in the chin' that its top competitors—Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Chase—abandoned their proposed debit fees as well."

What is a day of action in which thousands close their accounts and denounce the banks as greedy if not another PR “kick in the chin”?

In his article, van Zuylen-Wood uses selective citation of a source to suggest that credit unions might not want the influx of new members:

"Worse yet, by transferring their money to credit unions, Bank Transfer Day participants may also be harming the very financial institutions they mean to help. These not-for-profit banking co-ops are governed by their depositors and are generally more customer-friendly than banks—although too big a customer base could threaten that. Indeed, a little more than a week ago, in anticipation of Bank Transfer Day, the National Credit Union Administration sent out a memo advising its federal regulators that a large influx of new customers could lead to long-term problems down the road, reminding them that credit unions are penalized if their retained earnings fall short of seven percent of their total assets. In other words, by inundating credit unions with a flood of capital they likely cannot profitably invest, the Bank Transfer Day participants may be pushing those institutions to abandon the perks that make them attractive, like free checking accounts.

"Bank Transfer Day gets one basic thing right: Checking account holders have a right to take their business wherever they wish. What they forget, however, is that not everyone will want the business they have to offer."

Except that, the credit unions do want the new business—and they’ve been very vocal about that fact. The same source that van Zuylen-Wood cites, the National Credit Union Association, sent out a press release last week lauding Bank Transfer Day and celebrating the influx of new members. It includes exuberant quotes from the organization’s president, Bill Cheney:

"'Many credit unions across the nation...are making special efforts to tap the surging interest in credit unions,' said Cheney.

“'They are conducting advertising campaigns both individually and cooperatively with others, sending ‘switch kits’ to existing members to share with family members or other prospective members, beefing up websites, extending hours and staffing for Bank Transfer Day, performing e-mail blasts to members, maximizing social media campaigns, putting up banners in lobbies or on their buildings, offering bonuses to members who bring in new members, and giving bonuses to members as well,' Cheney said."

The New York Daily News quoted another credit union executive basically saying the exact opposite of what van Zuylen-Wood wants to convey:

"'These are very good times for credit unions," said Kirk Kordeleski, CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union, one of Long Island’s largest with 24 branches and $4.4 billion in assets. 'All this conversation about fees has led to a lot of opportunity for us,' said Kordeleski, who saw a 60% hike in new members in October, to 1550 from 925."

In general, “vote with your dollars” consumer actions are not my preferred model of organizing. Moreover, I have no illusions that the amount of money transferred by small account-holders, in itself, is going to cripple the banking giants. But my answer to people who raise that point is the same as my response to people who think that moving your money to a credit union is merely a lifestyle decision with no real political impact. The energy of something like Bank Transfer Day only feeds into other activist efforts and broadens the constituency supporting regulation of the financial sector. This weekend, activists got thousands of people to move their money. Next week they can find a new way to stick it to the big banks.

After all, protesters featured in the ABC News story weren’t just saying, “Close Your Account.” They had signs that said, “Make Banks Pay.” I think their detractors are going to have a hard time explaining how that demand ends up helping the one percent.

Mark Engler is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via DemocracyUprising.com. He is a contributor to Dissent Magazine, where this article originally appeared.

Legalize Local Investing

2011-11-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

I personally support the spirit of Occupy Wall Street, especially the spotlight it has cast on the shocking level of inequality in our country. But the movement oddly conveys a very mainstream message that Wall Street can and should be fixed. Just clean up our existing financial institutions – make them more accountable, honest, transparent – and all will be well. Really?

I think it would be smarter to end our relationship with Wall Street. Just say “no.” There’s another 99% that begs our attention – the 99% of Americans who are not permitted to invest in local small business. A growing body of evidence suggests that these are the businesses that are essential for growing jobs, incomes, equality, entrepreneurship, smart-growth, and green communities.

If we were to legalize investment in local businesses, including co-ops, farms, and community investment funds, Wall Street would be history. And the good news is that it’s on the verge of happening.
WANT TO HELP LEGALIZE LOCAL INVESTMENT? Then...

Sign the Legalize Local Investment! petition
ask your Senators to support The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act
Attend or support the Occupy SEC rally on November 17th in Washington, D.C.

For decades, we’ve lived under an oppressive system of investment apartheid. The 1% who are millionaires (known under federal securities law as “accredited investors”) are free to invest in anything they choose. With the referees in their back pockets and all kinds of home-court advantages, it’s easy for them to win the wealth-accumulating game. The other 99% of us are stuck with the slim pickings of the Fortune 500 public companies listed on Wall Street – the companies least connected to the well being of our communities.

Before small businesses can accept investment from the 99%, they have to spend many tens of thousands of dollars on legal, accounting, and government filing fees. While most of us would like to invest in small businesses in our community, practically speaking, securities laws make it impossible.

This is a far more extreme big-business bias than exists in banking, where we can easily move our money to local banks and credit unions. Worse, we have four times more money in Wall Street investments – stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds, and insurance funds – than we do in banks . We are the ones fueling the multinational companies we distrust.

If we could overhaul securities laws that we enacted during the early Jurassic Period, local businesses could be fabulous investments. They are the most important job producers in the economy. They account for more than half of private sector jobs. They are increasingly competitive – so much so that their their share of the national workforce actually growing. Stunningly, sole proprietorships are three times as profitable as C-corporations.

For the first time in decades, reform is finally possible. A remarkable coalition has emerged bringing together leaders of the Tea Party and the Obama Administration. They agree that investment apartheid should be abolished. Republican Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina is leading the charge in the House to legalize small businesses raising money through large numbers of small investments (aka “crowdfunding”), with minimal paperwork, for companies raising less than $1 million. Recent changes in his bill (HR 2930, The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act) actually make it very similar to reforms President Obama proposed in his jobs package in September.

On November 3, HR 2930 passed the House with overwhelming support (407-17). But passage of crowdfunding legislation is still uncertain. Senate Republicans may be afraid to support anything that Obama has proposed as part of his jobs package. And many Democrats are defending the status quo, because they are understandably afraid of deregulating the financial industry. What Dems don’t appreciate, however, is that the key to Wall Street reform is to ratchet up regulation at the top and loosen things a bit for the 99% at the bottom.

The Occupy Wall Street protestors could make a critical difference here. They – and we – should occupy Congress until they legalize local investment. Once that occurs, we’ll see thousands of small companies owned by their customers. We’ll see the emergence of local stock exchanges that will provide investors with liquidity. We’ll see mutual funds with local securities (none exist today), and local pension funds.

Consider what happens when the first trillion dollars of our long-term savings move from Wall Street to Main Street. Stock prices of giant multinational public companies will go down, and the price of local business shares will go up. A stampede of investors moving their money could follow. We might quickly see the largest transfer of capital in human history, from increasingly untrustworthy Fortune 500 companies to the local businesses we care about.

Millions of Americans have already changed their buying habits to buy local. Now’s our chance to invest locally too! My dream is to transform the place into a quaint Big Apple tourist site, where we can pay our respects to the mistakes of the 20th century that we thankfully stopped making in the 21st.
LEGALIZE LOCAL INVESTMENT

Sign the Legalize Local Investment! petition
ask your Senators to support The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act
Attend or support the Occupy SEC rally on November 17th in Washington, D.C.

Yours,

Michael Shuman

Michael Shuman is director of research for Cutting Edge Capital, director of research and economic development at the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute. He is the author of Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity, forthcoming in 2012 from Chelsea Green and Post Carbon Institute.

imagining life beyond “the economy”

2011-11-09T10:49:00.000-08:00

Ethan Miller
October 2011

Gratitude to Kate Boverman, who inspired this piece and provided crucial
ideas, support and editing; to Michael Johnson for extensive, spirited comments and helpful critiques; to Cheyenna Weber, Annie McShiras, Len Krimerman, and Anne O’Brien for their excellent suggestions and edits; to Hermann Ruiz for the cover image; and to Tiffany Sankary for the artwork on pages 10, 23 and 34.
for the occupiers

#OccupyWallStreet has cracked open a little hole in history, creating
a moment where some of the very core institutions of our economy are called into question. Along with indignation and outrage, there is a certain excitement in the air. Things that have been terrifyingly stuck seem to be moving. Something seems possible today that wasn't just a month ago. In this space, our conversations and our imaginations are buzzing. What are we doing? What should we do? What's coming next? In particular: as we condemn this economy built for the benefit of the 1%, what do we want in its place, and how will we build it?
This text, grounded in several years of collective thinking and writing, is meant to be a contribution to this vibrant conversation. My basic premise
is this: if we want to effectively envision and create alternatives to the economy of Wall Street, we need to re-think the very concept of “the economy” itself. We have inherited an economics that stifles our imaginations
and dampens our collective sense of power and possibility. Only by telling new stories about what economies are (and might yet be) can we most effectively kindle the fires of our creative, transformative work to build new forms of livelihood.
I propose here a set of five core economic principles for “rethinking the economy” that might be helpful steps in this process, and may also usefully inform the direction of our concrete strategies. These are not proposals for an alternative economic “system” to replace the current one. They are, rather, tools to support our diverse, collective work of imagining new livelihoods together. This text is part theory, part strategy and part call-to-action for the immediate and long-term work of identifying
and seizing spaces of democratic practice (occupy!), linking them together in networks of mutual support and recognition (connect!), and
An Introduction
“Fall in love with hard and patient work—we are the beginning, not the end.”
-ŽiŽek, at #OccupyWallStreet
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drawing on our collective strength to actively create new ways of meeting
our needs and making our livings (create!).
The #Occupy Movement is a vital spark, already creating and demonstrating-
in public experiments with democracy and solidarity across the U.S. and the world-elements of the new economies we are working
to build. This movement calls us toward long-term commitments, generations of work that we have only just begun. Everything is at stake.
I refer quite often, in these pages, to a “we.” Who is this “we”? It is everyone who reads these words and finds some resonance with them; it is everyone who participates in the larger conversation (of which this text is one tiny part) about what it means to be alive at this moment
in history, and about what it means to respond to the urgent call for occupation, connection and creation. The “we” is you, and you, and you, and I, who are ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work on building a different way of living together on this earth.
This Is Our Moment
The #Occupy Movement that is spreading like wildfire across the United States and around the world is a wake-up call. We are standing at the edge of the world as we know it, and the question is whether our future will simply happen to us, or if we will participate in its making.
We’re in a hell of a mess. Major economies of the world are coming unravelled, teetering at the edge of all-out crisis and living by the fickle
mercy of volatile financial markets. Many of us who once relied on the basic economic institutions of our societies— education, employment,
healthcare, public infrastructure, retirement, social assistance in times of need—are confronting the brutal reality that such faith is no longer merited. Meanwhile, the “experts” poised to deal with this mess are working in the service of the very institutions that profit from it. Nor do we have any reason to believe that their ideas, which have torn apart our lives, our communities and our environment, have anything to offer us in the work of weaving them back together.
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And what if these experts could “fix” our economy? What if we could convince them to “curb the excesses of Wall Street” and get our economic
engine “back on track”? This demand would ignore the fact that the very success of the capitalist market economy—the ways in which it has seemingly provided so many with so much in so short a time—is built on violence and plunder. For every glorious triumph of economic growth and progress, there has always been another story unfolding behind the magic curtain: the story of enclosure and colonization, of slavery and military coercion, of the exploitation of working people, of the suppression of struggles for dignity and justice, of the unravelling
of culture and community, and of the looting and destruction of ecosystems around the world.
The sorcery of capitalist economics is precisely to make its own violence
invisible, so that it can appear to be nothing but the miraculous liberator of human potential and the progressive deliverer of ever-abundant goods. And there is a disturbingly good reason for us to give in to this illusion: most of us are dependent on the very economy that has systematically exploited us and undermined the health of our communities and our environments. We have come to rely on the very “job creators” (that new euphemism for exploiters) whose project of profiting at our expense we condemn. We have come to need the very economic growth machine that is eating our world and destabilizing our planetary climate in the name of “progress.”
We can no longer ignore the immense challenge at the heart of this moment in history: We are trapped in patterns of life on which we have come to depend, but which we must fundamentally transform as a matter of our very survival. How do we acknowledge our dependence,
and address the needs that it gives rise to, while also imagining and constructing new forms of freedom?
The politics of our age must be the politics of our creative and collective
escape from this historical trap. We are called toward new ways of understanding our realities and experiencing our capabilities. We are called to work in solidarity with each others’ daily struggles to gain footholds of stability on which to build a different future. We are
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called to imagine and create new ways of meeting our needs and living together on this shared earth. We are called to participate not just in the emergence of new movements, but of new forms of living. This is not about “reform” nor “revolution,” but about how we build relationships,
communities, and institutions that simultaneously meet our immediate
needs and open up possibilities for other forms of livelihood. As the old ways crumble, as we face the non-viability of the economic machine that has chewed us up and spit us out, this is no longer a matter of “alternatives.” It is a matter of survival.
And so it’s time to play for keeps.
This work challenges us at many levels. We are learning how to cooperate and how to be democratic people, struggling against a culture that has taught us otherwise. We are learning how to work on ourselves, facing up to our inherited “shit” with honesty, courage and compassion, so that we can become the change we wish to see. We are discovering new forms of satisfaction and identity as we leave the world of endless consumption behind. We are creating new forms of trust, inventing new forms of community, and building new forms of personal and collective security beyond bank accounts, retirement funds and formal employment. We are developing new skills and new forms of awareness as we create livelihoods connected to our places and contexts. We are learning from struggles of the past and, with the strength of this wisdom, imagining new forms of collective action to take back land, water, housing, healthcare, culture, infrastructure, and institutions of governance from those who have enclosed them for private profit at our expense.
To strengthen all of this work, we are beginning to tell new stories.
This part of our task cannot be underestimated. The #Occupy Movement
is directly confronting, in ways not seen for generations, the power of the economic status quo. We are up against the most sacred institutions
of our society, and challenging some of the most powerful stories that our civilization has told over the past two hundred years. These are stories that run deep, and that structure our imaginations and political
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sensibilities in ways that we are often barely aware of. It is all-too-easy for us to challenge the inequities of our economy without questioning the very concept of “the economy” itself.
We might be tempted to agree with Paul Krugman when he writes that “it’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators
want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians
to fill in the details.”1 This would be our worst mistake. The peril that we must avoid at all costs is to hand over our power, once again, to the self-righteous economists and the pragmatic managers of the financial machine.
This is our moment.
This is the time when we must refuse to accept the old ideas, the old concepts, the old stories. This is the time when we need to create new, shared stories about what it means to be alive together, about what it means to make a living, about what is possible for us to dream of and create, and about how it is that we, the people, will make a future for ourselves.
If the economists want to join us, all the better. But they can check their economic “laws” at the door, thank you very much.
The Name of the Trap Is “The Economy”
At every step in our work for a more just, democratic and ecologically-viable world, we are haunted by this thing called “the economy.” We know that “it” doesn’t work, that “it” is broken, that “it” has served the interests of the wealthy and powerful for generations, that “it” has systematically
undermined the health of life on earth, and that “it” needs to be fundamentally changed. And yet at the same time, we confront this economy as if it were a force of nature, a weather-like system that batters us with its shifting whims. At best, it appears as a massive and complex infrastructure of institutions, primarily owned and ruled by the “1%” and managed by obscure experts running elaborate mathematical
computer models. They whisper into politicians’ ears behind
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closed doors while the rest of us are locked out. At worst, it is a hurricane
barreling toward our shores, tracked by satellites and mapped on charts, but beyond mortal control. We board up our windows (if we haven’t already lost our homes to foreclosure) and pray.
What is this thing?
First and foremost, it is a story. A story designed to stop politics, to shut down ethics, and to stifle our imaginations. “The economy” is a way of thinking and experiencing the world in which our power and agency is robbed from us. In this story, the economy is portrayed as a massive, unified system, a thing that we’re inside of that is animated by specific “laws” and “logics.” It is for others to deal with, manage, or fix, and we are to simply follow their commands. We’ll vote in the next election for someone to tell us, after consulting with the experts, what we must sacrifice,
change, or accept in order for the economy to get growing again. “Democracy” is the name for all the minor tinkering we’re allowed to do inside the space in which this economy has us locked.
But there is a dirty secret here that we weren’t taught in school or on the news: the whole concept of “the economy” has existed for less than two hundred years! No human beings in history, prior to Europeans in the early 18th century, lived in anything like what we today call “the economy.” In order for us to find ourselves inside an “economy,” this economy had to be made.2 It did not emerge from some “natural” process of inevitable evolution; it was constructed, often violently, by specific groups of people and specific institutions in order to serve their purposes. “The economy” was not a reality that was “discovered” by some brilliant economists: it was a project of the elites from its very origins.
This economy was constructed by processes of enclosure, where people were forcibly separated from their means of subsistence (land, community,
tools and skills) and pushed into dependence on wage-jobs and commodity purchases. It was constructed by the legal and military authority of centralized states who sanctioned the private property of elites and enforced their contracts. It was constructed by the specific, politically-enforced organization of wage jobs, in which workers were systematically excluded from democratic ownership and control over
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the products of their own labor. It was constructed through the outright
theft of life, labor, land and resources from people in colonized places around the world. It was constructed in concert with a notion of “nature” that enabled living beings to be turned into exploitable objects, and for ecosystems to become nothing but mines and dumping
grounds. It was constructed by the ongoing, violent suppression of social movements seeking to transform all of these relationships.3
Along the way, there were theorists who wrote about this economy as if it were a fact of nature, the evolution of an inevitable pattern built into the very core of humanity and the world.4 They told stories about how self-interested bartering “savages” evolved markets and became civilized humans. They told stories about the “laws” that could be discovered at the heart of economic dynamics: supply and demand, maximization of gains, the necessity for growth, the harsh yet efficient reality of endless
competition, the “productive” accumulation of wealth in the hands of powerful “job creators.” And they made these laws seem even more natural and inevitable by developing forms of measurement that “confirmed”
them, crafting elaborate graphs and charts to “demonstrate” them, and drawing on mathematics and metaphors from physics to place their theories beyond the reach of politics and society.5
It was a perfect scenario: the ruling elites could systematically institute this new economy through enclosure and violence, all the while drawing
on the theory of the economists to show that this economy was nothing more than the inevitable unfolding of human nature.
Let’s be clear, though, to avoid any confusion: humans have always engaged in diverse forms of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption. What the elite’s self-fashioned concept of “the economy” did, in this specific historical form, was to create a kind of conceptual enclosure around a very particular set of human rationalities, motivations, social activities, and ways of life. Economic theory said: self-interest is the legitimate, and natural, economic motivation. Exclusive, individual private property is the legitimate, and efficient, way to organize access to resources and the means of livelihood. Accumulation of wealth (and the fear of poverty) is the legitimate incentive that will generate human
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well-being. Wage labor (a world divided into owners and workers) is the way to organize effective and innovative economies. Competition is the dynamic that generates efficiency in production and exchange. Bundle all of these things together, publish books about their necessity and build institutions on their certainty, lock the rest of life’s complexity and possibility in a closet (or a jail) and call that … economics.
The physical enclosures that drove people from their common land and forced them into dependence on wage jobs over the course of a few centuries in Europe, and that robbed indigenous peoples of their lives and land, were accompanied and supported by the conceptual enclosures that made the story of “the economy.” These are two sides of the same coin. And this process of double enclosure is ongoing. It is called “privatization,” “colonialism,” “neoliberalism,” “development,” and “economics 101.”6 The economy has to be made continually, and it is made by institutions (including the state) that enforce this story on us, that put us in debt to its dependency-machine, that steal our labor, our ideas and our futures in the name of our own best interests. It is made by convincing us that its story is true, and then punishing us when we fail to act accordingly.
We are occupying public spaces across the globe because we are sick and tired of this story, and we will no longer act “responsibly” according
to its dictates: we are taking a new form of responsibility, and we are enacting a different story.
There is a vast world of possibility for how we might organize human
life and livelihood that lies outside of the enclosure we call “the economy.” Every single human being on the planet is already engaged in practices that cannot be contained within its cage, yet are essential to life and well-being. This is the moment in history when we can no longer ask the economists for a different version of their clever invention.
This is when we break it open, let the light pour in, and begin to imagine our world anew.
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Five Principles For Rethinking the Economy
The glimmers of a new economic story are emerging. These are concepts and intuitions that can help us to free our imaginations from the grip of the old “economy” and to embark on new collective explorations of how we might live together in this coming age of uncertainty and change. Let’s start with five principles for re-orienting our economic thinking that can help us to move: (1) from a singular notion of “the economy” to a notion of diverse forms of livelihood; (2) from an economy/nature divide to a restorative concept of ecological community; (3) from a stale choice between “the market” and “the state” to a creative political space within and beyond these institutions; (4) from the limiting logics of “economic laws” to the work of creating new possibilities through collective
imagination and action; and, finally, (5) from the economics of the “experts” to economics as a practice of democratic organizing in which “we the people” make our own economies.
1. From “The Economy” to Diverse Livelihoods
There is no single “economy,” except as a story that is enforced by institutions to maintain the status quo. There are, instead, diverse forms of livelihood, multiple ways that we make our livings in relation
to each other and to the living world of which we are a part.
The idea of a single “economic system” made of money and markets is a bankrupt story that serves only to make our economic possibilities
invisible. In the real world—outside of the textbooks and the institutions who model the world on their ideas—we meet our needs through all kinds of different practices and relationships. It is time to move from a notion of “economy” to one of livelihood. This is not, any longer, about what the capitalist market demands of us. This is about how we make our living. How we make our lives.7
We are not just rational self-interest maximizers. We cooperate, we share, we identify with each other and create communities of care and support. Far from living in a world of cold business transactions, most
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of us live in worlds that are full of complex relationships, obligations, commitments, and forms of love. We fight tooth and nail to hold onto these spaces—the roots of our dignity—in the face of an economy that tries to rob them from us.
We do not just depend on jobs and money for our livelihoods. Our lives are more than our work, and our work is more than our jobs. We depend on each other, on our families and friends, on our neighbors and on the many communities of which we are a part. We depend on gift-giving and bartering, generosity and solidarity, lending and borrowing,
sharing and holding resources in common. We depend on our own skills and the skills of others, on shared wisdom, and on shared forms of work within and beyond the workplace. These are the forms of livelihood,
in fact, that keep us alive in the most difficult times. We don’t rely on “the market” to provide us with our needs when the floodwaters rise, when the mill closes down, when the company downsizes, or when the hurricane strikes. We rely on each other, because we are the economy of life and community.
In a larger sense, we also rely on the ongoing labor of other living beings and the world itself, processes of livelihood which “the economy” cannot
provide (and most often works to exploit or destroy): the plants that make our oxygen, the soils that grow our food, the insects that pollinate our fruit, the climate that turns our seasons, the clouds that bring the rain, and the wind that sweeps them away to reveal the sun. This is not “natural capital”: this is our shared world. It cannot be turned into money.
Neither money nor “economic growth” are the sole measures of our well-being. Even as we struggle and strive to earn it, we do not all believe in the idea that money actually measures “value.” We have other values, too: our health, our time to rest, play and to be free, our creative expressions, our spiritual and religious lives, our family commitments, our relations with the more-than-human living world, our traditions and our stories, and the possibility of a future for those yet to come. These values do not die, no matter how many times the economists ignore them and the insurance companies try to quantify them for profit: they make us who we are, we live them, and we pass them on.8
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The story of “the economy” has hidden from us our possibilities. These are not just imagined, not just fantasies of what might yet be. No: the creative action of generations of economic pioneers has already given rise to a whole array of living possibilities in which we might participate,
or on which we might come to depend: worker, consumer and producer
cooperatives; community currencies; fair trade initiatives; housing cooperatives and intentional communities; volunteer rescue and fire
The Iceberg of “Diverse Economies” 9
This is the story we’re told about what “the economy” is...
...but here’s a different story!
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2. From Economy/Nature to a Community of Life
“The economy” is not a subset of ecology, and “nature” is neither a limit nor a source for an “economic system.” We are fully members of a community of life on this planet.
How many more times will we be asked to choose between “jobs” and “the environment”? This choice is the insult added to the injury of enclosure. It is a demand that we choose between two forms of slow death: to starve our families one by one or to destroy the earthly base on which our lives depend.
Yet this is not an inevitable struggle between competing goods. It is a violent effect of the very concept of “the economy” as it has been historically
constructed and justified. The process of conceptual enclosure that created the economy also created an ecology. Think of it this way: when you draw a square, you create not only an inside, but also an outside. Inside the economy are all the things that count. Outside the economy is everything else, including “nature,” the living world from which all livelihoods are made.
It is a convenient separation: as long as “nature” is seen as a separate domain of life, a realm of valueless objects, a pool of resources to be mined (and made “valuable”) or an empty space into which all waste
squads; collective childcare and education networks; community-run social
centers; public libraries; non-profit community development credit unions; free schools; cooperative forms of no-interest financing; community
gardens; neighborhood care networks; open source free software projects; community supported agriculture (CSA) programs; farmer’s markets; community land trusts— commons of all sizes and shapes.10
These are not utopian projects. They are the imperfect shapes of our creative struggles to build different forms of livelihood in this actual world. They call us toward possibilities that we have only begun to explore and to fight for.
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can be dumped, then “the economy” can just get along with its business of exploiting everything in the name of profit and growth. Even more convenient is the way that certain humans, along with their cultures, communities and homelands, can be tossed into the realm of nature (as “savages” or “primitive peoples”) and then colonized or destroyed in the name of necessary economic development. Economics is for real humans,
we are told; ecology is for everyone else.
But we rise up and resist. Mass social mobilizations, protests, strikes and occupations: we refuse to be ignored or exploited. Ecosystems, too, reach their limits and cease to be silent. Large-scale extinctions, fishery collapses, new emerging diseases, mass deforestation, devastating
droughts and floods, soil nutrient depletions, rising food insecurity,
and ever-increasing rates of cancer are all ways in which we are learning that no economy can get away for long with the systematic plunder of its own base. And perhaps no message could be clearer than the dawning collective realization that the spewing emissions of our economic monster are—as we speak—destabilizing the 10,000 year-old planetary climate pattern which has made agriculturally-based civilization possible.
There can be no doubt: the extent to which “jobs” appear at odds with “the environment” is precisely the extent to which we are trapped by the economic institutions of the status quo. We must make a creative and collective escape from this disastrous trap as if our lives depended on it. Because, in fact, they do.
Yes, (anticipating the economists) there are always “tradeoffs.” But these can no longer be posed as tradeoffs between an “economic system” that supports humans and an “ecological system” that supports life on earth. This is the logic that seeks to make exploitation and domination efficient and “sustainable.” This is the logic that hopes to fix “the economy” so that business as usual can proceed, only in “green” form. This is the economic politics in which exploitative factories cranking out millions of toxic solar panels and corporate investors bulldozing fragile mountain habitats to build wind towers forms the limits of our imagination and creative action.
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We face tradeoffs not between economy and ecology, or between human
livelihoods and “the environment,” but between different ways of living with each other and with our shared earth. Some ways of living systematically exploit and undermine the health of the people and landscapes
they depend on. Others open up possibilities for relationships of solidarity and care, ways of living built on the recognition of our interdependence, on the cultivation of democratic politics, and on the making-visible of the effects of our choices. Economics must become the negotiation of livelihoods with those on whom we depend.
A new politics of ecological livelihood is calling us: to collectively refuse either form of slow death; to directly confront not the question of “jobs or environment,” but the absurd structure of the trap itself. This, then, is the work of defending our livelihoods and our ecological communities while, at the same time, imagining and building forms of life in which our economies and ecologies are no longer placed in opposition.
How do we do this? We are only beginning to explore the possibilities,
but we can catch glimmers of emerging pathways: first, a collective
refusal to accept the old choices, a defiant opposition to ecological destruction, and an emerging awareness that no economics can be taken seriously that does not place the work of ecological restoration at the very center of its theories and practices. Second, an emerging dedication to transforming our own needs and aspirations. We are learning that we—not just individually, but as communities— must come to want different lives, to make these lives possible for each other, and to find joy in these different ways of living. And finally, the ongoing invention of new forms of production and provision: zero-waste, closed-loop manufacturing, bioregional re-localization of industry, principles of “permaculture” applied to broader economic processes,11 forms of decentralized
and distributed community-controlled production, ecological
design through biomimicry, the defense and reclamation of local and indigenous livelihood practice and knowledge, the re-construction of shared and protected resource commons.12
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3. Beyond “The Market” and “The State”
There is a world of possibility beyond “the market” and “the state,” and our economic politics must stop see-sawing back and forth between
these two poles. We must work, instead, to cultivate forms of livelihood and governance that embody our aspirations for justice, democracy and solidarity.
More market! More state! More market! More state! Is this not the repetitive debate of mainstream economic politics over the last dozen decades? The see-saw goes up and down, the liberals and the conservatives
posture with their latest pet economic theories, and the business-as-usual of exploitation and world-eating continues on. Have we had enough of this yet?
We can find one source of this ridiculous game in most economics 101 textbooks. There are only two ways to organize an economy, they say: the “free market” or the “command economy.” Market or state. Capitalism or communism. Yep, that’s it.
Who gave these people a PhD? (Oh, right. I almost forgot. The same elite institutions that produce most of the world’s ruling 1%).
It is crucial for us to recognize that our imaginations and our economic possibilities are stifled by this radically oversimplified way of thinking. Those in power don’t mind, of course, since either option ends up with a similar result: a tiny portion of the population controlling, managing and benefiting from a vast majority of its resources. This is built into our historically-inherited story of “the economy” itself. In its representation as a huge, unified system of commodity production and financial ac18
cumulation, the two options for maintaining coherence are starkly clear. Either order emerges magically from the self-organizing dynamics of a “free” competitive market, or order is imposed from a centralized point of command. And so the market and the modern state emerge together, twins separated at birth.
One effect of this story is to make “markets” seem inevitably linked with “capitalism.” The term “capitalist market” ends up seeming redundant, and to be for (or against) one is to be for (or against) the other. This is the convenient link that allows the story of capitalism to swallow the entire domain of decentralized coordination between free agents. This is the link that makes every form of economic organization other than capitalism (and its double, the command-economy) invisible.
But this is the link that we have to break. Capitalism is a specific way of organizing production: a separation of working people from our abilities to meet our own needs, and a relation of wage-labor in which workers have neither ownership nor control over the profits we create. Markets are a form of exchange in which sellers and buyers meet to trade products using some agreed-upon medium of exchange.13 Capitalism
requires markets, but markets do not require capitalism.
This does not at all imply an endorsement of “alternative” markets as a grand and equitable solution to our economic struggles. It is simply to say that we do not yet know what kinds of markets we can create. Markets are animated by all kinds of dynamics, depending on the institutions that participate in them and the rules that are set up to structure them. What kinds of “solidarity markets” might emerge from a network of exchange among worker- and community-owned businesses? Among businesses structured to meet the needs of their members and not to maximize profits? In a culture in which the love of “markets” runs deep, and in which this love can be seen as an expression of the desire for legitimate freedom, we must take these questions seriously. What would it look like to sever capitalism from markets in our public politics? We can meet the pro-marketeers not with another demand for state control, but with a challenge: let’s take the ethics of democracy and freedom all the way into the heart of the exploitative capitalist firm. Let’s transform that, and then see what forms of freedom we can make together.
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The other side of this coin, the side of the state, presents us with a similar
trap we need to avoid. We have been handed an image of “the state” as a single, unified, coherent thing.14 You are either for it or against it. To advocate for one function of the state is to ally yourself with all of them. The state is either the bureaucratic boogeyman working to destroy our freedom and steal our hard-earned money, or it is the singular leverage point for progressive politics, the great protector of public goods and the provider of social resources. We either work to abolish it, or to restore it to some mythic, past democratic glory.
This story narrows our political and economic possibilities by hiding
two key things. First, it hides all of the complex differences that exist “inside” the big box that we call “the state.” All kinds of different
and conflicting relationships, politics, interests, and functions get bundled together in this package-deal. Take taxes, for example: sometimes taxes are a form of social solidarity, a way for wealth to be fairly redistributed for the benefit of the current population and for future generations. Sometimes taxes are a form of exploitation that extracts further wealth from working people and subsidizes elite business
schemes. Sometimes (though rarely) taxes are a way to finance community-based and democratically-controlled livelihood institutions
(cooperatives, for example). Sometimes taxes are a way to finance the plunder and military colonization of other lands. The question is not “state or no state”; it is this: whose values are institutionalized in the specific programs of a specific state? Does a given element of the “state” help or hinder in forming the conditions of possibility for new forms of democratic and equitable livelihood in our communities?
But perhaps even more importantly, our oversimplified story of “the state” hides all of the possible ways that we might imagine and struggle for the transformation and decentralization of many state functions. Budgeting, service provision and the protection of public goods (among other things) might be placed directly in the hands of the communities that are most affected by them. What does the state need to do, and what does the state need to coordinate, but delegate to a more direct and local level? What can we remove the state from altogether, and do for ourselves?
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These questions might seem terrifying if you’ve been thinking that the problem of “neoliberalism” is its assault on the state. But the problem of neoliberalism is, more accurately, its agenda to “privatize the benefits
and socialize the costs.” It is a project of social theft and enclosure. The state appears as its target, and as something we must absolutely defend, only because we have conceded the entire terrain of possibility to the old state/market divide! Might we imagine a more inspiring politics
that sees the widespread public critique of the state as an opportunity
to experiment with new forms of grassroots democratic practice? Might we learn to selectively defend and fight for certain elements of the state while remaining true to an aspiration for maximum direct democracy? Might we move from privatization to cooperativization?
And this points to the final problem of the state/market divide, and one that is likely clear by now: there is an entire universe of livelihood practices and institutional possibilities that are neither part of “the market” nor part of “the state.” It is this huge space—in fact, the space in which most of us live, most of the time—that is rendered invisible when we reduce “the economy” to its old twin forms. This space has been called “the social economy,” the “third sector,” and “civil society.” But these terms fail to capture the diversity and scope of all that we make and do outside of the market and the state: all forms of gifting, sharing, collective-doing; in fact, all forms of the work of living itself. Neither job nor handout: this is how we occupy our world.
What does this all mean?
It calls for an approach to livelihood that refuses to concede our imaginations to the narrow story of the market and the state, and yet also refuses to abandon these two realms as spaces of political possibility.
This is part of the collective, creative escape from the trap of dependency: the need to live in the present so that a future might be possible. Our task is to identify and create sites, institutions, and practices
in which values of equity, cooperation, democracy, pluralism and solidarity are enacted—in markets, in states, in any realm of life—and to link them together. This is the approach of a “solidarity economics,” emerging from grassroots social movements around the world.15
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Economists have been the priests of the possible. When they appear in public to address some issue or key question, it is most often to tell us (directly or implicitly) what we can or cannot do, what is or is not viable, what is reasonable and what is merely naïve dreaming. They seem to have it all figured out: direct access to sum total of human potential.
Interested in social change? In imagining a more equitable and democratic future? In exploring new possibilities for how we might live together responsibly? Don’t get too excited until you talk to the economists. They’re the ones who sign your permission slip.
Does it sound familiar? Can you picture the hard-nosed realist, secretly resentful for all that time spent learning obscure math or business
strategy while you were dreaming of a better world, snickering at your aspirations?
Well of course we look foolish to the mainstream economists and their apologist friends! The whole structure of their “economy” is set up to do exactly this: to narrow the field of possibility in such a way that makes certain kinds of proposals, and certain ways of life, seem non-viable, impossible, ridiculous. Even some (though not all!) of the “left” economists play this game: instead of offering their skill and creativity to help us make viable that which we aspire to create, they pull out the laws and logics and tell us: “no.”
It’s time to begin consciously and systematically ignoring anyone who claims that they have figured out what can or can’t be done. As the Chinese proverb says, “Those who say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those doing it.” We are finished with the politics of economic “laws.” Every such law, every such “necessary logic,” every claim that some possibility is closed must be met as a suspected ploy to shut down
4. From Necessity to Possibility
There are no “economic laws,” and there is nothing necessary or inevitable about economic dynamics. We make our economies, and therefore we can make them differently.
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creativity, imagination and experimentation. This is not to say that everything
is possible—it is not—but simply that we do not yet know where the line is between the possible and the impossible, and stories that stop us from exploring this frontier are stories that we must leave behind.16
We stand at the crossroads of multiple converging crises. The economic institutions on which so many of us depend are collapsing; peak oil (among other key “resources”) is knocking at the door; political instability
lurks in the wings; ecosystems are disintegrating; and the entire climate of the planet is becoming increasingly volatile. Nobody knows how to solve these problems, or how to mobilize humanity into a common,
rapid process of reconfiguring our ways of life. This is something that the 1% and the 99% have in common: we face a terrifyingly uncertain
future. There is no reasonable response but for us to experiment. As C.S. Holling says, “The only way to approach such a period in which uncertainty is high and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living.”17
Experimentation means shifting from the skeptical world of “no” to the open and creative world of “let’s give it a try.” But it does not mean chasing windmills or wandering aimlessly into fluffy fields of hopeful rainbows. For many of us, experimentation is not even a choice, but a harsh reality that we face as the systems we have relied upon unravel. We experiment because we need to seek new forms of livelihood. The question is about how we engage with this seeking. We can cling to the hope of restoring the lost order, and we can look for scapegoats to blame for its collapse. We can go it alone or in small groups of self-seekers, grabbing whatever can be found in a world of scarcity. Or we can find and create new communities of learning in which our experimentation
is collective, shared, and seeks to build something in the world that might contribute to an equitable and resilient future.
In this work, we must be clear that “viability” of our proposals and our projects cannot be determined in the terms set by the experts and managers of the current economy. Every society creates the conditions of viability for its own practices: certain things are permitted, and others
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forbidden; certain things are supported, and others denied. We must remember this: capitalist businesses did not spring up magically into the world already “viable.” The supposed practicality, efficiency and creative power of the market economy was not simply waiting, ready-to-go, for its successful release into the world. The world had to be radically transformed
so that these institutions could become possible and viable.
Political struggle and creation cannot be simply about realizing that which is already possible, but must be about changing the conditions of possibility themselves so that new forms of life can be born.
This is our task: to begin envisioning and creating relationships and structures that make new ways of living and new forms of livelihood more and more viable. This is the work of making visible, and then connecting,
the practices of cooperation and solidarity that already exist in our midst—the work of a solidarity economics. It is in part through our linkages, and the strength that we gain from mutual aid and collective action, that the conditions of viability begin to change. This connection creates a space of learning through which we can begin to understand what kinds of broader institutional changes might deepen this viability.
The question of what economic reforms to fight for should always be asked with this in mind: will this reform help to change the conditions
of possibility for other kinds of cooperative, equitable and ecological
livelihoods to gather strength? Will this open the door to new possibilities for grassroots, democratic organization? Will this help to strengthen movements that are fighting to take back commons, build collective power and enact new ways of living?
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5. From “The Economy” to Economic Organizing
We must no longer think of economics as the objective analysis of a “system.” It must now become an active practice of solidarity and democratic, grassroots organizing.
“The economy” is something that is built for us. Livelihoods are what we, collectively, make for ourselves. We must cease to see economics as the study of a “system” that stands apart from us, and that we can influence only by demanding regulations from politicians or accountability
from corporations. We must begin to see economics as something
that we do, and the economy as that which we make. To the extent that this power of making our own livings has been taken from us, we are taking it back.
Our social movements must begin to make a tremendous shift. We have protested, we have expressed our outrage, we have demanded changes, we have struggled to win. But we have not yet begun, in a serious, strategic and connected way, to build our own economies. This is the power that we handed over to the experts and the policy-makers, and this is the power that we must reclaim: if we want to live in a just, democratic and ecologically-viable world, we need to organize ourselves,
organize our resources, organize our collective power, and build this world in the here-and-now.
No waiting for a better president. No waiting for the “recovery.” No waiting for the revolution. Just the hard, slow, but powerful work of reclaiming
commons, learning how to make democracy work in our lives and organizations, constructing new forms of shared livelihood, connecting
them together in webs of mutual support and recognition, and fighting to overcome or transform every obstacle that gets in our way.
This is the call: Occupy! Connect! Create!
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What is it “to occupy”? What is this charged word that is spreading
like wildfire and inciting us to reclaim public space? It reminds some of us of invasion, colonization—as in “an occupied nation.” At the same time, the #Occupy Movement is pointing toward a different
sense of the word: something more like a taking back, a holding of space in order to open it up toward new collective possibilities. From its Latin roots, “to occupy” can, in fact, mean to seize a space against the status quo and to turn it towards something new. To occupy is to construct
a space in which we can engage in the craft—the occupation—of enacting the world we long for.18
We need to understand and to enact “occupation” in the widest sense possible: to seize every single space that we can, physical and conceptual, in which to exercise collective power and experiment with new forms of collective life. Occupy everything! This is also about making visible the spaces that we have already occupied, the practices and forms of life in which we are already rooted and which we already share in common. Think of us as water; think of our spaces of occupation as the cracks into which we flow. These are footholds from which we launch each new moment of creative action.
OCCUPY!
The brilliance of #OccupyWallStreet is to create a common public space that is more than protest—as much a space of creation as it is of opposition.
And this is what our emerging movements must be: not just protest
movements, not movements clamoring only for our demands to be met, but movements actively working to build the world that we wish to live in. Nobody will do this for us, and nor would we want them to.
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So: we can begin by mapping and strengthening our current public #occupations. These are, indeed, sites where other ways of living are being birthed, public laboratories and collective schools in which we are learning how to live together, how to do democracy, how to transform ourselves, and how to enact livelihoods—real occupations!—without the economy of Wall Street. The many hundreds of #occupations
holding spaces around the U.S. and the world are opportunities for us to experiment with and to demonstrate the kinds of relationships
and institutions we seek to create. Imagine: in place of coercive jobs that we begrudge or even hate, working groups based on affinity and organized collectively; in place of isolated meals (or lack thereof), community kitchens where we share food together; in place of corporate
media, forms of information-sharing that we create and control; community self-management at every turn. What can these structures evolve into? What might it look like to link them across #occupations, creating or strengthening regional, national and international networks
of popular education, democratic practice, media, healthcare, food distribution, mediation and alternative economic imagination?
And let’s map our other, wider, “occupations,” too. Where are the spaces in our communities in which people are actively constructing relationships
and institutions of cooperation, mutual-care, solidarity and democracy? Let us map the #occupation support groups, the grassroots neighborhood associations, the community centers, the economic and social justice organizations, the land-care and ecological defense groups, the housing cooperatives, the community gardens and farms, the worker-owned businesses, the farmer’s markets, the mutual-aid support groups, the community-based nonprofits, the credit unions, the grassroots
foundations, the artist collectives, the free schools, the community currency and barter networks, the public squats, the informal spaces of sharing and collaboration, the community-based health centers, the land trusts, the public parks and libraries, and every other space or structure
we can possibly find. These are our roots. These are our commons. This is the ground from where we begin.
From here, we can begin to envision and create new occupations: Reclaim more and more public spaces and open them for community,
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CONNECT!
We are only as strong as our connections with others, and the work of building other forms of livelihood cannot be done alone. Remember “the trap”: our creative escape, if it is to work, has to be collective. We will do it together, or we will not do it at all.
Our occupations, then, must be about making connections at every step.
First, linking our work across multiple communities, struggles and issues:
We are already building relationships of solidarity between people struggling against Wall Street financiers, predatory lending, corporate personhood, military action, the prison-industrial complex, the many faces of racism, the ongoing colonization of indigenous land and culture,
climate change, the ecological devastation of industrial and factory
farming, islands of plastic collecting in our oceans, toxic waste in low-income communities, privatization and slashing of social programs, decaying public infrastructure, and skyrocketing foreclosure and unemployment.
We need to support each other in deepening and strengthening
this work as much as we can, and at every turn.
This is not about creating a single image of “The Man” that unifies all experiences
of exploitation and oppression together into one giant, coherent
convergence, conversation and common creation. And then let’s go further: inspired by those who have occupied their foreclosed homes and refused to let them go; inspired by those who reclaim un-used lots and abandoned building and transform them into new spaces of community;
inspired by workers in Argentina who occupied their factories and called them their own (shouting, in words that have kindled our imaginations, “occupy! produce! resist!”); inspired by the landless workers
movements in Brazil and elsewhere who organize occupations of land, taking it back from the 1%, and create vibrant, multi-generational cooperative communities. Let us begin to imagine all of the ways that we can construct new commons, shared spaces and pools of resources, on which we can begin to build different kinds of livelihoods.
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system or conspiracy (this would cover over both the complexity of how it all connects, and the fact that power is never that coherent—let’s not give them too much credit, here!). Rather, we are engaging in the work of learning to hear each other’s stories, to connect with each other’s differences,
to take responsibility for our own complicities, and to build solidarity
across many kinds of work and struggle.
Second, linking our many practices and institutions of cooperative livelihood
together in webs of mutual support:
This is the task of the emerging solidarity economics movement. Here, our work is to begin building concrete, material relationships of support and exchange among initiatives working in multiple sectors of economic life: projects that are caring for and defending creation (the gifts of the earth: all that from which we draw our livelihoods, but which exceeds human agency); forms of production; types of exchange and distribution;
forms of organized consumption; structures for saving and allocating surplus (recycling and financing); and practices of democratic economic governance (decision-making, rules and agreements). We need to connect diverse initiatives engaging in these forms of work in order to build new, synergistic ecosystems of livelihood, to pool resources
and create shared support structures, and to build collective and organized economic power.19
Third, connecting the work of solidarity-based economic organizing with the broader work of building diverse, multi-issue social movements:
We must integrate economic alternatives into social movements, and social movements into economic alternatives. Precisely what the #Occupy Movement is enacting so well. Social movements must become the lifeblood that flows through the veins of newly-connected forms of livelihood. They are the base which sustains these projects, and at the same time the base which these projects are able to increasingly sustain.
Organizations working for economic, social and ecological justice can act as sources of accountability for emerging solidarity economy networks that face cultural and economic pressure to adopt “market values.” And reciprocally, solidarity economy networks can infuse social movements with concrete examples and experiences of their val29
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And fourth, the work of linking multiple forms of transformative work: defense, offense, creation, and healing:
We must connect the work of defending our lives and communities from colonization and injustice, the work of actively opposing oppression
in all forms, the work of healing together from trauma and hurt,20 and the work of imagining and building alternative ways to live together and meet our needs as integral parts of a holistic movement
for transformation. We cannot afford to divide ourselves along these lines, and we must cease to participate in a culture of activism which tries to place final judgments on the importance, effectiveness, or “radicalness” of our diverse forms of work. We need each other.
ues in action. These linkages offer ways for oppositional social movements
to strengthen their critiques and demands with an increasing commitment to building new economies and ways of life.
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We need each other’s differences. We need the many different things that each of us has to offer. This is about relentless humility: we do not know how to make the changes that we need to make, and we will only discover the paths together.
The work of occupation and connection must become the work of creation:
the innovative, collective construction of forms of livelihood and community that might enable us to imagine a day when Wall Street can topple without bringing suffering millions with it. This is our way out of the trap. It is not a naïve notion of “dropping out” (as if everyone
had the privilege to do this, or the privilege to choose otherwise), or a dreamy hope of evading hard work and struggle. It is, rather, about recognizing that the work of breaking out of our dependence is a necessary site for our creative action.
We need housing, food, water, clothing, education, healthcare, love and dignity. How will we organize to create these for ourselves? How
CREATE!
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will we learn to create and live in new forms of face-to-face relationship
and community so that these things can be shared? How will we imagine and fight for institutions and policies that will enable our work of building these forms of livelihood together? How can we learn from those who have gone before, and those who are here now in our communities, experimenting with collective and democratic ways of life? What kinds of support structures of connection, collaboration
and common work can we create through which to sustain this emerging work? How will we move the spaces of #occupied parks to the spaces of a re-occupied world?
There are two views that we must keep in sight, never letting go of either:
The first view is the need to build and fight for stability and security for ourselves, each other, our families, our communities and those with whom we’re connected around the world, here-and-now. This is where we demand21 (and the list can go on): equitable social policies, demilitarization, restructuring of financial systems, debt forgiveness on multiple fronts, trade policy oriented toward economic justice, public investment in post-carbon conversion and ecological restoration,
free education for all, and fiscal policies which significantly and progressively redistribute wealth from the 1% to the rest, particularly those who have been systematically excluded even from the shrinking
“middle class.” This is where we must work also, recognizing our dependency on that which we must transform, for job creation. But not just any job creation. We need to demand public (and private) resources to help us develop new kinds of jobs:
Locally-rooted jobs: it’s time to refuse the myth that jobs must be given to us by huge, “outside” forces which are unaccountable to our needs, our stories and our places. We need jobs that build on and enhance local
and regional strengths, that reflect the aspiration and values of our specific communities, and that are responsible to other communities around the world with whom we are connected.22
Cooperative jobs, worker- and community-controlled jobs: it’s time to publicly proclaim that a society in which a majority of people spend their days working under the rule of dictators (bosses) and learning to
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obey orders rather than think for themselves cannot be a democratic society. We need jobs that embody, in their daily workings, the kind of broader society we seek to cultivate.23
Ecologically-restorative jobs: it’s time to be serious, too, about forms of employment that are not dependent on the ongoing destruction of the ecological base upon which we all rely. “Green jobs” that seek to sustain
our current levels of consumption and production in a “sustainable” form will not do. We must create forms of work that are synergistic with our common habitats.
Beyond (but supported by) our demands, then, we must take the initiative in creating locally-rooted jobs in workplaces that we own, manage and share together, and that enhance the resilience, stability and health of our ecological communities.
At the same time, we need to keep the second view in sight: a world of livelihood beyond employment. We must shift from simply asking how we might create more (or better) jobs to asking about how we can progressively create the conditions in which we no longer need them.
First, how can we begin to build a world in which the unpaid labor of birthing, parenting, caring for elders, building community, creating art, working for justice, and defending and restoring our ecosystems can be supported as shared social goods? What kinds of accounting would make this work and its value publicly visible? What structures for supporting each other and sharing surplus can make this work more viable and sustainable?
And second, how do we re-common the enclosures that created our dependency on wage-work in the first place? How do we construct forms of direct, collective access to our means of subsistence? How do we make growing our own food, gathering and sharing resources collectively,
producing for ourselves at home and in cooperative communities,
building our own housing, providing our own non-monetized networks of support and care, all the more possible and viable? Life beyond “jobs” is not for everyone, and nor does it need to be. But it must become an ever-more available option. Let us keep our eyes on
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this prize: the possibility of diverse, dignified, democratic and cooperative
livelihoods available to all.
Do we know how to make this possible? Not yet.
But we can say this: It is time to launch the largest explosion of practical
experimentation that our society has ever seen.
To do this work, we must all begin to imagine our lives differently. What does it mean to stand on the edge of everything we once took for granted and choose to step into the unknown? Alone, this work is terrifying. Together, it becomes an adventure in living. We need to begin imagining lives in which our forms of security (if we have them at all) do not lie in the structures held up by Wall Street or beholden to the banks and corrupt governments. We need to begin exploring the possibility of new forms of security, new forms of resilience. Not in banks or retirement funds, not even in money, but in relationships, in community, in commons, in common skills, common land, common resources, and common movements of people experimenting, imagining
and building a different life together.
This creative experimentation cannot ignore the work of long-term visioning, the work of developing and debating blueprints and maps for the future we seek to create; but nor can we get stuck in the all-too-common and dangerous demand for “an alternative.” There is no singular “economy,” and there will be no singular alternative. This is a path of many paths, and the work of many hearts and minds. We are a movement, not a destination.
This is going to be a hell of an adventure.
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Resources
#Occupy Wall Street: www.occupywallst.org
#Occupy Together: www.occupytogether.org
Grassroots Economic Organizing: www.geo.coop
Community Economies Collective: www.communityeconomies.org
SolidarityNYC: www.solidaritynyc.org
Z-Net: www.zcommunications.org/znet
The Commoner: www.commoner.org.uk
U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives: www.usworker.coop
U.S. Solidarity Economy Network: www.ussen.org
Cultivate.coop: www.cultivate.coop
Data Commons Project Cooperative Directory: www.find.coop
Community-Wealth.org: www.community-wealth.org
On The Commons: www.onthecommons.org
Yes! Magazine: www.yesmag.org
Shareable.net: www.shareable.net
Further Reading on Solidarity Economics
“Towards an Economy Worth Occupying” (Cheyenna Weber): http://www.organizingupgrade.com/2011/10/an-economy-worth-occupying/
“Solidarity Economy: Key Concepts and Issues” (Ethan Miller): http://www.communityeconomies.org/site/assets/media/Ethan_Miller/Miller_Solidarity_Economy_
Key_Issues_2010.pdf
“Solidarity Economics” (Euclides Mance):
http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-1/solidarity-economics/
36
Notes
1. Paul Krugman. “Confronting the Malefactors.” New York Times. October 6, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-
the-malefactors.htm
2. See, for example: Rene Dumont, From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology. University of Chicago Press, 1977; Also Timothy Mitchell, “Fixing The Economy.” Cultural Studies. Vol.12, Issue 8, p. 82-101.
3. For at least some of this story, see Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation.
Beacon Press, 1971 ; and E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Penguin, 1991.
4. Nothing short-circuits political possibility like an appeal to “nature.” More more on this, see Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences
into Democracy. Harvard University Press, 2004.
5. For some academic work on the role of measurement and graphical representation in the making of “the economy,” see Timothy Mitchell, “Fixing The Economy.” Cultural Studies. Vol.12, Issue 8, 1998; and Susan
“Other Economies Are Possible”: Special section of Dollars & Sense on “solidarity economy” (in collaboration with Grassroots Economic Organizing): http://www.geo.coop/files/Other%20Economies%20Are%20Possible_GEO%20Section%20of%20D&S.pdf
“Solidarity and Participatory Economics” (Michael Albert): http://www.zcommunications.org/solidarity-and-participatory-economics-by-michael-albert
“Solidarity Economics: Building New Economies from the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out” (Ethan Miller)): http://www.communityeconomies.org/site/assets/media/Ethan_Miller/Miller_Solidarity%20Economics%20(2005).pdf
“What Is Solidarity Economics?” (Lius Razeto):
http://www.luisrazeto.net/content/what-solidarity-economics
Also see the entry at p2pfoundation.net:
http://p2pfoundation.net/Solidarity_Economics
37
Buck-Morss, “Envisioning Capital: Political Economy on Display,” Critical
Inquiry. Vol. 21, Issue 2, 1995. For an elaborate argument about the sketchy relationships between economics and physics, see Philip Mirowski, More Heat Than Light: Economics As Social Physics, Physics as Nature’s Economics. Cambridge University Press, 1989. For an account of some ways in which early economists such as Adam Smith actively hid the role of enclosures in making the economy they were writing about, see Michael Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation. Duke University Press, 2000.
6. For more on contemporary enclosures, see The Commoner, Issue 2, 2001 (http://www.commoner.org.uk/index.php?p=5) and Issue 7, 2002 (http://www.commoner.org.uk/index.php?p=7) among others, and David Bollier, Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth. New York: Routledge, 2003.
7. For more on this shift in perspective from a monolithic “economy” to a diverse landscape of practices, see J.K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics. University of Minnesota Press, 2006; and Jenny Cameron and J.K. Gibson-Graham, “Feminising the Economy: Metaphors, Strategies, Politics.”
Gender, Place and Culture, Vol. 10, No.2, p.145-157; also other work of the Community Economies Collective: http://www.communityeconomies.org
8. Massimo De Angelis offers a powerful framework for thinking about values and “value struggles” in his book The Beginning of History: Value Struggles
and Global Capital (London: Pluto Press, 2007). He draws on David Graeber’s concept of “value as the importance of action” in David Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
9. Iceberg image adapted from an original by Ken Byrne, published in J.K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2006.
10. To put a few numbers into the mix: A recent study by the USDA shows that 29,000 cooperative businesses in the U.S. employ more than 2 million
people. This includes over 200 worker-owned cooperatives and 26,844 consumer-owned cooperatives (many of which are credit unions-- non-profit alternatives to corporate banks). These are all businesses “mutually owned and democratically controlled by members who benefit from its products and services.” (See http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdaho
38
me?contentidonly=true&contentid=2009/04/0094.xml). Additionally, there are more than 250 community land trusts—cooperatively owed and democratically
controlled parcels of land to support affordable housing and other projects—in the U.S. (National Community Land Trust Network: http://www.cltnetwork.org/index.php?fuseaction=Main.MemberList), and hundreds
of local currencies and barter networks of all kinds (see Community Currency Magazine’s directory for just a few of these: http://www.ccmag.net/directory). The Data Commons Project is working to develop a more comprehensive directory of alternative economy initiatives of all kinds. The in-progress prototype can be found at: www.find.coop
11. See, for example, David Holmgren, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. Holmgren Design Services, 2002; and Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future. Island Press, 1990.
12. Freya Mathews describes these various practices as pointing toward the possibility of economies of biosynergy: that is, forms of livelihood that not only refrain from destroying ecosystems, but work to heal and enhance them. See Freya Mathews, “The Moral Ambiguities In the Politics of Climate
Change,” in Ved Nanda (Ed), Climate Change and Environmental Ethics. New York: Transaction Publishers, 2010.
13. This is a distinction that comes from Karl Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man. New York: Academic Press, 1977.
14. For some theory that supports this critique, see Timothy Mitchell, ‘The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics.” The American Political Science Review, vol.85, no.1, 1991.
15. For more on “solidarity economics,” see the resource library at http://www.solidaritynyc.org
16. See J.K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics. University of Minnesota
Press, 2006.
17. Quoted in Diane Dumanoski, The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive On a Volatile Earth. New York: Crown Publishing, 2010, p.213. Emphasis mine.
18. Occupy: from ob - capere (Latin). The “ob-” can mean “in the directions of, towards,” and at the same time “against,” or “in a direction or manner
39
Ethan Miller is an activist, educator and researcher working to cultivate
and support efforts for more democratic, equitable, cooperative and ecologically-sound economies. He works with Grassroots Economic Organizing (www.geo.coop) and the Community Economies Collective (www.communityeconomies.org), and has lived for the past ten years at the JED Collective/Giant’s Belly Farm in Greene, Maine (www.jedcollective.
org). Ethan is currently on a hiatus in Australia, working on a PhD at the University of Western Sydney with the Community Economies Research Group.
Email Ethan at: leaving.omelas@gmail.com
contrary to the usual” (as in “obverse”). Capere is “to take, to seize.” At the same time, “to occupy” is “to employ, to make use of, to exercise one’s craft.” (from the Oxford English Dictionary)
19. A larger version of this circle, with descriptions of many of the initiatives
listed on it, can be downloaded here: http://www.geo.coop/files/Solidarity%20Economy_Circle%20and%20Key.pdf. For more on solidarity economy linkages, see Ethan Miller, “Solidarity Economy: Key Concepts and Issues,” in Emily Kawano, Tom Masterson, and Jonathan Teller-Ellsberg (Eds), Solidarity Economy I: Building Alternatives for People and Planet. Amherst, MA: Center for Popular Economics, 2010. This can be downloaded at: http://www.communityeconomies.org/site/assets/media/Ethan_Miller/Miller_Solidarity_Economy_Key_Issues_2010.pdf
20. See Yashna, “Communities of Care, Organizations for Liberation.” OrganizingUpgrade.com. http://www.organizingupgrade.com/2011/07/yashna-communities-of-care/
21. Note that I am not advocating for the #occupations to develop lists of demands. I am speaking about the larger movements to which they are (and will increasingly be) connected.
22. See, for example, the work of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE): http://www.livingeconomies.org.
23. Check out the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives for more information:
http://www.usworker.coop
v3.0

How State Banks Bring the Money Home

2011-11-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

How State Banks Bring the Money Home
Big banks freeze out small business, but North Dakota’s state bank supports local jobs. The idea is catching on.

From Yes Magazine
by Stacy Mitchell
Sep 23, 2011

One of the most significant, but least noticed, consequences of the rapid and dramatic consolidation of the banking industry over the last decade is how much it has hindered the U.S. economy’s ability to create jobs.

To begin to understand this, take a look at each end of the banking spectrum. On one end are the nation’s 6,900 small, locally owned, community banks. These institutions control $1.4 trillion in assets. That’s 11 percent of all bank assets. They currently have $257 billion in loans to small businesses and farms on their books.

On the other end, four giant banks—JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo—now command $5.4 trillion in assets, or 40 percent of the total. Given that they are nearly four times as large as all local banks combined, one might expect that they would have made four times the small-business loans, or about $1 trillion. In fact, these banks have a mere $85 billion in small-business and farm loans on their balance sheets.

Why do giant banks make so few small-business loans? Automation is the short answer. The only way these sprawling institutions can function efficiently is by taking a mass production approach to lending: Plug credit score, income, and appraisal into the computer—out comes the loan. That’s why the mortgage business was supposed to be so safe. The economic meltdown of 2007 shows that it’s actually very risky.
North Dakota's struggling farmers, tired of being at the mercy of powerful out-of-state financial interests that controlled the availability and cost of credit, decided they needed a bank better aligned with their own interests.

Small-business loans are not so easily mechanized. Each is a custom job, requiring human judgment to evaluate the risk associated with a particular entrepreneur, a particular business plan, and a particular market. Community banks excel at this. Their lending decisions are made locally, informed by face-to-face relationships with borrowers and an intimate understanding of their hometown economies. Big banks, whose decision-making is long-distance and dictated more by computer models than judgment, are pretty bad at it. So they don’t make many small-business loans.

It’s no wonder, then, that unemployment has been so persistent. Our financial system is top-heavy with big banks that are scaled to meet the needs of large multinational corporations. The Commerce Department estimates that U.S.-based multinationals have eliminated 3 million American jobs over the last decade. Meanwhile, small businesses, historically responsible for about two-thirds of new jobs, have found it harder and harder to obtain credit.

In short, we have a financial system that is mismatched to the economic needs of American communities. This mismatch will become more acute as we attempt to transition to a carbon-efficient economy, which, by its very nature, will be the domain of small-scale enterprises: local food producers, community-owned wind and solar electricity, neighborhood stores that provide goods within walking distance of homes, and so on. To take root, these businesses will need a robust array of community-based financial institutions capable of meeting their capital and credit needs.

What a State Bank Can Do for a State's Economy

Lots of lending by banks is a measure of a healthy economy.
1. Lending in North Dakota is consistently higher than nearby states that are economically similar. One reason? The support that the State Bank of North Dakota offers local banks.
2 That’s also why North Dakota has nearly double the number of banks per 100,000 than its neighbors, and more than four times the national average.
State Partnership Banks

Home of Economy photo by Ellis Grafton

Photo by Ellis Grafton.

There’s no single solution to the thorny problem of how to restructure our financial system, but one of the most promising strategies involves creating state-owned banks that can bolster the lending capacity of local banks, helping them grow and multiply.

North Dakota is the only state, so far, that has a publicly owned bank. Founded in 1919, the Bank of North Dakota (BND) was a populist response to dynamics similar to those we face today. The state’s struggling farmers, tired of being at the mercy of powerful out-of-state financial interests that controlled the availability and cost of credit, decided they needed a bank better aligned with their own interests.

BND is wholly owned by the state, which deposits all of its money, except pension funds, with the bank. BND does not compete with local banks; it does not solicit retail banking business and has no branch offices or ATMs.

Instead, BND partners with local banks to expand their lending capacity. Much of BND’s $2.8 billion loan portfolio consists of “participation loans.” These are business loans originated by local banks, which then invite BND to finance a portion of the loan (and share part of the risk). This enables local banks to make more loans and maintain more diverse portfolios.

Thanks largely to BND, North Dakota has a more robust community banking network than any other state. It has 35 percent more local banks per capita than South Dakota and four times as many as the U.S. average. Small local banks account for 60 percent of deposits in North Dakota, compared to only 16 percent nationally.
Inspired by the North Dakota model, activists and small-business owners in more than a dozen states backed bills this year to create state-owned banks.

Over the last decade, lending by North Dakota’s local banks has averaged about $12,000 per capita (plus about $2,400 in participation lending by BND), compared to just $3,000 for community banks nationally. BND has also enabled local banks to maintain a higher loan-to-asset ratio than their counterparts in other states, which means they devote more of their assets to productive lending, rather than safer holdings like U.S. securities.

Although BND has some loan programs that accept a higher risk or lower return to meet specific economic objectives, such as its Beginning Entrepreneur Loan Guarantee Program, the vast majority of its lending decisions are made on a for-profit basis. It participates only in loans that make economic sense. As a result, BND has pumped $300 million in profit into the state’s general fund over the last decade. (In a state like Illinois that has a population of 13 million, the equivalent return would be about $6 billion.)

Inspired by the North Dakota model, activists and small-business owners in more than a dozen states, including Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, and Washington, backed bills this year to create state-owned banks. Although none of these bills passed on the first round, they did pick up a remarkable amount of support from lawmakers, given how unfamiliar most people, including most local bankers, are with BND.

To help educate lawmakers and counter misinformation put out by big-bank lobbyists, the Center for State Innovation has produced several reports analyzing how a public bank would function in various states. Its analysis of Oregon, for example, concluded that a state bank would help local banks expand lending by $1.3 billion, leading to 5,391 new small-business jobs in its first three to five years.

Many of these states, and others, are likely to take up the state bank idea again in the coming months. Although opponents like to suggest that these proposals would simply create yet another (unnecessary) state loan fund, the real power of a state bank lies not so much in its own lending, but rather in its capacity to support local banks and remake the financial landscape to better meet the needs of small businesses and communities.

Stacy Mitchell wrote this article for New Livelihoods, the Fall 2011 issue of YES! Magazine. She is a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project, where she heads up initiatives on community banking and independent business. Her latest book is Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses.

Moving to Equilibrium: Risk and Return in the New Economy

2011-11-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

From the Reimagine Money Blog
November 4, 2011
By John Bloom

The tandem term risk-return represents a kind of received wisdom in the investment world. The hyphen highlights the assumption that with higher risk comes higher return and that the investor’s interest stands at the top of the investment system hierarchy. Such a unilateral perspective has produced enormous investment wealth very efficiently for a limited number of people—after all, only a few can afford to take the risks that produce the highest returns. Those below that threshold have options ranging from insured savings accounts (very low risk with minimal returns) to the casino world of slots, lotteries, and scratchers (with odds far outweighing risk in the calculus). There are a number of vehicles that lie somewhere between these extremes, such as CDs and bonds, but the risk-return choices are limited by regulation.

The point of this framing is not to cast aspersions on investors and the structures that support them in their deployment of capital, but rather to call into question the entwined nature of risk and return, coupled as they are in investor-centric practice, and to explore what might happen if they were treated as separate functions weighed out not only from the perspective of investor interest (private wealth) but also in light of community wealth. It is the rare exception in which this latter dimension is considered as anything other than a fortuitous by-product of investment. The concept of the commonwealth holds little economic resonance in an individualistic ownership society. In an economy driven by competitive self-interest, that which is not strictly economic suffers the most directly—namely, natural resources and culture, two key elements of the commons. I am pointing to a foundational problem with ownership. Do we own in order to accumulate wealth in service to self, or do we own in order to circulate and steward wealth in service to self and others? Each of these leading questions goes down a different path, and each to a world that has a fundamentally different economic operating system.

Historically, and from an economic perspective, the capacity to bring ideas into production has been the purview of the entrepreneur. The investor, able to recognize this capacity, places capital at the service of the entrepreneur who then uses those funds to run the business. Through the activities of the business an economic community is created including investors, employees, natural resources, suppliers, distributors, and customers, among others. Through its interconnected chain of actions this community produces wealth and hopefully the participants have their economic needs met from the proceeds of the ongoing circulation. However, through the assumed hierarchical power of the investor’s position (high risk, high return) as it has come to be applied in the modern investing world, the natural flow of capital in economic community is driven to disequilibrium. Investment has moved from its original primary function as enabler of economic initiative, to a more extractive process, in that an investor’s success has come to be measured by the degree to which wealth is drawn excessively out of community flow with far more than is necessary accumulated for private benefit. This is, of course, a broad-brush analysis. It is not intended as anti-capitalist or anti-anything, but rather to establish that the commonwealth could and should have a place in the investment process. Inclusion of the interest of the commonwealth could bring much needed equilibrium to the current extreme systemic imbalance, one caused at least in part by investor self-interest, and in the worst cases by greed.

The example of Mondragon Cooperative Corporation is a useful one for demonstrating that an investment system can create both personal wealth and commonwealth through a different set of assumptions about the risk-return linkage. The approach that Mondragon’s financial institution, Caja Laboral, takes to investment is that a start up enterprise is financed at a very low interest rate. This is so because the bank recognizes that a young business is not really in a position to carry a burdensome debt service. When the enterprise is established and can demonstrate sustainability, it then pays higher interest. This formula is quite the opposite of high-risk, high return. Judging by Mondragon’s growth and stability since the 1950s, it is worth understanding what lies behind this approach.

First, the consideration of risk is inherently broader than just the bank’s perspective, because the bank is in reality owned by the community. Thus the failure of the enterprise is also the community’s failure. This is not a conundrum, but instead a picture of financial and economic mutuality or interdependence that has long vanished from mainstream financial institutions, but has been the backbone of community banks and credit unions. Instead of the convention that risk is an indicator of what I as an investor might lose, risk is seen as a degree of investor and community commitment to a project’s success. The rate of return is not at all derived from the perceived risk, but rather from what is needed in order for the money to continue in circulation and produce enough surplus to meet the complex of community needs. Much more could be said about the shared community values and agreements underlying Mondragon’s system, but this is enough to see that Mondragon is one notable model of a different way of working.

There is change afoot. The emerging field of impact investing, which is looking at the outcomes of investing on the natural and cultural environment is moving toward a more bilateral view, one that recognizes the importance of the commonwealth and values it as a beneficiary. Yet, it fails to give that commonwealth a real voice in the investment process. The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) is one example, though it is still driven by the investor’s will as the provider. The evolution of B Corporation is another growing exemplar of reallocating investor-stockholder power to entrepreneurs who build a sense of the commonwealth into the corporate charter. In a B Corporation a risk to the environment caused by the company’s activities is also a risk to the investor. Such an investor is not only stepping into a new set of agreements about stockholder rights, but also into an evolving social contract.

The realities of mutuality or interdependence are critical to maintaining economic equilibrium. And, further, owning with a sense of stewardship for the commonwealth will require a rewiring of most of our basic economic and financial understandings. In this case I have identified risk-return as a metaphoric magnifying glass to look into the system, which Occupy Wall Street [OWS] and so many others have named as broken, unjust, and even criminal. These visionaries for a new social contract have rightly identified that our current imbalance of wealth, and the concentration of economic power in the hands of investors, including Wall St. and banks, is the place where leverage for change is most needed and is most likely to be effective. One need not look far or read extensively to know that our economy is where the social pain is most visible and visceral.

Transforming from a culture of owning to a culture of stewarding will require a fundamental shift in how we view our relationship to the material world. If the last few years have taught us anything, it is that what we think of as material and enduring is no longer so. What we thought of as retirement savings can disappear overnight, and increasingly strong natural catastrophes can wipe out whole communities instantly. Communities rise up as the antidote to uncertainty, whether its origins are natural or cultural. OWS is nothing if not a new kind of community. While its origins reside in recognizing the disequilibrium in the economy, what the movement is demonstrating is a new stewardship of the commonwealth.

John Bloom is Director of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance.

* Published by Jillian McCoy
* Categories: Blog, Investing, Money

An interview with Mira Luna on The Solidarity Economy

2011-11-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

An interview with Mira Luna by Michel Bauwens
and Neal Gorenflo

From Shareable.net
Saturday, October 22, 2011

Shareable publisher Neal Gorenflo and founder of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives Michel Bauwens talked with solidarity economy activist and organizer Mira Luna about the historical moment and what's coming soon from alternative economies

Neal Gorenflo: When I met you three years ago, you described yourself as an alternative economics organizer. I had never heard such a thing. It fascinated me. How did you come to your work?

Mira Luna: I came to my work through years of environmental and social justice activism. I was disheartened by how little progress we were making because of the way the economy is structured. It was like banging my head against a wall. While studying at New College and coordinating the Really Really Free Market, I realized the wall was in some ways an illusion and there are many ways to take back your power that often are invisible to the average person- in these spaces is the terrain of solidarity economy. I wrote a Masters thesis on my work to end sweatshops and how it was hopeless, pointing to many local economic alternatives as the only real and permanent solution. I don't believe it is possible in this context to significantly reform or topple the system from above.

Then personal and political fused. My relationship with my long-term partner fell apart because of economics – differences in class and values. I didn't value money over relationship and he did. This became a critical point. Then I got Lyme disease and hit up against another wall – my insurance company – and spent several years disabled and going bankrupt to get better, on the edge of not being able to afford the medicine my insurance wouldn't cover, really on the edge of death, for the sake of profit. After all my money and credit was gone, I fell into the arms of a new found community and to some degree they caught me, although I felt I could have gotten more help with a better mutual aid network. I discovered a whole new world living in the gift and barter economy, which is based primarily on relationships and shared values. I thrived in this subculture, which echoed a village type economy that still exists in some parts of the world – Mali for example. I decided I wanted to create this relationship village economy locally.

As I was recovering from my illness, I dove head-first into theory and practice of alternative economics and became an expert in local currencies. I started Bay Area Community Exchange and its Timebank, co-founded JASEcon - a network of alternative economic projects, joined the US Solidarity Economy Network board, the San Francisco Community Land Trust board which develops affordable housing coops, dabbled in the worker cooperative world, and joined my local Transition Towns group.

Michel Bauwens: What is the Solidarity Economy? How closely is it related to other 'social economy' formats such as what is called the 'social economy' in France. What are the requirements to be counted as part of that economy?

As defined by the US Solidarity Economy Network, “the Solidarity Economy is an alternative development framework that is grounded in practice and the in the principles of: solidarity, mutualism, and cooperation; equity in all dimensions (race/ethnicity/ nationality, class, gender, LGBTQ); social well-being over profit and the unfettered rule of the market; sustainability; social and economic democracy; and pluralism, allowing for different forms in different contexts, open to continual change and driven from the bottom-up.”

USSEN and the local solidarity economy network I helped develop called JASecon have a open approach that allows organizations to self-identify based on these principles. There seems to be a lot of consensus, except when it comes to organizations that identify as social or green capitalists. I think most solidarity economists, but not all are vehemently anti-capitalist but not anti-business or market (maybe anti-stock market) and they are general not communist, although some are participatory socialists. Actually, they tend to shun political ideology in favor of fluid values and principles as a frame. I would add to their definition that participation is very important – participation in decision-making, governance and in creating economic activity itself. Local, collective decision-making and voluntary action are favored over authoritarian control of the economy.

From a more spiritual perspective, the solidarity economy moves us from a “me” to a “we” economy, recognizing, like the Buddhists do, that we are all interconnected – we including the Earth and all its creatures - which the Bolivian Government recently encoded in law.

NG: Why is the Solidarity Economy so strong in some parts of the world,like the Basque region of Spain where the Mondragon cooperative is based, and weak in others?

It is stronger in areas that have a culture of resistance, community self-sufficiency, and strong communal ties. Latin America is leading the way. Poverty is a strong motivator, but the solutions are only possible because there is fertile ground for change in strong communities, like the Basques, Zapatistas and the MST. On the other hand, government has been helpful in some countries, especially in Latin America, and some local governments. Additionally, our economy in the US is so tied into a centralized power structure, it feels very challenging to escape and survive. In less developed countries there is more room for experimentation without the government cracking down, less commercialization, and more possibilities for economic autonomy. Less of their assets are tied to big banks and more are tied up in local relationships. Relationships and reputation are extremely important to Latin Americans in general so it makes sense that an economy based on relationships would thrive there. In the US, our economy thrives on the severing of relationship ties - to place, to workers, to the Earth, to each other.

NG: What impact has The Great Recession had on the Solidarity Economy? Has it been strengthened or weakened by the crisis of our economic system? Do you see it's future improving? How big a role would it have in the overall economy?

It definitely has strengthened the solidarity economy. Crisis breeds change and most Americans and Europeans had been riding along too comfortable to rock the boat. There is a growing distrust in government as corruption and deceit become glaringly obvious, especially around the bank bailouts. A global economy and even a national economy seem out of our hands and out of control. So there is a now a strong movement towards localization to gain democratic control back, even if not yet full solidarity economy, which asks for more. As people are out of work and desperate to get their needs met, they search for alternatives that offer a more hopeful future. They are also questioning what the economy is for (if it's not taking care of our needs), allowing the imagination to envision a whole new economy, and from there many creative possibilities emerge.

NG: Poverty alleviation and solidarity economy initiatives seem like two different streams of activity here in the US. Why is that, and how might that be changing?

Actually, they are quite overlapping. There certainly needs to more more integration, but it is happening as I demonstrated in my article “An Economy Turned Upside Down”. My understanding is that often people at the bottom of the economic pyramid often don't have access to information about alternatives or the time or capital to implement them. They are definitely interested though as they understand the Solidarity Economy at deep personal level and through social justice organizing. I find that funders are more interested in poverty alleviation than solidarity economy projects that present a challenge to the source of their wealth. That makes it difficult to get these projects off the ground in low income communities, but I think we need to get more creative at using the resources already within these communities. If a good government or nonprofit or socially responsible business is willing to help all the better, and we are seeing that happen as well in small pockets.

In March of this year, the Southern Grassroots Economies Project brought together over thirty representatives from organizations from across the South and Midwest to discuss developing cooperative economics as a part of their social justice work, at the Highlander Center. Labor organizations like theUnited Steel Workers, Jobs with Justice, and the International Labor Organization have all started partnerships with worker cooperative development institutions. While traditionally worker coop development hasn't expresses a preference for helping the most poor, this is changing. Evergreen Worker Cooperatives prioritizes hiring worker owners that have serious barriers to employment, like former incarceration and there are many social justice organizations organizing solidarity economy projects with poor people under the radar (some mentioned in my last article), especially, but not at all limited to, worker cooperative development.

NG: What are the most promising new innovations coming out of The Solidarity Economy recently?

Associations of alternative economic projects that pool resources: skills and technical expertise, knowledge, capital and material resources (like mills or butchering facilities), administration, governance and labor either within a specific sector (cooperatives, timebanks, etc) or across sectors within a specific geography. The Evergreen Cooperatives in Ohio and Banco Palmasin Brazil are an example of the former, and Sonoma Go Local is an example of the latter. These projects are very familiar with the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, which has an impressively integrative model, with its own bank, educational institutions, and participatory self-governance. The Zapatistas are also quietly building a new economy from the bottom up, using mostly their own resources but in intensive collaboration, collective governance, resource sharing, training, and so on. The US Solidarity Economy Network, emulating Brazil, is attempting to map the solidarity economy in the US. Mapping should help people find each other to grow and form stronger networks, facilitate resource and information sharing, trade, collaboration, and associative organizations, as well as connecting solidarity economic producers.

MB: Some people are advocating a convergence between open source thinking, i.e. the sharing of knowledge, code (free software), and designs (Arduino), with the solidarity economy networks? Is this happening, feasible, desirable?

It is of the utmost importance. I think open source tools can help these projects catch fire spreading across the world, by eliminating the initial or limiting barrier to implementation, which is often knowledge or money or both. Solidarity economy projects as I mentioned are intentionally or systemically under-resourced or unfunded. Sharing knowledge, code, etc. is one way to give these projects a leg up against the mainstream economy and give them access to resources they can't afford to access. Many people with useful skills and knowledge are coming aboard the open source movement, but since they often come without a personal experience of poverty, idealism is usually the main driver for open source innovators. One problem I see with this is that people with knowledge and skills often create solutions without the input of those who will be using their tools, especially the poor, non-English speakers, unplugged, etc. It would be wise to get as much input from the groups you are trying to involve from the very beginning.

The Timebank I coordinate is an open source code project so we share code with communities that want to use our software and we ask that they share new code with us. I see more of this happening in the currency world and as more skilled techies get involved, there is enormous potential for a power shift. As Thomas Jefferson said, which is more true today, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks, and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." We need many currencies, all kinds of them run by democratic groups of good reputation or even individual issuing power, which happens in a mutual credit currency model like the timebank, LETS or GETS. Decentralization of knowledge, decision-making power and resources is absolutely necessary to a healthy democracy and a peaceful, relatively egalitarian society. If one group gains more power, they will game the system and shift its rules and structure to to their favor. Open source models are tools that counter this kind of power grab.

MB: The Arab Spring and the 15M movements in the Middle East and Europe, and perhaps the elections of progressive governments in Latin America, are signs of a revival of social movements in the world, in the context of an onslaught of austerity budgets. Do you see any connection or convergence?

Yes, there is both horrible suffering and amazing opportunity around the world right now. Though actually the suffering is mostly new to the developed world. This happens in many different contexts, but since the economic downturn touches nearly everyone and every issue, it is a primary motivator and target for reform and radical change.

NG: You've been co-leading the largest timebank in the San Francisco Bay Area for over two years. What have you learned that could help other timebank organizers?

Our Timebank appears to be different from other timebanks. There are only a couple outstandingly successful ones in the US and they were very, very well funded – one by a Rockefeller and the other by the government. However, getting outside conventional funding is notoriously difficult for timebanks, with a few exceptions of government grants. Other timebanks peter along growing painfully slow with minimal funding and still working within a traditional nonprofit framework and unable to make the transition to functioning in the new economy. While we do need $USD for some basic expenses, we try to maintain as much self-sufficiency and autonomy from the mainstream economy as possible. We pay our volunteers in time dollars and work to make those time dollars as useful as possible as soon as possible. As nonprofits are shrinking and closing up all around us, we are growing quickly, fueled by necessity and idealism, and by tapping into the solidarity economy growing all around us.

Our timebank is simultaneously a nonprofit, a volunteer worker collective, and member/consumer cooperative that combines economy of scale and a decentralized organizing strategy. We offer everyone in the Bay Area access to the Timebank and ask them to organizing their own communities using our free software and pooled organizational resources. It’s like having lots of mini-timebanks under one umbrella association called Bay Area Community Exchange. All these groups are coming to me saying “I want to start a Timebank.” It takes an awful lot of work to start one so we say just “join us and do your own thing”, but under a few main principles and in communication with the larger group. As an open source project, we share code with other communities outside the Bay that want to use our software and have a Ruby programmer to tailor and maintain their system. In return, we ask that they share new code with us. There is now a group in Greece that's interested in using our software to start a timebank. There is another organization calledHour World that hopes to provide economy of scale of financial resources, training, and software to timebanks on a national level while organizing networks amongst timebanks in a more decentralized and collaborative way than Timebanks USA as a leadership organization has done as a conventional nonprofit. Naturally, timebankers are collaborators and we can be because in our system there is abundance not scarcity. Timebanking is the closest bridge we have to the new economy and its where I find the most hope.

Occupy Oakland makes plans for citywide general strike

2011-11-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

By Scott Johnson and Angela Woodall
Contra Costa Times

OAKLAND -- Occupy Oakland protesters debated Thursday evening the practical difficulties of organizing a citywide general strike with the aim of shutting down the city of Oakland on Nov. 2. Speakers urged teachers, students, union members and workers of all stripes to participate in whatever way they could, and said the entire world was watching Oakland. "Oakland is the vanguard and epicenter of the Occupy movement," said Clarence Thomas, a member of the powerful International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union who urged the hundreds of assembled people to support the strike.

Protesters said the aim of the strike was to involve Oakland more aggressively in the global Occupy movement, and to help mobilize millions of Americans to protest against what they see as the excesses of Wall Street, unfair banking regulations and disparities in the nation's health care system.

The call for a strike originated Wednesday evening during a General Assembly which drew at least a thousand people from all walks of life to Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza, which protesters had turned into a de-facto camp site before police kicked them out last week. Many people said they felt mobilized to participate after seeing videos and pictures from Tuesday night's violence, when at least 200 riot police from around the Bay Area clashed with protesters, lobbing tear gas, flash-bang grenades and so-called "nonlethal" projectiles to attempt to corral and contain them.

Scott Olsen, a U.S. Marine corporal and Iraqi war veteran remained in intensive care at Highland Hospital after suffering critical wounds to the head from an unidentified police projectile. His condition was improving but as of Thursday evening he remained unable to talk.

Spurred on by Olsen's injury, the actions of the police and the relative absence of Mayor Jean Quan from the debate, the calls for a general strike gained momentum as the week progressed. Oakland last had a general strike over half a century ago, in 1946, when unions shut the city down for 56 hours. Bars were allowed to remain open, but could only serve beer. Jukeboxes were left to play, but had to be placed on public sidewalks so the maximum number of people could enjoy the music. A commonly heard song was "Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay that Pistol Down," a national hit at the time.

Today's protesters say the next step is to involve as many local and national unions, community organizations, churches and student movements in the shortest time possible.

"We're going to have to do a lot of work, but we understand the importance of it," said Josie Camacho, executive secretary and treasurer of the Alameda Labor Council, which has 120 affiliated unions and claims over 100,000 Bay Area members. "This movement has its own momentum," Camacho said, adding that she and others were urging the AFL-CIO to join their ranks.

Some who support the movement have nevertheless expressed concern about the implications of a major strike.

"There are a lot of people in this city who are struggling to hold on to their jobs," said Noweli Alexander, an East Oakland resident and comptroller at a local design company. "I support this strike, but there needs to be more discussion about the economic consequences."

Pastor George Cummings with Imani Community Church in Oakland and a leader with the Oakland Community Organizations, or OCO, a federation of congregations, schools, and allied community organizations, representing more than 40,000 families in Oakland, said the organization had not yet taken a stand on the proposed strike.

However, Cummings continued, "As a leader of OCO, to the extent that the sentiments of the movement attempt to hold the financial institutions accountable, then we would support that," Cummings said.

So far, both a nurses association and an Oakland teachers union have come out strongly in support of the Oakland protest's goals, but have fallen short of giving their full endorsement for a general strike. Some teachers have expressed support for the strike, but said they would not bring students along for reasons of "legal liability."

"However energetic we are about the cause, we also are law-abiding organizations that are very cautious," said Matthew Goldstein, president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers, which represents faculty at the four East Bay schools in the Peralta Community College District. The union planned to discuss the strike with its members and with its parent organization, the California Federation of Teachers, before deciding whether to participate.

"A general strike on the order of the 1946 general strike in Oakland is an ambitious goal, especially in just a few days," Goldstein said. "It requires groundwork to be laid. There is still much to be determined."

"I'll definitely be here," said Max Bell Alper, a member of United Here 2850, a hotel and hospitality workers union, headquartered near Frank Ogawa Plaza.

Alper said his family was hit hard by the recession and housing crisis. Occupy Oakland, he said, was an inspiration. "It looks like we're on course to be the next 1946."

Contact Scott Johnson at 510-208-6429. Follow him at Twitter.com/scott_c_johnson and Twitter.com/oaklandeffect

Local Money Creates Wealth Outside the Bubble

2011-11-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

Nov 1, 2011
by Mira Luna
From Shareable.net

Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation's economy and the value of its currency. Money seems to take inconceivable, abstract, and even magical forms, traveling around the world at lightening speed with little oversight and obvious mismanagement.

We have little control over it — the value of our currency is tied to conditions well beyond our control. It moves in directions that most of us are vehemently opposed to. We trusted that the banks, Congress, the Federal Reserve, corporations and Wall Street are managing money responsibly on our behalf, particularly with retirement funds and mortgages, but lately that trust has been broken. In response, local currencies have drawn interest from Occupy and other economic resistance groups to create an alternative to state-controlled money.

Click here to read the rest of the article

Cashless transactions: Greeks’ creative crisis solution

2011-10-31T15:50:00.000-07:00

From Question More
27 October, 2011

Whether the EU anti-crisis plan is effective or not, for the austerity-hit Greek people a creative solution could be the answer to some of their problems. In a country where cash is in short supply, time has taken on a whole different value.

They same time is money, and now it’s being used as a currency in an emerging barter system developed by cash-strapped Greeks who want to swap goods and services.

“In the Time Bank we exchange voluntary services.Sometimes I give painting lessons for free but I take yoga for free also,” says Niki Roubani of the Bank of Voluntary Time project. “It’s huge, it’s everything we do without money. It’s looking after people and making things ourselves.”

The Time Bank is just one of a growing number of service-swapping alternatives that are providing people in Greece with an imaginative way to cope with the tough economic conditions.

Tsakalotos Efklidis, an economics professor, says a financial crisis can have terrible and divisive consequences for society.

“[It divides] public sector workers from private sector workers, it divides richer workers to poorer workers, immigrant workers from home workers. And that’s a terrible thing,” he said.

For a country in crisis, building social unity can be an uphill struggle. However, the barter networks have proven a great way of bringing together large groups of people. A popular slogan in Greece now is, "No-one's alone in the crisis."

Organizations are arranging swap-shops to exchange clothes, and one town in Greece has even started its own barter currency.

“We still have the memory of an agricultural society in Greece, where people used to do things together. They would harvest the olive tree of my family this week and then the next week we do the olive trees of your family. So they would exchange services – and people like that,” says Niki Roubani.

Nikki gives her friend Alexandra, who is also a member of the time bank, an art lesson. In exchange, Alexandra helps Nikki with the gardening, and the time is repaid.

“It’s an amazing way of receiving by giving to others,” says Alexandra.

As many Greeks struggle with wage cuts and tax increases, and with unemployment in the country now cripplingly high, there has been huge interest in the time banks and barter networks.

No wonder the idea of swapping goods and services has proven so popular – it is building solidarity at a time when the economic situation is extremely uncertain. Whilst these barter networks will not solve Greece’s financial problems, they do provide a massive amount of help and support for the participants.

“It’s not a response to the crisis, in the sense that it’s going to overturn the government, but it’s giving support and comfort to those who would like to overturn the terrible economic policies that are being imposed by the Troika. It’s giving people support to feel that they can do something,” says Tsakalotos Efklidis.

While these tough economic times are leaving many Greeks feeling worthless, there is real value in projects like the time bank. With the Greek government drowning in debt, these creative solutions are offering not only support but also encouragement to the people here, which at a time of deep economic recession, are proving priceless commodities.

Building the Worker Co-op Movement

2011-10-24T15:22:00.000-07:00

By Rebecca Kemble
From the Progressive
October 12, 2011
[Kemble is a driver for Union Cab Co-op in Madison, WI]

I am in Quebec City this week to attend two worker-cooperative-related conferences. I am here as the president of the board of directors of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives together with the rest of the board, our staff and our Canadian and Quebequois counterparts. Joining us are cooperative movement leaders from Italy, France, Spain, Belgium and Argentina.

At the end of the week, we will officially sign a declaration and launch the North American regional body of CICOPA [1], the international organization of worker cooperatives. Worker cooperative federations in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil have formed a similar organization in their part of the world in the hopes of building toward a pan-American organization that has the capacity to resist the forces of neoliberal economic exploitation.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting in windowless hotel conference rooms with a group of amazingly dedicated, tenacious (and surprisingly funny) people who are developing organizational structures and institutional relationships based on solidarity that build meaningful working class power on an international scale.

Worker cooperatives are businesses that are owned and operated on democratic principles by the people who work in them. Because they are organized around the will, talents and needs of the human beings who work in them rather than the imperative of growth and ever-increasing profit margins, worker coops have the capacity to promote and extend new, humane and imaginative ways of meeting the material needs of people by producing and distributing goods and services in society.

When dozens, hundreds and thousands of these enterprises pool resources and cooperate with each other based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity, a fundamental transformation of culture and society occurs. This has taken place most notably and enduringly in Mondragon, Spain, where worker co-ops drive the economy and fund and control social services, health care, retirement and education.

So as my heart breaks for the burning of Rome (or Athens), the life cycle of my family, the gutting of public education, the depth of the suffering and indignities visited on the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our communities through false austerity and punitive laws and policies, and the abuse being hurled at the brave, young people who dare to stand up for them, I redouble my efforts to strive with others through differences of opinions, communication styles and languages to build the worker cooperative movement. If the Basque people of Mondragon could do it under the iron fist of Franco, we can certainly do it here.

Rebecca Kemble [3] is an Anthropologist who studied decolonization in Kenya. She serves on the Board of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and as the President of the Dane County TimeBank.

Worker Cooperatives Can Revitalize Our Economy

2011-10-08T18:48:00.001-07:00

Tompkins Weekly 10/3/11
by Joe Marraffino and Gay Nicholson

Leaders in the sustainability movement believe that the most promising economic development strategy available may be a focus on economic justice. This would reduce poverty and increase tax revenues, strengthen democracy and the sense of a shared future, reduce the tax burden for social services, and increase support for investments in education and public infrastructure. All of these are part of a viable and sustainable local economy.

Worker cooperatives can be an important tool in this strategy. According to the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, cooperatives can create a green and just economy by building community wealth “in which ownership is broadly shared, locally rooted, and directed toward the common good. Worker cooperatives are businesses owned and democratically controlled by their workers. They have been organized since the dawn of the industrial revolution and have been successful in virtually every industry – from mining companies, to robotics firms, taxi drivers, health care providers, food processors, to creative and technology firms – anywhere where the workers and their community would benefit from having a stake in their workplace and the incentive of receiving an equitable share of the fruits of their labor.
While worker cooperatives have been a steady presence in modern history, they have surged during times of economic dislocation, and rapid cultural and technological change. During the massive movement of capital and jobs out of the upstate region in the 1970s and 1980s, a wave of efforts to create and save jobs through cooperatives and employee ownership rose up in Jamestown, Herkimer, Saratoga, the Mohawk Valley, Ithaca and elsewhere.

The wave was given technical assistance by the NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations and supported by government loans. State workers, researchers and organizers in Central New York were considered authorities throughout the country, structuring buyouts and training workers. In the mid-1980s the New York State Legislature formalized their support by writing a new article into State Corporations law recognizing the benefits of the worker cooperative model.

Worker cooperatives can have profound social benefits in terms of job satisfaction and empowerment of citizens through the everyday practice of democratic participation. They have also been shown to have significant economic benefits, both at an individual and regional level. Participation in decision-making and an equitable share of profits increases worker productivity and creativity, and decreases the need for supervision. A broad base of employee ownership increases economic stability by increasing the incentive for firms and workers to stay in the region and via the multiplier effect of worker/resident’s local spending. Worker cooperatives also build and retain locally-rooted assets for workers who may have no other path to wealth creation or entry to the middle class.

In our current economic climate, worker cooperatives are increasingly being seen by governments, community groups, and workers as a valuable tactic to stabilize regional economies, create and retain local jobs, and create assets for residents, including those that may have no other path to enter the middle class. For example, Cooperative Home Care Associates, a NYC home health care business, has over 1,500 worker-owners and annual income of over $40 million. The cooperative has helped raise the base pay for the entire sector of workers in the region, and has created full-time work and career paths in an industry notorious for its instability and low pay. South of Rochester, one of the oldest worker cooperatives in the country, the 35-year-old, and $18 million per year food processor Once Again Nut Butter has grown and created jobs despite regional closures and layoffs.

The Finger Lakes and Southern Tier regions need a program to mobilize the creation of regional worker cooperatives. Worker cooperatives need technical assistance to get started. They need incubation services, connections with investments, and organizational development that is not available through existing business development agencies. This need exists in part because of the relative lack of familiarity that banks, attorneys, and workers have with the model, and also because of some unique aspects of the model itself.

Sustainable Tompkins is proposing a pilot project of an incubator and technical assistance center for worker coops. Let’s make sure that economic justice is at the heart of our economic development strategy. It’s good for business. Contact us at info@sustainabletompkins.org to learn more and get involved.

Joe Marraffino is a Cooperative Organizer with Democracy at Work Network
Gay Nicholson is President of Sustainable Tompkins

Incubating Worker Coops on a Shoestring with Timebanks

2011-10-08T10:57:00.001-07:00

Incubating Green Worker Coops on a Shoestring with Timebanks
Habra Traduccion en Espanol
Tues, Oct 11, 5-7pm
PODER, 474 Valencia #120

Linda Hogan and Terry Daniels of hOur World and the most prolific Timebank in the US - Hour Exchange Portland have been developing green worker coop microenterprises and community projects for many years on a shoestring using Timebanks to provide the social capital. Their home weatherization program renovates 1000 low income homes per year in Portland, Maine and trains unskilled workers for high paying green worker coop jobs. Join us for a revolutionary presentation on how to create empowering jobs from the bottom up. Free and open to the public, please distribute this announcement widely. For more info, contact mira@sfbace.org.

Community Currencies Aim to Aid Merchants

2011-10-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
Annie Tritt for The Wall Street Journal
October 7, 2011

Darcy Lee owns Heartfelt in Bernal Heights.

Hoping to keep their money close to home, three Bay Area communities have begun operating their own currencies.

In June, a group of businesses in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood started signing up residents for a debit card that offers 5% of purchases back in a local currency called Bernal Bucks when residents shop in the community. The move follows that of two nonprofits in Marin County—Coastal Marin Fund and FairBucks—which began minting their own $3 coins last year.

The idea is to raise resident awareness about supporting small businesses in an era of big-box national chains, and to find a new way to raise funds for local causes.

"Neighborhoods are taking their economic destiny into their own hands by looking at the money that is circulating in them," said Arno Hesse, one of the creators of Bernal Bucks.

Community currencies exist world-wide and are legal in the U.S. so long as they don't pose as official American greenbacks. Communities offering them include the Berkshires region in western Massachusetts, while a group in Oakland is working on a currency known as Alternative Currency for Oakland Residents and Neighbors, or ACORN.

But they all face the challenge of persuading merchants and residents to commit to adopting them for daily use. Some past local currencies, such as one called Berkeley BREAD that started in the late 1990s, ended in 2003 after its coordinator left and wasn't replaced. There also was a program called Sonoma County Community Cash that died after about two years around 2000.

The Bernal Bucks debit card grew out of past attempts by Bernal Heights merchants to reward residents for shopping locally, including stickers placed on real $5 and $10 bills that could be redeemed for incentives. Last year, Bernal Heights resident Mr. Hesse set out to find a way to use technology to improve on that idea.

Ms. Lee's shop accepts Bernal Bucks, the neighborhood's own currency, promoted by a sign.

In June, Mr. Hesse's software company, Clearbon Inc., and local merchants teamed up with the Community Trust credit union to issue a Visa debit card with the Bernal Bucks loyalty program integrated into it, one of the first such programs in the nation. For every $200 that users spend at participating local businesses, they receive 10 Bernal Bucks. Users can spend their Bernal Bucks on goods and services sold by participating businesses at the rate of one per U.S. dollar, or can choose to donate them to community nonprofits.

Darcy Lee, owner of a Bernal Heights gift shop called Heartfelt, said she signed up her business for the program in the hopes of attracting "a repeat local, loyal customer that is making a conscious effort to shop in the neighborhood."

Merchants such as Ms. Lee agree to give up 5% of the value of goods and services paid for with Bernal Bucks cards. This goes into a fund that users can tap when they spend their Bernal Bucks at participating merchants. Ms. Lee said the effort is worthwhile for marketing purposes because many of the products she sells, such as wrapping paper, "you could easily go to get at Target."

Last Sunday, Samuel Fajner, a five-year resident of Bernal Heights, used his Bernal Bucks card to buy groceries at Good Life food store on the neighborhood's Cortland Avenue. "I make an effort to not go to the big chain stores," said Mr. Fajner, 36, who signed up for the program in June and has accumulated about $120 in Bernal Bucks.

So far, more than 20 of the businesses along the Cortland shopping corridor have joined the program. The hard part is persuading more residents to sign up, say organizers and local businesses. Mr. Hesse declined to say how many people have joined, or how many Bernal Bucks have been spent so far, but said the transaction volume of card users has doubled every month.

In Marin County, the two currency programs require less initial effort for residents to participate in because they use a physical currency.

Last year, the Coastal Marin Fund began minting $3 brass coins that are about the size of a silver dollar. The coins cost less than a dollar to produce, but are sold for $3 to businesses in western Marin county to hand out as change. The profit on the sale from each coin is kept by the nonprofit Coastal Marin Fund, which has distributed more than $3,000 of it to local charities such as the Bolinas Museum.

One major goal, said founder Richard Kirschman, is to tap the 2.5 million tourists who come through the region's 10 towns each year as a source of revenue for local charities. The hope is that tourists will get the unusual $3 coins in change, and then hold on to them as souvenirs —leaving the value of the currency back in Marin. Mr. Kirschman estimates that about 7,000 coins have left the area with tourists.

So far, about 55 Marin businesses have agreed to accept and hand out the coins, according to Mr. Kirschman. The fund minted 10,000 coins and has about 2,000 left, so it is preparing to mint another batch.

After hearing about the Coastal Marin effort, a group of residents in eastern Marin's Fairfax decided to emulate it, minting up about 5,000 $3 tokens of their own, which they began distributing this summer. The goal is both to boost local merchants and aid area nonprofits.

One difference between the two programs is that the Fairfax currency, called the FairBuck, will be backed for a while by real cash held in a local bank. Fairfax attracts fewer tourists than west Marin, so the FairBuck is more likely to stick around town.

"There was some reluctance with some of the merchants. They wondered, 'How do I pay my rent?'" said David Bernard, a member of the FairBucks steering committee. "We assured them that for the first year we would have 100% of the money, so that if they wanted to cash in their tokens they could do so."

Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com

Veterans’ co-ops build homes fit for heroes

2011-10-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

David J. Thompson
From Co-operative News
September 2, 2011

A Massachusetts co-operative is leading the way in solving the problem of homelessness among US veterans, especially those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many of these veterans have been left with physical and mental disabilities from their wartime service — and, with too few transitional facilities, many end up on the street.

This is a national crisis, with 275,000 US veterans now homeless — 8,000 in LA alone. A fifth of America’s homeless are veterans, trapped in a vicious Catch 22: if you cannot find a job you are likely to end up homeless, and if you are homeless it is unlikely you will get a job — a problem highlighted by the Prince William and Katherine the Duchess of Cambridge on a recent visit to LA, where they took part in a veterans’ job fair, “Hiring Our Heroes”.

The Massachusetts initiative puts co-operative housing communities, with veterans as members, at the heart of plans to give former soldiers a new start.

United Veterans of America in Massachusetts, also known as Soldier On, has pioneered the use of the limited equity co-op housing model and is involved in the creation of about 360 apartments in three veteran’s co-ops. The limited equity co-op model keeps the apartments permanently affordable.

The first co-op created by Soldier On is the Gordon H Mansfield Veterans Community in Pittsfield. Opened last spring, it provides 39 studio and one-bedroom apartments in a village style community, close to a Veterans Community Care Centre. It provides “permanent, sustainable, safe, affordable housing with support services that veterans will own and operate”. In addition, the co-op added an array of photovoltaic solar panels and other green features.

The venture needed $6.9 million dollars of financing from government agencies, the Federal Home Loan Bank, banks, foundations and non-profits. It was made affordable by the elimination of much of the permanent debt through a federal initiative called Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing. The $2,500 dollars of equity required for each veteran to buy a share in the co-op came partly from the members and through grants and donations.

Last year, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded the Pittsfield Co-op a “Door Knocker” Award, one of 14 awarded nationally to honour models of state and local collaboration. “This national model allows veterans to feel the full responsibility that ownership entails while having the Soldier On service platform and it has proven a tremendous success,” said Jack Downing, CEO of Soldier On.

Massachusetts is the only state to offer local financial assistance to its veterans, for food, clothing, shelter, housing and medical care — but its co-op model is being looked at closely by other states.

Two similar projects are on the drawing board in California, awaiting financing. Veterans organisations have joined to sponsor legislation which would make limited equity housing co-operatives eligible for the $1.3 billion of veterans housing funding available in California. The bill is backed by the Twin Pines Co-operative Foundation and this author is providing pro-bono technical assistance.

Since the end of the First World War, more than 40 housing co-ops have been built for returning veterans. Together these have created more than 13,000 housing units in more than 15 states. They have been built to meet a wide range of needs such as student housing co-ops for veterans returning to school, to the more popular apartment type buildings with numerous community features.

The idea, then as now, is that after wartime service there is a social and psychological value that veterans derive from living in the same community. But with so many vets coming home with physical or mental needs, and high unemployment, demand has outstripped supply. There is now a national push to end homelessness for vets in five years.

To achieve that goal, permanent Veterans Villages need to be created throughout the US. Strong communities — such as co-operative housing with on-site or nearby support services — give veterans the chance to rebuild their lives.

For many veterans, this new phase of housing co-ops is a journey that can take them from homelessness to home ownership and from soldier back to citizen.

Cooperatives find new relevancy helping East Bay low-wage workers

2011-10-04T12:14:00.001-07:00

By Hannah Dreier
Oakland Tribune

Norma Sanchez's hand still flutters to her chest when she remembers the incident that was the beginning of the end of her career as a $5-an-hour janitor.

She was mixing heavy-duty cleaners in a supplies closet when the mixture exploded, filling the space with caustic smoke. Unable to read the English labels, she had accidentally combined ammonia and bleach.

The Oakland resident's lungs ached for a month but taking a night off seemed impossible.

"Now I look back at all of that and I say, 'Wow, I was really suffering,'" she said.

Today, Sanchez, 35, cleans with baking soda and natural Castile soap and takes sick days when she needs them.

She is one of dozens of low-income, low-education, sometimes undocumented workers who have gone into business for themselves thanks to a boom in worker-owned cooperatives.

Organizers at the Bay Area's two co-op associations say their membership rolls have swollen in the past several years even as the broader economy has faltered.

That's partly thanks to expansion among hip mainstays such as Arizmendi Bakery, Berkeley's Cheese Board Collective, bike shops and artisanal collectives.

But a different kind of co-op is also gaining in popularity.

Responding to what they say is a remarkable interest in entrepreneurship, nonprofit organizations are launching programs that provide leadership training, management support and other tools that help workers become their own bosses.

"That's the reason I'm interested in co-op development," said Melissa Hoover, director of the San Francisco-based U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. "I'm super glad the world has a lot of bike stores, but I'm more interested in how co-ops are used as a tool for economic development."

A bill that would establish formal structures for democratic workplaces is winding its way through the state legislature and the U.N. has named 2012 "the year of the cooperative."

The Bay Area, long home to the greatest concentration of co-ops in the nation, has become a testing ground for those hoping use an economic model once dismissed as utopian and separatist to build a path out of poverty.

A growing sector

Last Friday evening, six jobless Richmond residents met in a drafty church kitchen to test out the recipes they hope will soon become office favorites.

Carlos Rullier, 68, tossed a skillet of tempeh with great flourishes while two young women scooped out avocados and kept an eye on their sons.

The group has been working toward opening a food truck for months, collaborating with a co-op incubator and carpooling to business classes and cooking workshops.

Rullier has long dreamed of opening a restaurant and sees the co-op as a chance to do what he loves without having to find startup capital or take orders.

"I'm not very obedient," he said with a grin. "Here, we can all be on the same level."

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin is promoting cooperatives as a tool to help plug the city's 17 percent unemployment rate.

She has been holding packed co-op study sessions, and this summer hired Arizmendi co-founder Terry Baird to help launch new enterprises.

"My charge is to try to get people employed," Baird said. "Especially people who have not been employed for a while."

Baird and other organizers draw inspiration from the success of the green housecleaning network Women's Action to Gain Economic Security, or WAGES.

This 16-year-old incubator has helped launch five worker-owned housecleaning businesses from Concord to Morgan Hill, which today employ 100 women.

As with most co-ops, after a six-month initial "probationary" period, employees begin to buy into the company through payroll deductions of $1 per hour (for a total of $400).

At the Oakland co-op, where Norma Sanchez works, members make about $14 an hour and receive an annual profit-sharing bonus.

A recent afternoon ¿found the co-op's finance committee members leaning around a table at their small Fruitvale Avenue office, talking in rising voices about what they might do when they become too old to clean.

Should they become accountants? Run similar collectives as administrators?

These meetings are a highlight for Anahi Rojas, who used to work 15-hour shifts at a panadería.

"I studied law in Mexico and I was so depressed when I got here," said Rojas, 24. "Now I use what I studied on the finance committee. I'm not just an immigrant anymore -- I'm doing something for this country, for this environment."

Chris Scheldt pays $150 each month to have Sanchez and Rojas scrub her seven-room Berkeley home. That's a little higher than the going rate, but Scheldt considers the service a bargain because it allows her a clean conscience.

"I don't have to worry about the workers having long-term health effects just from cleaning my house," she said, "and that means a lot to me."

Slow to develop

With economic development co-ops, the real barriers may lie not in finding customers but in building the organizing capacity.

"Starting a co-op is really hard and it's even harder to do with people who have limited education," said TeamWorks founder David Moore, who helped a group of San Jose gardeners launch an organic landscaping service this summer.

What's more, he said, these co-ops are generally limited to low-wage industries.

For some, fully democratic workplaces are simply too much work.

Kevin Rath founded Manos Home Care in 1989 as a not-for-profit business, but has opted not to invite his 200 employees to take over management.

"It has to do with what I call participation limits," Rath said. "We have a hard enough time making sure that people get to their CPR classes."

He shares profits and encourages worker feedback but acknowledges that his employees may be losing out on the intangibles that stem from co-owning a company.

For Sanchez, it's this sense of purpose that's made all the difference.

As a teen in Mexico City, she worked full time to help support her siblings. Now, with three children of her own, she says she feels confident in a way she never could before.

"I didn't have an education, but it's important to able to say I have something and it's mine," she said during a break from the finance committee meeting. "It's something to be proud of."

Contact Hannah Dreier at 510-262-2787. Follow her at Twitter.com/hannahdreier.
Find an economic development CO-OP
CONTRA COSTA Natural Home Cleaning Professionals (Concord), 510-532-6645, www.naturalhomecleaning.com SPOKESHOP Bike Lounge (Richmond), 510-545-2243, http://bit.ly/qjXTqk
OAKLAND Manos Home Care, 510-336-2900, www.manoshomecare.com Mandela Foods Cooperative, 510-452-1133, mandelafoods.com Natural Home Cleaning Professionals, 510-532-6645, www.naturalhomecleaning.com
SOUTH BAY TeamWorks Sustainable Landscape Maintenance (San Jose), 408-250-8619, www.teamworks.coop Emma's Eco-Clean (Redwood City), 650-261-1788, www.emmasecoclean.com Eco-Care Professional House Cleaning (Morgan Hill), 408-778-8445, www.eco-care.org TeamWorks House Cleaning (San Jose), 650-940-9773, www.teamworks.coop

Can I Trust You Really?: The Reputation Currency

2011-10-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

From Shareable.net
By Albert Cañigueral
09.28.11

During the Age of Separation we shielded ourselves from strangers by reducing all access to goods and services to money. No personal economic relationships are important because we can always "pay someone else to do it" wrote Charles Eisenstein in the book Sacred Economics.

In contrast, the Age of Reunion that we are entering is all about sharing: sharing with friends, sharing with coworkers, sharing with neighbors, sharing with complete strangers, sharing for free, sharing with a payment, etc. but sharing is not without its risks as the Airbnb incidents exposed. Can I trust you?

“For pretty much anything related to sharing resources, thinking through trust and reputation is a critical first step —particularly as it relates to user acquisition. If these companies don’t make their communities feel safe, they won’t have communities anymore.” -

Craig Shapiro, Collaborative Lab

"Reputation capital is becoming so important that it will act as a secondary currency, one that claims "you can trust me". It is shaping up as the cornerstone of the 21st-century economy […] It's the ancient power of word-of-mouth meeting the modern forces of the networked world." – Rachel Botsman

Read more here.

Battered by Economic Crisis, Greeks Turn to Barter Networks

2011-10-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

October 1, 2011
By RACHEL DONADIO
from the New York Times

VOLOS, Greece — The first time he bought eggs, milk and jam at an outdoor market using not euros but an informal barter currency, Theodoros Mavridis, an unemployed electrician, was thrilled.

“I felt liberated, I felt free for the first time,” Mr. Mavridis said in a recent interview at a cafe in this port city in central Greece. “I instinctively reached into my pocket, but there was no need to.”

Mr. Mavridis is a co-founder of a growing network here in Volos that uses a so-called Local Alternative Unit, or TEM in Greek, to exchange goods and services — language classes, baby-sitting, computer support, home-cooked meals — and to receive discounts at some local businesses.

Part alternative currency, part barter system, part open-air market, the Volos network has grown exponentially in the past year, from 50 to 400 members. It is one of several such groups cropping up around the country, as Greeks squeezed by large wage cuts, tax increases and growing fears about whether they will continue to use the euro have looked for creative ways to cope with a radically changing economic landscape.

“Ever since the crisis there’s been a boom in such networks all over Greece,” said George Stathakis, a professor of political economy and vice chancellor of the University of Crete. In spite of the large public sector in Greece, which employs one in five workers, the country’s social services often are not up to the task of helping people in need, he added. “There are so many huge gaps that have to be filled by new kinds of networks,” he said.

Even the government is taking notice. Last week, Parliament passed a law sponsored by the Labor Ministry to encourage the creation of “alternative forms of entrepreneurship and local development,” including networks based on an exchange of goods and services. The law for the first time fills in a regulatory gray area, giving such groups nonprofit status.

Here in Volos, the group’s founders are adamant that they work in parallel to the regular economy, inspired more by a need for solidarity in rough times than a political push for Greece to leave the euro zone and return to the drachma.

“We’re not revolutionaries or tax evaders,” said Maria Houpis, a retired teacher at a technical high school and one of the group’s six co-founders. “We accept things as they are.”

Still, she added, if Greece does take a turn for the worse and eventually does stop using the euro, networks like hers are prepared to step into the breach. “In an imaginary scenario — and I stress imaginary — we would be ready for it.”

The group’s concept is simple. People sign up online and get access to a database that is kind of like a members-only Craigslist. One unit of TEM is equal in value to one euro, and it can be used to exchange good and services. Members start their accounts with zero, and they accrue credit by offering goods and services. They can borrow up to 300 TEMs, but they are expected to repay the loan within a fixed period of time.

Members also receive books of vouchers of the alternative currency itself, which look like gift certificates and are printed with a special seal that makes it difficult to counterfeit. Those vouchers can be used like checks. Several businesspeople in Volos, including a veterinarian, an optician and a seamstress, accept the alternative currency in exchange for a discount on the price in euros.

A recent glimpse of the database revealed people offering guitar and English lessons, bookkeeping services, computer technical support, discounts at hairdressers and the use of their yards for parties. There is a system of ratings so that people can describe their experiences, in order to keep transparent quality control.

(The network uses open-source software and is hosted on a Dutch server, cyclos.org, which offers low hosting fees.)

The group also holds a monthly open-air market that is like a cross between a garage sale and a farmers’ market, where Mr. Mavridis used his TEM credit to buy the milk, eggs and jam. Those goods came from local farmers who are also involved in the project.

“We’re still at the beginning,” said Mr. Mavridis, who lost his job as an electrician at a factory last year. In the coming months, the group hopes to have a borrowed office space where people without computers can join the network more easily, he said.

For Ms. Houpis, the network has a psychological dimension. “The most exciting thing you feel when you start is this sense of contribution,” she said. “You have much more than your bank account says. You have your mind and your hands.”

As she bustled around her sewing table in her small shop in downtown Volos, Angeliki Ioanniti, 63, said she gave discounts for sewing to members of the network, and she has also exchanged clothing alterations for help with her computer. “Being a small city helps, because there’s trust,” she said.

In exchange for euros and alternative currency, she also sells olive oil, olives and homemade bergamot-scented soap prepared by her daughter, who lives in the countryside outside Volos.

In her family’s optical shop, Klita Dimitriadis, 64, offers discounts to customers using alternative currency, but she said the network had not really gained momentum yet or brought in much business. “It’s helpful, but now it doesn’t work very much because everybody is discounting,” she said.

In an e-mail, the mayor of Volos, Panos Skotiniotis, said the city was following the alternative currency network with interest and was generally supportive of local development initiatives. He added that the city was looking at other ways of navigating the economic situation, including by setting aside public land for a municipal urban farm where citizens could grow produce for their own use or to sell.

After years of rampant consumerism and easy credit, such nascent initiatives speak to the new mood in Greece, where imposed austerity has caused people to come together — not only to protest en masse, but also to help one another.

Similar initiatives have been cropping up elsewhere in Greece. In Patras, in the Peloponnese, a network called Ovolos, named after an ancient Greek means of currency, was founded in 2009 and includes a local exchange currency, a barter system and a so-called time bank, in which members swap services like medical care and language classes. The group has about 100 transactions a week, and volunteers monitor for illegal services, said Nikos Bogonikolos, the president and a founding member.

Greece has long had other exchange networks, particularly among farmers. Since 1995, a group called Peliti has collected, preserved and distributed seeds from local varietals to growers free, and since 2002 it has operated as an exchange network throughout the country.

Beyond exchanges, there are newer signs of cooperation from the ground up. When bus and subway workers in Athens went on strike two weeks ago, Athenians flooded Twitter looking for carpools, using an account founded in 2009 to raise awareness of transportation issues in Athens. The outpouring made headlines, as a sign of something unthinkable before the crisis hit.

With unemployment rising above 16 percent and the economy still shrinking, many Greeks are preparing for the worst. “Things will turn very bad in the next year,” said Mr. Stathakis, the political economics professor.

Christos Papaioannou, 37, who runs the Web site for the network in Volos, said, “We’re in an uncharted area,” and hopes the group expands. “There’s going to be a lot of change. Maybe it’s the beginning of the future.”

Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting from Volos and Athens.

United we stand

2011-09-27T15:21:00.000-07:00

Oklahoma Gazette, 09-21-2011 » Page 13
By Clifton Adcock

Do you play well with others? A new organization wants to nurture economic security through the proliferation of the cooperative business model.

Advocates of cooperatively run businesses are looking to increase their number in the state by holding several meetings to inform others on the concept and how to get started.

The Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network plans to host several “incubator meetings” throughout Central Oklahoma between Sept. 29 and Oct. 25.

Worker cooperatives are businesses owned and operated by the employees, said Robert Waldrop, the network’s gen-eral manager and one of the founders of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative.

The organization formed this year.

Waldrop said the current economic climate provided the ideal avenue for nurturing a proliferation of worker cooperatives.

“We need good jobs and the best jobs in effect are jobs owned by the worker, because there’s no chance of them being outsourced to India or China or places like that,” he said.

The group states its goal is to promote the development of worker co-ops in the state by creating a structure of support involving education, business incubation, access to financing and training in order to empower stakeholders to bring about economic opportunity, personal development and revitalize local communities.

The advantage of workers being involved in such cooperatives, said Matthew Jordan, OWCN board member, is that they are not prone to layoffs when the economy stumbles.

“Worker-owned cooperatives are local solutions to global problems,” Jordan said. “By encouraging the development of worker cooperatives, we can recession-proof our economy.”

The goal of the meetings is to help educate those interested in forming worker cooperatives on how to do so, Waldrop said. He’ll also share stories of such cooperatives existing in several states.

“The OWCN will develop and support worker co-ops by building public awareness and helping people work through the steps of starting a business,” Waldrop said. “We will take participants from the initial idea, to writing the business plan, funding options and operational management. Oklahomans are an independent breed, but we know the power of working together, as well as the value of selfreliance — and worker cooperatives are the best way to achieve both.”

INCUBATOR MEETINGS

All events start at 7 p.m. and end at 9 p.m. Pre-registration is not required.

Southeast OKC — Sept. 29 Midwest City Public Library, Room B 8143 E. Reno

Northeast OKC — Oct. 6 Lang Center of Corpus Christi Church 1010 N.E. 15th

Northwest OKC — Oct. 3 St. Charles Borromeo Church, Rooms A-B 5024 N. Grove

Southwest OKC — Oct. 4 Capital Hill Church of the Nazarene 3412 S. Shartel

Norman — Oct. 10 St. Mark the Evangelist Church, Lake Room 3939 W. Tecumseh

Shawnee — Oct. 11 Pottawatomie County Extension, Cowboy Classroom 14001 Acme

Stillwater — Oct. 18 St. John the Evangelist University Parish 201 N. Knoblock

Edmond – Oct. 24 Edmond Public Library, Room A 10 S. Boulevard

El Reno – Oct. 25 Owl Make It Shop 114 S. Rock Island

For more information, call 593-8327 or email info@okie.coop.

EAT, DRINK AND MAKE MONEY AT SLOW MONEY NATIONAL GATHERING IN SAN FRANCISCO

2011-09-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

Media Contact: Joan Simon
Full Plate Restaurant Consulting
jsimon@fullplateconsulting.com
707-795-4885

EAT, DRINK AND MAKE MONEY AT SLOW MONEY NATIONAL GATHERING IN SAN FRANCISCO
Small Food Businesses Move Beyond Family and Friends To Find New Investment Sources

September 20, 2011 (San Francisco) –The Slow Money movement, cited by Entrepreneur.com as “one of the top five trends in finance in 2011” is coming to San Francisco this fall; bringing with it small food business entrepreneurs from around the country and a roster of conscious investors and star speakers from the world of finance, food and the green movement.

The Third Annual Slow Money National Gathering (http://www.slowmoney.org/national-gathering/)
to be held October 12th through 14th at the historic Fort Mason Center on San Francisco Bay, will not only feature investment opportunities in dozens of enterprises on the cutting edge of food trends, but will also offer attendees the opportunity to participate in an emerging national conversation about how we can fix our economy from the ground up.

“In the 21st century, investing is not only about markets and sectors and asset allocation,” states Slow Money Founder and former venture capitalist Woody Tasch, “In a world that is speeding up and heating up, losing its soil and losing its sense of common purpose, investing is also about reconnecting and healing broken relationships. What could make more sense than taking a small amount of our money, turning in a new direction, and putting it to work near where we live, in things that we understand, starting with food."

The three day event is the third for the Slow Money Alliance, an emerging network that was launched in 2008 in response to Tasch’s book, Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as If Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered, which was immediately hailed as the beginning of a movement. More than 1000 people from 34 states and several foreign countries attended Slow Money’s first two national gatherings in Sante Fe and Vermont. In 2010 over $4 million was invested in 12 of the presenting enterprises and since then an additional $5 million has flowed to dozens of small food enterprises. Given that the Bay Area is in the forefront of the local foods movement, this year’s shift to a larger, West Coast venue is expected to spur enormous interest.

“Problems in the global food system parallel those in the global financial system. Investing in small food enterprises begins to fix many of the problems, quite literally, at their roots,” ” observed Slow Money Founding Member Judson Berkey of UBS. “This may be the only way to save a lot of small farms. Banks are out of the question,” continued Alexis Koefoed, a chicken farmer at Soul Food Farm in Vacaville, California. “The non-profit organizations that are supporting sustainable agriculture are great resources, and doing really important policy works, but when small farmers need cash, they need to go to private investors who are ready to lend them money.”

Among this year’s list of 100 prominent speakers and educators will be David Suzuki, the award-winning host of CBC’s “The Nature of Things;” environmentalist Vandana Shiva, named one of world’s most influential women by Forbes Magazine; Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute; Melissa Bradley, CEO of Tides Foundation; Leslie Christian, CEO of Portfolio 21; and scientist turned economist Chris Martenson, whose book and video series The Crash Course is an international best seller , and Thomas Steyer Founder of Farallon Capital Management, Managing Director at Hellman & Friedman and signatory to the Buffet-Gates Giving Pledge.

An “Entrepreneur Showcase” will spotlight two dozen food and farm entrepreneurs who are seeking funding. Break-out sessions led by recognized experts will cover topics ranging from farmland preservation to local investment clubs. Each day includes live music, film screenings, sustainably sourced food from local vendors, and many opportunities for networking and relationship building.

“Slow Money is about relationships, not only transactions,” said Berkeley based Ari Derfel, whose award winning restaurant Gather has been a recipient of Slow Money capital investment. “The National Gathering provides a wonderful environment that catalyzes the flow of money and creates social change.”

Part venture fair, part farm to table celebration, part forum on the future of the economy, the event brings together financiers, farmers and an unusually diverse constituency of folks who want to know where their food comes from and where their money goes.

"I left the world of global finance because it was fundamentally out of touch with the real world, the natural world," said Marco Vangelisti, a former an emerging markets specialist for a major international investment firm. "Then I found Slow Money and realized that this could be the way back."

About The 2011 Third Annual Slow Money National Gathering
Event dates are from Wednesday through Friday October 12-14. The program will begin at 9 am every morning and end late evening. Cost is $595 for individuals, non profits and startups and $895 for professional investors, and philanthropists. Farmer and student discounts are available and Slow Money members receive a 10% discount. Further details and registration forms can be found online at www.slowmoney.org/national-gathering/ .

About Slow Money
The Slow Money Alliance has 2,000 members, including many leaders in social investing, philanthropy and organics. 15,000 people have signed the Slow Money Principles, a new vision of finance that promotes soil fertility, diversity, care of the commons and nonviolence. Since mid-2010, 11 local Slow Money chapters have emerged around the country and millions of dollars of has been invested in scores of small food enterprises, prompting ACRES USA to call Slow Money a “revolution” and Rodale to call it one of the top ten trends in organics. For more information visit www.slowmoney.org, call 510.408.7645 or email info@slowmoney.org.

# # # # #

Photos Available Upon Request.

In Pockets of Booming Brazil, a Mint Idea Gains Currency

2011-09-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

Posted 20 September 2011 - 11:05 PM
In Pockets of Booming Brazil, a Mint Idea Gains Currency
Towns Issue Their Own Money, Which Brings Local Discounts;
http://forum.newzimbabwe.com/Index.php?/topic/45851-new-local-currency-town-level-currency-phenomena-in-brazil/
By PAULO PRADA

SILVA JARDIM, Brazil — After school and on weekends, Carlos Leandro Peixoto de Abril sells ice cream made by his grandmother from a stoop alongside the family's cinder-block home.

Instead of Brazilian reais, though, the 11-year-old prefers payment in capivaris—a local currency emblazoned with the face of a giant rodent. Bills in hand, Carlos then heads to a local grocer and buys ingredients, at a special discount, for another batch of grandma's goods.

The capivari circulates only in this dusty, agricultural town 60 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. The money is an effort by the town, one of the poorest in southeastern Brazil, to encourage its 23,000 residents to spend locally.
Cash, Credit, or Capivaris?

The capivari is one of 63 local moneys now circulating in needy towns and neighborhoods throughout Brazil.

Locals exchange capivari bills, emblazoned with the face of a giant rodent.

Ten months after introduction of the capivari—named after the capybara, a red lace-sized rodent common in a local river—the currency is lifting fortunes of local retailers and gnawing holes in the pockets of consumers. Capivaris pay for everything from haircuts to restaurant tabs to tithing at churches. The mayor even has plans to open a "Capivari Megastore," where local artisans and growers can showcase wares.

The capivari is one of 63 local moneys—including bills named after the sun, cactus and the Brazil nut—now circulating in needy neighborhoods throughout Latin America's biggest economy. The idea is gaining currency as towns seek a share of current economic growth. This month, a new local currency hit the streets in Cidade de Deus, the Rio slum that was the subject of a blockbuster film and a stop on President Barack Obama's South American tour this year.

While equal in value to the real, local currencies gain traction because local merchants offer discounts when using them. No one is forced to quit the real, but shopkeepers say greater volumes make the markdown worthwhile.

"It brings customers through the door," said Roseanne Augusto, manager of a Silva Jardim hardware store, where a builder one recent afternoon set aside 2,700 reais in supplies, about $1,520 worth. He then left the store, went to trade reais, and returned to pay with capivaris, saving 5%.

Capivaris are managed by a new, community-run Capivari Bank. Inside its one office, a brightly painted space the size of a small fast-food joint, are the bank's employees, three women in their 20s.

For each of the 50,000 capivaris first circulated, Capivari Bank holds an equal number of reais on deposit at a traditional bank. Tatiana da Costa Pereira, the bank manager, says she sees as many as 60 clients a day. A local police car patrols outside and a state policeman comes in regularly.

The currency has been so successful the town ordered a second run of the notes, which bear serial numbers, watermarks and a hologram alongside the whiskered varmint.

Celma de Almeida, a garment saleswoman, says she didn't like the capivari at first. "I thought it was hideous," she says. "But it's grown on me. Now it's reais that seem ugly."

The first local money in Brazil was the palma, or palm, which helped foster a local economy in Conjunto Palmeiras, outside Fortaleza in Brazil's northeast.

The idea was hatched by Joaquim Melo, a former seminarian who worked as a social activist there in the 1990s. He saw a currency as a logical alternative to an experiment with neighborhood credit cards, which proved too bureaucratic for local merchants.

"They liked the idea of cash, even if it was a different sort of cash," says Mr. Melo. A group of four small retailers that accepted the palma quickly grew to more than 200.

At first, Brazilian authorities frowned on the idea.

In 1998, just as Banco Palmas was getting under way, police with machine guns raided its tiny office, acting on a complaint from Brazil's central bank. The palmas hadn't yet been printed, but police seized a handwritten ledger and 100 reais.

Mr. Melo convinced the government the notes weren't a threat to the real. Because the palma was pegged to the sovereign currency, he argued, it was as legitimate as a coupon or other proxy for legal tender.

The project drew interest from other poor communities. By 2005, the federal government came on board, getting Mr. Melo to help launch community banks across Brazil.

Silva Jardim's mayor, Marcello Zelão, wanted residents to spend in their own community. Because so many residents work in richer towns, he says local retailers often lost out to competitors at the other end of daily commutes. "It was like even our newsstands were inferior," he says. "Like the same newspapers had better news if bought in another town."

With Mr. Melo's help, the mayor organized town hall meetings and made the pitch. Locals voted on a name and hired a local designer to draw up the bills.

In November, with seed money from town coffers, capivaris rolled off the press—in denominations no greater than ten. "Big notes get hoarded," says Mr. Zelão. "Small bills circulate."

Locals use the capivari everywhere. Rogério Simplício Costa, priest at the town's hilltop Catholic church, says parishioners put about 30 capivaris in the collection box during a recent Sunday mass. Nelcimar Fonseca, manager of a supermarket, says as much as 12% of sales have been in capivaris. Margareth Vieira Xavier, owner of a roofing shop, pays part of her workers' salaries in capivaris.

"They didn't like it at first," she says, "but then they realized it saves money on groceries."

In Cidade de Deus, where the new local currency is called the CDD, people are just getting used to the idea. "I've seen a lot of money come and go," says Benta Neves do Nascimento, a 78-year-old resident who remembers failed currencies during Brazil's turbulent economic past.

Her qualm with the CDD has little to do with economics, though.

"I don't like the way it looks," she says. That's surprising: The likeness on the 5 CDD note is of her, a tribute to her longstanding role as a community activist and spirit healer. "If the money outlasts me, people will think I was ugly."

Get Discount Tix Today! CA Time Bank Conference

2011-09-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

California Time Bank Conference
Where:
The Armory Center for the Arts
145 North Raymond Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 91103

When:
Saturday October 1, 2011 at 9:00 AM PDT
-to-
Sunday October 2, 2011 at 3:00 PM PDT

Today is the last day to get half price tickets (only $20 for the whole conference!) to the California Time Bank Conference! Get your tickets today and be a part of this inspiring event.

Register Now!
View the program and presenters at www.cafederationoftimebanks.org
Check out the new video and listen to the KPFK interview with Stephanie Rearick, who will be a presenting at the conference. See you there!

Day One: Saturday, October 1st from 9AM-3PM

8:00AM to 9:00AM Registration Coffee and snacks.
*This is a zero waste event. Please bring your own plate, cup and utensil.

9:00AM -10:30AM Welcome and Opening Plenary with Christine Gray, Edgar Cahn, Lisa Conlan Lewis, Sheryl Walton, Janine Christiano and Autumn Rooney.

10:30AM to 11:00AM Break and optional Tai Chi

10:30AM to 12:00PM – Choice of two sessions
Session 1 – Time Banking: Creativity and Collaboration with Linda Hogan, Autumn Rooney, Ron Saunders, Mark Lakeman and Marisha Auerbach.
Session 2 – Food Access and Food Justice with Jennie Cook, Olivia Chumacero, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld and Janine Christiano.

12:00PM to 12:30PM Lunch
*This is a zero waste event. Please bring your own plate, cup and utensil.

12:30PM to 1:30PM Lunch Panel – California Coordinators Present on Local Projects.

1:30PM to 3:00PM World Cafe – Discussion circles and networking facilitated by Joe Donofrio of Temple City Time Exchange.

6:30PM to 8:30PM Potluck Celebration at All Saints Church 132 North Euclid Avenue, Pasadena CA 91101. Thank you to the All Saints Church Time Bank!

_______________________________

Day Two: Sunday, October 2nd from 9AM-3PM

8:00AM to 9:00AM Registration Coffee, Snacks, Welcome
*This is a zero waste event. Please bring your own plate cup and utensil.

9:00AM to 10:30AM – Plenary Panel with Terry Daniels, Linda Hogan, Lois Arkin, Stephanie Rearick, and Sarah McGowan.

10:30AM to 11:00AM Break and optional belly dancing

11:00AM to 12:00PM - Choice of two sessions
Session 1 Organizing and Running a Time Bank Part One with Stephanie Rearick and Sheryl Walton.
Session 2 Starting a Micro-Enterprise within a Time Bank with Terry Daniels and Linda Hogan.

12:00PM to 12:30PM Lunch
*This is a zero waste event. Please bring your own plate, cup and utensil.

12:30PM to 1:30PM Lunch Panel Time Banking, Youth Courts and Restorative Justice with Edgar Cahn, Lisa Conlan Lewis, Sarah McGowan and Homeboy Industries.

1:30PM to 2:30PM – Choice of two sessions.
Session 1 Organizing and Running a Time Bank Part Two with Stephanie Rearick and Sheryl Walton.
Session 2 Cooperatives: Models, Principles and Governance with Lois Arkin and Terry Daniels

2:30PM to 3:00PM Co-Production and The California Federation of Time Banks Janine Christiano, Autumn Rooney, Natalie Zappella and Sarah McGowan.

__________________________________

Monday, October 3rd from 1:00PM to 5:00PM

Adult Learning Facilitation - Learn and practice the basics of getting information across to an audience. Please attend if you’re interested in helping to train or support other timebankers. Facilitated by Autumn Rooney and Stephanie Rearick at the Madison Casita 805 North Madison Avenue Pasadena CA 91104.

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Tuesday, October 4th from 1:00PM to 3:00PM

Time for The World – Discussion with Stephanie Rearick and Leander Bindwald of Time for the World at the Madison Casita 805 North Madison Avenue Pasadena CA 91104.

Sincerely,

California Federation Of Time Banks
catimebankfederation@gmail.com
213-973-BANK (2265)

Co-opoly: A Board Game For The Co-op Movement

2011-09-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

From Shareable.net
By Beth Buczynski
09.15.11
coopolygame.com

Time and again, democratically-run companies have provent that a business built on the principles of equal access, ownership, and decision-making authority for all is far stronger than those built around traditional hierarchies.

Despite the communal ideals, a member-owned business is still a business, and as such requires a special mix of traditional and non-traditional management skills.

If you're interested in starting a worker co-op but feel unprepared for the challenges that lie ahead, you might be tempted to spend hours researching the concept online, but might be easier if you just buy a new board game instead.

Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives is a creative and exciting educational game currently gathering funding as a very promising Kickstarter project.

"Games have been proven to be unique resources that shape the way people learn, work, and interact with one another," states the official website, "but Co-opoly is more than just a board game. It is an innovative way for aspiring and existing cooperators, as well as other interested parties, to learn about co-ops and to practice cooperation."

The brain-child of The Toolbox For Education and Social Action, Co-opoly has been in continuous development during the past three years. It has evolved and improved based on input from cooperators, cooperative allies, and, just as importantly, from people who were being introduced to cooperatives for the very first time.

But, it's just a game. Can anyone really say that playing LIFE taught them anything about the challenges of living?

The game's creators realize that in order to have a real impact, the goal can't only be to entertain. To ensure that those who play Co-opoly walk away with knowledge and inspiration for the real world, each version of the game will come with lesson plans, workshops, discussion questions, information packets, and more for download – while a print introduction, “What is a Co-op?” will be included in each copy. This also makes the game a valuable resource for existing co-ops who want a fun way to train new members.

Assuming that the Kickstarter project reaches its funding limit in the next 17 days, the first version of Co-opoly to market will be the worker cooperative edition. But The Toolbox is also planning to create other versions for consumer and grocer cooperatives as well as for multi-stakeholder (“hybrid”) co-ops, like social co-ops, housing co-ops, student co-ops, and so forth.

Want to play Co-opoly and help support the growing cooperative movement? Click here to find out how you can donate to the project via Kickstarter.

New PB Process Launches in NYC

2011-09-14T15:59:00.000-07:00

From the Participatory Budgeting Project Newsletter
Sept 14, 2011

Participatory budgeting has arrived in New York City. The PB Project is proud to serve as the lead technical assistance partner for a new $6 million PB process that is starting next month in four City Council districts. City Council Members Brad Lander, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Eric Ulrich, and Jumaane Williams are each setting aside at least $1 million in capital discretionary funds for residents to allocate.

Over the past several months, the PBP has worked closely with the Council Members, lead community partner Community Voices Heard, and a City-Wide Steering Committee of 40 organizations, to design and plan the process. District Committees in each of the four districts are now planning the opening round of neighborhood assemblies, which will last throughout October.

Volunteer budget delegates, selected at the assemblies, will then meet for 3-4 months to develop final budget proposals. In March 2012, residents in each district will vote on the proposals, and the top vote getters will be included in the city budget for 2013. We expect this pilot process to expand to additional districts and budget pots once the first cycle is complete. For more information, see today's NY Times article, the PBNYC website, and the full press release on the PBP website.

Additions to the PBP Team
We extend a warm welcome to the two newest PBP members: Donata Secondo and Pam Jennings. Donata and Pam interned with us over the summer, and we're thrilled that they're staying on board as Associates. Both will be working on PBNYC and other upcoming projects. For more info on the PBP team, click here.

New Orleans visit
In October, the PBP will be speaking in New Orleans - dates to be announced soon.
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Read more about these and other stories on the PBP website.
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Interested in bringing participatory budgeting to your community? Give us a shout!

Solidarity Economy in the Big Apple

2011-09-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

Four New York City Council Members, Each With
$1 Million, Will Let Public Decide How It’s Spent

By KATE TAYLOR
SolidarityEconomy.net via New York Times

Four City Council members, intrigued by experiments begun in Brazil to let ordinary citizens determine how government uses tax dollars, say they plan to allow their constituents to decide how $4 million is spent next year.

Through a process known as participatory budgeting, constituents in each of the four Council districts will be enlisted to develop and choose among proposals for local capital projects like street repairs, new parks and public artworks. The money — $1 million in each district — will come out of the council members’ discretionary funds. (Among the city’s Council districts, discretionary funds range in size from $1.5 million to $6 million.)

Three Democrats, Brad Lander and Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn, and Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan, and one Republican, Eric Ulrich of Queens, are taking part.

Participatory budgeting has been used for years in some Brazilian communities and is now being used in parts of Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, but the only parallel in the United States, council members say, is in Chicago. Alderman Joe Moore introduced participatory budgeting in his district in North Chicago two years ago; he said in a telephone interview that it was “easily the most popular initiative that I have ever undertaken” in 20 years on the Chicago City Council. The projects financed so far, he said, included a community garden, a dog park and murals under train underpasses.

In New York, Mr. Lander has pushed the effort, saying he was impressed by the efforts that some of Mr. Moore’s constituents had undertaken. He cited a sidewalk-repair project for which a group of residents had walked every sidewalk in the district to determine which most needed to be fixed.

Mr. Lander said that was “the sort of thing that a council member is not going to be able to do, and the city is not going to be able to do, at that level of detail.”

The City Council’s use of its discretionary funds has been a focus of criticism in recent years, particularly for what is seen as a lack of transparency in how the money is distributed. Mr. Lander said he hoped participatory budgeting might help to address some of those concerns. He also said he thought it would increase voter confidence.

“I think that having the chance to be really directly involved in how this money gets spent will increase people’s faith that it’s being spent well,” Mr. Lander said.

The process will begin this fall, with neighborhood assemblies at which constituents can suggest needs in their communities and ideas for projects.

The most active volunteers will meet over the fall and winter to discuss the suggested ideas, determine their costs and then present the options to the public; residents at least 18 years old will then cast ballots on which projects they want to see financed. Those projects will then become part of the city’s 2013 capital budget.

Mr. Williams said he hoped the experience would help his constituents feel more engaged in city government.

Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network Announces Fall Tour

2011-09-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.blueoklahoma.org/diary/2411/oklahoma-worker-cooperative-network-announces-fall-tour
Worker Cooperative Incubator Starts Operations - Plans 9 Meeting Tour of Central Oklahoma - "A Better Way to Go to Work"

The Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network is a new organization that will help Oklahomans start worker-owned cooperatives.

"Worker owned cooperatives are local solutions to global problems," said Matthew Jordan, OWCN board member. "By encouraging the development of worker cooperatives, we can recession-proof our economy. The Mondragon worker cooperatives of Spain created 100,000 jobs and have never laid off an employee for economic reasons in 60 years of work," he added.

Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network Announces Fall Tour
"The OWCN will develop and support worker coops by building public awareness and helping people work through the steps of starting a business. We will take participants from the initial idea, to writing the business plan, funding options, and operational management," said Bob Waldrop, general manager.

Board member, J.D. Thompson added, "Oklahomans are an independent breed, but we know the power of working together, as well as the value of self-reliance -- and worker cooperatives are the best way to achieve both."

The OWCN has an Advisory Committee, which includes community leaders such as Oklahoma City Councilman Ed Shadid, Oklahoma Senator Andrew Rice, and Dr. Phil Kenkel of OSU.

"We are kicking off our program with a 'Better Way to Go to Work' tour of central Oklahoma. These nine free workshops will explain what worker cooperatives are and how they can benefit Oklahomans," says OWCN board member Paul Wellman.

Using solidarity as a business model, the Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network can teach people how to create good jobs for themselves, their families, and their friends, gain job security, drive economic development that benefits workers, protect families from economic insecurity, help workers gain more control over their lives and destinies, and help people find more fun, enjoyable, and profitable ways to work. We are growing an economy of solidarity, one worker-owned job at a time.

http://www.blueoklahoma.org/diary/2411/oklahoma-worker-cooperative-network-announces-fall-tour

Steelworkers pass resolution on workers' capital, industrial democracy and worker ownership

2011-09-04T12:23:00.001-07:00

http://www.usw.org/convention/resolutions?id=0027

Resolution No. 27

Workers’ Capital, Industrial Democracy and Worker Ownership

WHEREAS, USW members have billions of dollars invested in multi-employer pension

plans, such as the Steelworkers’ Pension Trust, single-employer pension plans, 401(k)

plans and labour sponsored investment plans in Canada, such as the Quebec Federation

of Labour Solidarity Fund and Working Opportunities Fund; and

WHEREAS, history has proven that these investments can produce both a healthy

monetary return and a social return that sustains and creates jobs and invests in our

communities; and

WHEREAS, we have too often seen the opposite result when we do not influence those

investments, leaving Wall Street to gamble with our money in ways that threaten our

jobs and destroy our communities; and

WHEREAS, our Union has good working relationships with most of the employers who

employ our members, many of whom need better access to capital investment to sustain

and create jobs; and

WHEREAS, we know that our members’ success is inevitably tied to our employers’

success, and that the surest path to success is built on a partnership, based on mutual

trust and respect; and

WHEREAS, USW members are an unending source of innovative ideas and insightful

feedback in their workplaces; and

WHEREAS, shared success is built upon shared rewards; and

WHEREAS, worker ownership has proven to be fruitful when ownership means much

more than just the value of a share; and

WHEREAS, the USW began efforts of collaboration in 2009 with the Mondragon

Cooperatives, the world’s largest worker-owned cooperative with nearly 100,000

workerowners, to develop unionized, worker-owned cooperatives in the United States

and Canada; and

WHEREAS, the economies of both the United States and Canada continue to struggle

after the 2008 financial collapse and the need for prudent investment of workers’ capital,

industrial democracy and worker ownership is as strong as ever.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that:

(1) Our Union will pursue every responsible avenue to ensure that the investments of the

USW and of USW members collectively are used in a way that not only provides a

reasonable monetary return, but also provides job security, job creation and invests

in our communities.

(2) Our Union recognizes and encourages partnership with an employer as a sure path

to shared success, but only if it is a partnership of equals based on mutual respect.

(3) Collective bargaining needs to become a more continuous process that does not

simply begin and end with a contract. Markets and technology change frequently, if

our Union is not engaged in a continuous bargaining relationship, then we risk

having our employers make important decisions unilaterally.

(4) Our Union will continue to promote and develop unionized, worker-owned

cooperatives, as well as other forms of worker-ownership, as a profitable and

sustainable means to create jobs and invest in our communities.

Less Work, More Living

2011-09-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

Working fewer hours could save our economy, save our sanity, and help save our planet
by Juliet Schor
from Yes!
Sep 02, 2011

Millions of Americans have lost control over the basic rhythm of their daily lives. They work too much, eat too quickly, socialize too little, drive and sit in traffic for too many hours, don’t get enough sleep, and feel harried too much of the time. It’s a way of life that undermines basic sources of wealth and well-being—such as strong family and community ties, a deep sense of meaning, and physical health.
Earn less, spend less, emit and degrade less. That's the formula. The more time a person has, the better his or her quality of life, and the easier it is to live sustainably.

Imagining a world in which jobs take up much less of our time may seem utopian, especially now, when a scarcity mentality dominates the economic conversation. People who are employed often find it difficult to scale back their jobs. Costs of medical care, education, and child care are rising. It may be hard to find new sources of income when U.S. companies have been laying people off at a dizzying rate.

But fewer work hours for people with jobs is a key step toward solving the unemployment crisis—while giving Americans healthier lives. Fewer hours means more jobs are available to people who need them. Living on less pay usually means consuming less, making more of the things one needs at home, and living lighter, whether by design or by accident.

Today, driven both by necessity and the deliberate choice to live simply, more Americans are shifting toward fewer work hours. It’s a trend that, if done correctly, could get us out of our current economic crisis and away from unsustainable economic growth.

Economists today focus solely on growth as a mechanism for job creation. But for much of the industrial age, falling hours have been roughly as important a contributor to employment as market growth.

The grueling schedules of the 19th century undermined health and prevented people from achieving what we now call quality of life. Hours of work in the United States began to decline after about 1870—from about 3,000 a year to 2,342 by 1929. In 1973 annual work hours stood at 1,887 (fewer than 40 hours per week, on average). If hours hadn’t fallen, unemployment would have grown even before the 1930s Depression.

Since the 1970s, Americans have been working longer. According to government survey data, the average working person was putting in 180 more hours of work in 2006 than he or she was in 1979. The trends are more pronounced on a household basis. Many more men are working schedules in excess of 50 hours a week. (Thirty percent of male college graduates and 20 percent of all full-time male workers are on schedules that usually exceed 50 hours.)

Not surprisingly, over the last 20 years, a large number of U.S. employees report being overworked. A 2004 study found that 44 percent of respondents were often or very often overworked, overwhelmed at their jobs, or unable to step back and process what’s going on. A third reported being chronically overworked. These overworked employees had much higher stress levels, worse physical health, higher rates of depression, and a reduced ability to take care of themselves than their less-pressured colleagues.
Doing it yourself, or self-provisioning, is now on the rise, both because of a culture shift and because in hard times, people have more time and less money.

But there are recent signs that a culture shift toward shorter hours has begun. In 1996, when I first surveyed on this issue, 19 percent of the adult population reported having made a voluntary lifestyle change during the previous five years that entailed earning less money. In a 2004 survey by the Center for a New American Dream, 48 percent did.

The stagnant economy, difficult as it is, represents an opportunity for expanding the norm of part-time work. In the first year of the recession, many businesses avoided layoffs by reducing hours through furloughs, unpaid vacations, four-day workweeks, and flex-time. By mid-2009, one study of large firms found that 20 percent had reduced hours to forestall job cuts.

Unfortunately, a lack of institutional support for short hours policies reversed many of those programs, as economist Dean Baker argued in a recent paper. Baker hypothesizes that businesses would provide an additional 1 to 2 million jobs a year if workers could collect unemployment insurance when they are on short schedules.

One thing we do know is that people who voluntarily start working less are generally pleased. In the New Dream survey, 23 percent said they were not only happier, but they didn’t miss the money. Sixty percent reported being happier, but missed the money to varying degrees. Only 10 percent regretted the change. And I’ve also found downshifters who began with a job loss or an involuntary reduction in pay or hours, but came to prefer having a wealth of time.
The Wealth We Make Ourselves

Earn less, spend less, emit and degrade less. That’s the formula. The more time a person has, the better his or her quality of life, and the easier it is to live sustainably. A study by David Rosnick and Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that if the United States were to shift to the working patterns of Western European countries, where workers spend on average 255 fewer hours per year at their jobs, energy consumption would decline about 20 percent. New research I have conducted with Kyle Knight and Gene Rosa of Washington State University, looking at all industrialized countries over the last 50 years, finds that nations with shorter working hours have considerably smaller ecological and carbon footprints.

There’s also a small but growing body of studies that examine these questions at the household scale. A French study found that, after controlling for income, households with longer working hours increased their spending on housing (buying larger homes with more appliances), transport (longer hours reduced the use of public transportation), and hotels and restaurants. A recent Swedish study found that when households reduce their working hours by 1 percent, their greenhouse gas emissions go down by 0.8 percent. One explanation is that when households spend more time earning money, they compensate in part by purchasing more goods and services, and buying them at later stages of processing (e.g., more prepared foods). People who have more time at home and less at work can engage in slower, less resource-intensive activities. They can hang their clothing on the line, rather than use an electric dryer. More important, they can switch to less energy-intensive but more time-consuming modes of transport (mass transit or carpool versus private auto, train versus airplane). They can garden and cook at home. They can meet more of their basic needs by making, fixing, doing, and providing things themselves.

Doing-it-yourself, or self-provisioning, is now on the rise, both because of a culture shift and because in hard times people have more time and less money.

In April 2009, according to a national survey, one in five Americans said they were making plans to plant a garden that year. After the recession hit, service-oriented businesses such as salons, pet groomers, and nannies experienced a decline in business as people began doing these things for themselves. An annual expo called Maker Faire that started in California has been attracting growing numbers of do-it-yourselfers and inventors. It’s spreading to new locations around the country, and attendance has reportedly quadrupled since 2006.

People are returning to lost arts practiced by earlier generations—woodworking, quilting, brewing beer, and canning and preserving. They are also hunting, fishing, and sewing. People engage in these activities because they enjoy them and they yield better-quality products or products that are not easily available. Producing artisanal jams, sauces, and smoked meats, or handmade sweaters, quilts, and clothing makes these pricey items affordable.

Self-provisioning is also getting popular in housing. For example, the movement toward straw-bale homes has taken off in the Southwest. Straw-bale construction has become prevalent enough that some localities have introduced code for it, and there are even banks that lend for these structures. People are also experimenting with the use of compressed earth bricks, poured earth, “papercrete” (which uses recycled paper and a small amount of concrete), and a variety of other materials. New Englanders have revived the colonial-era tradition of community barn-raisings, only now they’re coming together to build yurts.

As failed housing markets around the country stagnate, one can expect more real estate refugees to construct their own debt-free shelter with recycled, low-cost, or no-cost materials.

Self-provisioning is also a spur to entrepreneurial activity. Most people who practice it don’t self-provide everything. They find some productive activities they prefer, are more skilled at, or can do more easily. They trade or sell what they’re best at producing. With this specialization, self-provisioning becomes a pathway to incubating a set of small businesses that will flourish as the sustainable economy takes off.

A large-scale switch to less work and more production and self-provisioning at home will require some collective solutions. We need systems that provide basic security to all individuals and families—from childhood through old age. Access to basic needs such as education and health care must be widely affordable.

But it’s possible for many people to take small steps—right now—toward fewer job hours and more self-sufficiency. There are challenges, to be sure, but for many, the switch from paper-pushing to gardening has been welcome. Self-providers value their newfound skills, love the chance to be creative, and are getting satisfaction and security from constructing a more self-reliant lifestyle. The ability to work for oneself is highly valued. They are nourished by connection with the earth. Perhaps most important, they are rewarded by the opportunity to live without endangering others and the planet.

Juliet Schor is professor of sociology at Boston College and the author of the national bestseller The Overspent American. This article is adapted from True Wealth by Juliet Schor, reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) Juliet Schor, 2011. It appeared in New Livelihoods, the Fall 2011 issue of YES! Magazine.

Food Justice – Changing ‘there’ by changing here

2011-08-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

IN stirtoaction STIR
15 August 2011 at 5:30 pm
by Matthew Steele

I remember as an undergrad reading Ivan Illich’s 1968 speech to American students working in Mexico and having the once-clear vision of my life’s path confused. Illich’s rather simple, passionate, and poignant criticism has stayed in the back of my consciousness ever since. He dismissed the aid efforts the students were embarking on and went further to explain that their efforts would likely have a destructive impact in their host Latin American countries.

He found the students to be ambassadors for the American way of life, positing values that would ultimately serve more to destroy their host countries instead of aid them. He further remarked that working in an American ghetto as an alternative for these students could be equally destructive, but at least there community members would have the ability to vocalize or organize a rejection of student’s efforts. I think such critiques are increasingly relevant to the world of food, especially in the potential advent of “Food Corps”, a food-focused AmeriCorps program.

In the world of food activism, and arguably in every context, a person must identify the systems of power in place in the worlds they traverse to appropriately justify what role they take in changing them. Many of my well-intended contemporaries in the food movement fail to focus their efforts where they have the most power to apply a constructive and systemic critique. It is all too common for food activists to live in a community distinctly different from the one they are serving; their work and personal lives held separate “to maintain their sanity.” Though complete assimilation will likely never be possible, nor perhaps ideal, many of these community activists fail to even marginally immerse themselves in the community they are advocating for or organizing among. While focused on serving “other” communities, many food organizers and advocates in turn ignore the food system of the privileged community in which they choose to inhabit, thus obscuring the linkages between the choices made in the spaces of privilege and the spaces that lack privilege. Undergraduate student activists working on community projects are especially prone to exist in this outsider dynamic, as they frequently have superficial, short, and often uninformed interactions, and they live, if not physically then at least mentally, in disconnected bastions of privilege at their university.

These problems surface most explicitly in the efforts of current food justice advocates abroad who are focused on holding back unsustainable industrialization from reaching the agricultural sectors of Latin American and African countries. The American food system is the model being followed and these advocates’ efforts abroad are opportunities lost to change the unsustainable and unethical system perpetuated in the U.S. The well-intentioned activists utilize their influence as Americans, but in so doing they inadvertently reinforce the problems they are hoping to solve. They are in part legitimizing the means by which American power was attained, specifically rapid industrialization and economic imperialism.

Many food justice advocates are brought into their work by an emotional reaction to the tragic hunger that exists in the world, be it in the context of the U.S.’s inner cities or global poverty. Indeed, hunger and emergency food efforts have been the recipients of the bulk of funding in the growing food movement over the last 40 years, a time period that simultaneously saw an expansion of hunger and food-related problems. Focusing on the one issue of food access has only enabled the persistence of the true underlying causes of our unjust food system. Food access, though important, cannot be the focus of efforts. It is more important to restructure the food system in a way that empowers a community to have control in their food system thereby ensuring their continued access.

The radical conceptions of food sovereignty movements and movements such as Via Campesina (an international peasant movement for food sovereignty) were born out of this realization. To advocate for food sovereignty is to advocate for a redistribution of power within the food system so that communities have the ability and control to feed themselves with healthy and quality food.

Despite the increasing popularity of the term “food sovereignty”, funds are still doled out to organizations whose efforts only stand to superficially address food access issues. Often the funders are businesses like Walmart, which have been the major culprits in restructuring the food system and increasing income and health disparities. Philanthropic funds given to emergency food service providers satisfy a paternalistic need to help poor and starving people through direct forms of assistance. These funds are directed to those whose faces and places have become synonymous with need. However, the underlying causes of the need are ignored. Though humanitarian concerns should be addressed in tandem, the focus of available resources should be on building food security and addressing systemic issues at work causing mass hunger.

CoFed: A Systemic Approach

The idea of CoFed was built out of the growing relationships between student food cooperative (co-op) start-ups and is especially linked to the success of the Berkeley Student Food Collective in the winter of 2009-2010. The idea was to create an incubating structure to support students interested in creating food co-ops in their campus food system as well as to address some of the endemic problems, such as high turnover, institutional capacity, and memory, many of these cooperative projects have historically faced.

Student food co-ops integrate into the landscape of the university and operate as beacons for education and hubs for sustainability and activism among students. Student food co-ops as thriving money-making businesses can be a source of direct power for students aiming to transform their campus food systems. Co-ops can have control over the sourcing, the price of food for students, and revenue reinvestment. In addition, co-ops create opportunities for people to gain access to quality food through volunteering and wages. These co-ops educate and expose generations of students to food system critiques and give students a solid way to build food sovereignty. They also provide a means to create a peer-facilitated cultural shift in student communities. Through involvement in food co-ops, student organizers internalize food justice and food sustainability in their daily lives and often continue to build food sovereignty in the communities they join following graduation.

The creation and success of student-run food cooperatives, and the often-accompanying campus farms, serve to legitimize community efforts of a similar nature. The systemic efforts on behalf of student food co-op organizers have the potential to transform their campuses into more ideal models for development within a conducive intellectual environment where arguments around food sovereignty can especially gain traction. We hope that a national co-op organizing effort—in tandem with efforts to start campus gardens and farmers’ markets—can build momentum for food sovereignty on campuses throughout the country. In the process, we seek to increase the influence of food sovereignty as a development model in broader community development patterns both at the local, city, national, and international scale.

Experiential Learning

Ivan Illich was a staunch advocate of experiential learning. Indeed, one of his most important intellectual contributions was a book arguing for more self-directed, project-based learning, Deschooling Society. It is because of my support for such kinds of learning that I find it important to determine where such work is appropriate. While recognizing how much students actually gain from experiential learning, it is important to note that such learning is not gained at the expense of the communities being “helped”. As the students at the conference Illich was speaking at noted, students often have much more to learn from their host communities than the reverse.

Students in conventional universities only have a short period of time to get “credit” for project-based learning in a community. Given the time constraints of their semester/quarter system and institutional support for a year, or at most, four years, the community food projects in which students tend to partake struggle to be genuinely community-based and sustainable, precursors which are needed for any effort toward food sovereignty. Students also often lack the knowledge and the sensitivity to ensure their work is significant, and gaining such knowledge and sensitivity should not come at the expense of the community they are hoping to serve.

Regardless of their background, students and academics often come from a place of privilege and power inherited through their explicit association with an academic institution and the intellectual legitimacy it represents. The systems in place that maintain a university’s legitimacy provide students the privilege to bring service to a community and be accepted by the same. Indirectly, the systems that enable one’s power are condoned in the use of that power. A student is an ambassador for all of the values substantiated in the process that enabled the imparting of the privilege they wield. In the context of food systems work, the privilege a student wields is in part made possible by the exploitation of farm workers and by the unsustainable usage of fossil fuels in an industrialized and global agricultural system far removed from their daily life. It is important for all students to be cognizant that they are enabled to focus on their school projects because of a pattern of development that thrives on existing disparities in the world.

The conclusions drawn from the Illich’s paternalist critique should not be that one should throw up one’s hands and embrace blind apathy. Rather, it means one should take radical and sometimes more difficult steps to systemically change the worlds they do inhabit. For students focused on food, the most elemental of our systems, the focus should be their own campus food systems.

Sweeping policy changes such as those made to campus food dining halls or restaurants and the food service provider, often widely touted and spearheaded by administration, are rarely systemic, not sustained over time, and largely superficial even if directly and quantitatively significant in the short run. Such policy changes to campus food systems may have the overall impact and image of greening a campus, but such efforts need not involve students, and indeed could occur and be reversed without the broader student body ever noticing. The policies changed are often preliminary and enable the university or a sub-contracted food service provider to put on a green face while ultimately making few changes significant in the long-term.

The example of this I always provide is: the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle touts the sustainability of its food service. The crux of their claim to being “green” lies in the university’s switch from disposable to compostable eating utensils and plates in all of their restaurants and dining halls. They were especially proud of their ability to pressure Coca-Cola to make a compostable cup for the first time. While it is difficult enough to fathom Coca-Cola as sustainable in any form due to its egregious human rights violations in Colombia, its abysmal environmental track record in India, or its contribution to the obesity epidemic in this country, the compostable plates and utensils they put into use are actually less sustainable than their reusable counterparts that were once employed 25 years or so prior. This is because less resources are consumed through washing and the production of such serviceware. In making its change to compostable utensils and plates, the UW housing and food service perpetuates a fast food model.

Student food co-ops, in sharp contrast to these university-wide policies, provide a democratic cornerstone on which to build food sovereignty and channel power into students’ hands. In a co-op, students wield the power to make decisions about the quality, sustainability, and cost of their food. The potential power these food co-ops wield pose a threat to existing power structures and each successful co-op generally must engage in a battle with the existing monopolistic food service provider, be that an in-house operation or a sub-contracted corporate food service provider like Aramark and Sodex. Food co-op efforts on campuses, after being established, go on to spearhead the implementation of important systemic changes in the broader food system and increased democracy.

From my experience, though sweeping political changes can happen, ideally, in tandem with the creation of food co-ops, if it occurs before hand, it can paradoxically become difficult to build support for a food co-op. Superficial green policy changes become status quo and legitimatize a claim to being “sustainable,” which masks the lack of any systemic changes or plans for further changes. Once a system or institution has been legitimatized by such green policy lip service, food sovereignty by paths such as food co-ops is no longer a strong consideration. In contrast, the initiation of a food co-op on campus stirs policy changes by placing students into a prominent and empowered place in the food system that allows students to further push the status quo consistently into the future.

Food Justice Work

Food Justice work cannot narrowly be conceived of as helping poor people obtain access to food. We need to consider the broader systemic effects of each choice made in our lives and how we contribute to the systems of oppression that exacerbate health disparities and food access issues in our own communities. In the context of economic oppression, the food choices of those living in poverty are reflections of the norms substantiated in popular culture. To use the analogy of Paulo Freire, the oppressed internalize a love for their oppressor. The norms established by privileged individuals disproportionately influence norms that go on to influence popular culture on the aggregate. In other words, the choices of the poor are structurally framed through the influence and power wielded by the rich.

Regardless of where in the food system one focuses one’s efforts, there are injustices present throughout the system. The most blatant exploitation in the food system—that of the farm workers—can be addressed if the power and responsibility of sourcing is put into the hands of consumers. Consumers can then make decisions in collective dialogue with others, which creates the space for considerations of ethics and social values. This is precisely the goal of the student food co-ops I work with.

The influence of retail is powerful, and as such it is an important medium through which sovereignty can be built. As Raj Patal puts it in Stuffed and Starved (2007):

“The highest temple of the modern food system is the supermarket. The supermarket chain is an empire of logistics, one that governs and regulates the smaller fiefdoms within the food industry, such as the commission agent’s rule over the grower, or the distributor’s clutch on the agent. Through its decisions, and through its close supervision of each step in a product chain, supermarket-buying desks can fire the poorest farm workers in South Africa, flip the fates of coffee growers in Guatemala or tweak the output of paddy terraces in Thailand.”

Walmart, while clearly a powerful player in the food system, gained its power through unethical, unsustainable, and highly profitable, exploitive business practices. The use of its power in addressing food insecurity is enabling of Walmart’s business model both directly, by shielding the company from criticism, and indirectly by legitimizing that power among those being aided. Up until 2000, and more starkly in 2007, the Waltons were notorious for their lack of charity and the small size of the gifts they did give out. The company is making these superficial changes largely in response to the growing criticism in response to their mammoth presence in the food system, growing beyond 40% of all national food sales.

Retail power can be taken from corporate moguls and, through co-ops, be put into the hands of community members. This can happen in a wealthy neighborhood far easier than it can happen in a low-income neighborhood, and happening in the former will help make it possible in the latter. Efforts in one community can help build solidarity for community based efforts toward food sovereignty in others. Community food co-ops in low-income neighborhoods notoriously fail for a myriad of reasons including but not limited to issues surrounding poverty, such as a lack of human capital, a lack of community buy-in, and a lack of access to capital and credit. A report by UW (Madison) Center for Cooperatives provides some examples of failed cooperatives in low-income communities but identifies that community food co-ops that exist on the periphery between low-income and upper-income communities have been able to be very successful.

I understand the potential of a university to be an “anchor institution” for a local low-income community. An anchor institution, as discussed in the development field, utilizes its institutional power to catalyze surrounding development. Indeed, the local university, the University of Pennsylvania, enables me to work among a low-income community in North Philadelphia. But even in my position as a food ethnographer, I find myself not entirely immersed in the local community. A complete immersion requires sacrifices only some of the most privileged people could enjoy. To radically change the fate of an oppressed community, one needs to share its fate. For young, educated, but poor community organizers, time spent developing relations and immersing themselves in a world of chronically unemployed individuals is time that could otherwise be spent among those who could connect them with opportunities. Such a situation creates contentious incentives especially for those who are doing community food organizing as an employment strategy while unemployed, as is largely the case in Philadelphia.

I see few genuine, complete immersions by young food justice advocates in the area that I live. Indeed, the food justice world mainly consists of hyper-educated food activists who primarily associate with each other. At some level, I think people can immerse themselves sufficiently among a community to build truly community-based projects. However, such organizers need to accept that they will always be balancing a tension between what privileges they can sacrifice against the degree of their community immersion. For some, immersion is not even possible as the sacrifices are too difficult or impossible for them to make.

Many of the urban farmers I work with cannot or are unwilling to adapt their appearances to fit the community being served, because so much of their identity, and by extension motivation, is wrapped up in their radical appearances. They expect and hope to be “accepted,” and at some level this happens. Though the culture and values they are perpetuating may be admirable, they walk as aliens among the people they are working with, unable to connect with important figures who hold cultural influence over the neighborhood. As a result, they are unable to build bridges to create genuinely community-based food projects. In my neighborhood, the cultural icons are not the existing community organizers, but rather the hustlers of the neighborhood, the dealers, the players, the graffiti artists, and the rap artists. Those in the age group between 16 and 24 are often the most important cultural figures in the neighborhood and yet the most absent in community food projects.

Building a highly successful community-based grocer is possible, as demonstrated by People’s Grocery in West Oakland. Much of its ability to integrate into the surrounding community was due to the efforts of Nikki Henderson. Though an outsider, Henderson lived in, immersed herself in, and built community among the communities of color in West Oakland. Her partner is an equally engaged and respected community organizer involved withOakland’s hip hop scene. The project also benefited from its proximity to San Francisco, a city of privilege spearheading food sovereignty.

In neighborhoods like Philadelphia, the food co-ops that exist have been invisible. Of the two co-ops, Mariposa has been for members only, though is about to open to the public. Weaver’s Way was closed to the public as well up until a few years ago. While the latter is now open, it is tucked away on the outskirts of the city near the suburbs. For now, those living in low-income communities consider the notion of convenient, affordable, healthy and quality food access only in association with the suburban development model and by way of a corporation like Walmart. Ironically the migration process of “getting out” to the suburbs to enjoy these benefits will only continue to disintegrate the local community, making it ever more unlikely that things will change for the better.

I hope the reader takes from this article a clearer idea of where to focus their passions. One wields the most power in a descending concentric sphere of influence in relation to one’s identities and respective communities. Though I focused on students in this article, the arguments can be extrapolated. One must analyze where best to focus their efforts, taking into account what role they could occupy in the potential communities they aspire to serve. Efforts placed in one potential sphere of the food system are absent in other. Ultimately, efforts to reform the part of the food system in which we are active participants will have more impact in changing broader systems and indirectly address the disparities that spur a lack of access. Though hunger and other problems associated with food access are important issues to address, these issues are rooted in the disparities and poverty spawned from systemic and historical injustices that have as much to do with privileged contexts as they do spaces plagued with hunger.

For students, student food cooperatives can build food sovereignty into the food system of the institutions that provide them their privilege. Having food co-ops on universities throughout the country will indirectly influence development patterns by normalizing and legitimizing food sovereignty and food co-ops. Working in your own communities starting food sovereignty projects is just as important if not more important than working in “other” communities.

Matthew Steele works part-time as the Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, incubating food cooperative start-ups at universities and consulting with existing cooperatives. He also works part-time as a food ethnographer through the University of Pennsylvania, studying and documenting the local food movement, specifically market creation in areas of low access. Matt facilitated the creation of the University of Washington Student Food Cooperative (UWSFC) before moving to Philadelphia to focus on community development in North Philadelphia in conjunction with the work of his partner, Fernando Montero, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Slow Money 3rd National Gathering Oct 12-14

2011-08-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

Slow Money 3rd National Gathering Oct 12-14, San Francisco
Register now!

The program of Slow Money National Gatherings integrates internationally recognized thought leadership, next generation social entrepreneurship, and an environment that fosters shared learning across the full spectrum of backgrounds—from the most sophisticated financiers to individual investors, from farmers to food entrepreneurs.

Given the centrality of food to our mission, all meals feature the best offerings of local organic purveyors. Meals are generously scheduled to offer as much time as possible for food to be enjoyed and for a bit of the conviviality of the table to be experienced.

The program also includes elements of film, music, and Meet the Author sessions, because fixing the economy from the ground up is not only a financial activity, but also a cultural one.

WELCOME!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
8:00 am REGISTRATION & CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST
9:00 am OPENING REMARKS Woody Tasch
9:30 am KEYNOTE David Suzuki
11:00 am KEYNOTE Vandana Shiva
12:00 pm LUNCH
1:30 pm BREAKOUT SESSIONS Featuring case studies, education, best practices, and more (see below)
3:15 pm KEYNOTE Wes Jackson
4:00 pm TOWN HALL MEETING Roundtable discussion with Wes Jackson, Vandana Shiva, Premal Shah, and others. Moderator: Simran Sethi
Simran Sethi Wes Jackson Vandana Shiva Premal Shah
5:30 pm OPENING RECEPTION Food, music, and networking
7:00 pm FILM
Thursday, October 13, 2011
8:00 am REGISTRATION & CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST
9:00 am WELCOME MESSAGE Cathy Berry
9:05 am SPECIAL ADDRESS Leslie Christian
9:25 am SPECIAL ADDRESS Melissa Bradley
9:45 am ENTREPRENEUR SHOWCASE Two dozen food entrepreneurs from across the United States, selected by members of the Slow Money network, for the quality of their vision and their business acumen, present investment opportunities.
10:45 am ENTREPRENEUR SHOWCASE Continued
12:00 pm LUNCH
3:15 pm BREAKOUT SESSIONS Featuring case studies, education, best practices and more (see below)
5:00 pm TOWN HALL MEETING Bonnie Rukin Tim Crosby Grant Abert
6:00 pm SPECIAL ADDRESS David Montgomery
7:00 pm FARM-TO-TABLE DINNER A sit-down celebration of all that we have come together to support, catered by the award winning Back to Earth Organic Catering
Friday, October 14, 2011
8:00 am REGISTRATION & CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST
9:00 am OPENING REMARKS Woody Tasch
9:05 am SPECIAL ADDRESS Chris Martenson
9:25 am SPECIAL ADDRESS Kat Taylor
10:15 am SLOW MONEY ANNUAL MEETING Slow Money Annual Meeting: report from the Chairman, regional reports, membership campaign, and other governance matters
10:15 am BREAKOUT SESSIONS Featuring case studies, education, best practices and more (see below)
11:45 am BREAKOUT SESSIONS Featuring case studies, education, best practices and more (see below)
11:45 am SLOW MONEY ANNUAL MEETING (continued)
1:00 pm LUNCH
1:45 pm BREAKOUT SESSIONS Featuring case studies, education, best practices and more (see below)
3:00 pm SPECIAL ADDRESS Winona LaDuke
3:20 pm SPECIAL ADDRESS David Orr
4:00 pm CLOSING TOWN HALL MEETING Engagement & Reflection
Breakout Sessions - Wednesday, October 12, 2011
1:30 pm Investing in Small Food Enterprises:
How To
Marco Vangelisti Narendra Varma Ari Derfel Carol Peppe Hewitt
1:30 pm Slow Money Case Studies.
Slow Money regional leaders discuss their work.
Kelly Childs Michael Brownlee Scott Collier Derek Denckla
1:30 pm Mission-Related Investing:
Strategies for foundations to invest in small food enterprises.
Stuart Davidson Jeff Rosen
1:30 pm Sky Trust and Soil Trust:
New Intermediation that Protects the Commons
Peter Barnes Woody Tasch
1:30 pm A Fundraising 101 Primer.
For entrepreneurs who are new to venture financing. This session will cover the basics, including Business Plan, financial projections, and legal structure.
Julia Shanks
1:30 pm The Future of Money.
Local currencies represent the ultimate alternative to globalization. This panel will explore the role of local currencies in rebuilding local economies.
Chris Lindstrom Katrina Scotto di Carlo
1:30 pm Debunking Myths about GMOs
Vandana Shiva Debbie Barker
1:30 pm Food Sheds.
Hear from three leaders who are mapping local food and heightening public awareness about food sheds and sustainability.
Gary Nabhan Sibella Kraus Anthony Nicalo Michael Dimock
1:30 pm Financial Planning and Slow Money:
Where does Slow Money fit in your portfolio? Three investment managers give their perspective on Slow Money
Eric Becker Wendy Holding Matt Patsky
Breakout Sessions - Thursday, October 13, 2011
3:15 pm Show Me the Money:
Capital Opportunities for Businesses. Entrepreneurs have more financing options than ever before to raise capital for our businesses. But how can we choose which are a good fit for our businesses if we don’t know that half of them exist, much less how they work? In this session, finance industry experts will paint a picture of the ever-evolving capital markets landscape, identifying the many financing options available, from local versions of traditional debt and equity, to newfangled revenue sharing and crowdfunding models, and beyond. Designed for entrepreneurs seeking capital.
Ari Derfel Elizabeth Ü Jenny Kassan
3:15 pm Local Food Systems.
Studies of local food systems in Ohio and Vermont are receiving national recognition, promoting policy initiatives and new strategies for supporting small food enterprises.
Ellen Kahler
3:15 pm Giving Something Back:
New visions of corporate philanthropy.
Janie Hoffman Terry Kellogg Sean Marx
3:15 pm No Small Potatoes:
Slow Money Maine launched No Small Potatoes Investment Club. Slow Money Austin is also in the process of launching an investment club. How do they work?
Scott Collier Linzee Weld
3:15 pm Slow Money Circle.
Opportunity for investors with serious interest in the deals to connect with one another, compare notes, and explore opportunities for shared due diligence.
Woody Tasch
3:15 pm New Slow Money Funds
Jeff Rosen Janice St. Onge Craig Wichner
3:15 pm Sister NGOs:
Meet the leaders of other organizations that are playing key roles building local food systems and local economies.
Anna Smith-Clark Michael Dimock Alicia Harvie
3:15 pm Philanthropy and Food Systems
Oran Hesterman Susan Clark John Fisk
3:15 pm Slow Money Case Studies:
Hear from three entrepreneurs who have received Slow Money and one Slow Money investor.
Cathy Berry Mason Arnold Kelly Childs Narendra Varma
Breakout Sessions - Friday, October 14, 2011
10:15 am Trees:
Monetizing the role of forests in preserving and restoring soil fertility and providing ecosystem services.
Connie Best Bettina von Hagen
10:15 am Compost vs. NPK:
Companies that are Building the Soil.
Teddy Stray Jack Chambers
10:15 am Co-ops and the New Food Economy
Guillermo Payet Daniel Fireside Paul Cultrera
10:15 am CSAs: Is it capitalism? Is it socialism?
The role of community supported agriculture and local food systems. Is the rapid growth of CSAs over the past decade pointing towards a larger role in the food system?
Guillermo Payet Paul Muller Rebecca Calahan Klein
10:15 am Building Tomorrow\'s Local Food Systems:
Next generation food entrepreneurs share their vision and experience.
Brahm Ahmadi Nikhil Arora Paula Somoza Manalo
11:45 am Preserving Farmland:
Can significant new sources of capital, both for-profit and non-profit, be mobilized?
Constance Washburn Craig Wichner Ralph Grossi Jim Oldham
11:45 am Local Investing:
Place-based strategies and the future of social investing.
Leslie Christian Don Shaffer Joel Solomon
11:45 am Agriculture and Carbon Credits:
A lively discussion about the merits of biochar and carbon credits.
Lopa Brunjes
11:45 am Local Stock Exchanges.
LanX (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), the Hawaii exchange, and Toronto’s Social Venture Network are designing and implementing new ways to support the flow of local investment.
Trex Proffitt David Fisher
11:45 am From Food Access to Food Commerce – challenge to opportunity
Oran Hesterman Michel Nischan John Fisk
11:45 am Public Policy and Local Food Systems.
Initiatives at the state and federal level supporting the preservation and restoration of local food systems
Glenda Humiston Michael Dimock Jim Slama
11:45 am Meet the Authors
Nate Downey Kate Levinson
11:45 am Mission Markets:
An in-depth look at this innovative marketplace that connects investors, issuers and environmental credit buyers and sellers within the impact and sustainable capital markets.
Michael Van Patten

Webinar: Local Investment Clubs: A Replicable Example from Slow Money Maine

2011-08-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Organize your own local investment club!
Part of BALLE's Accelerating Community Capital Series Find out what is working on the ground across North America to connect regional investors with regional businesses.
How to use this webinar series

Join with others from your area for the each Accelerating Community Capital webinar.

Hear firsthand about the best models working right now that you can replicate where you live.

Ask the presenters the questions you need to build local investing in your area.

Space is limited; register now!

Series participants will learn about innovative strategies to:

• Connect local businesses with local lenders, investors and donors,

• Earn a "living rate of return" while supporting the local economy, and

• Create jobs by strengthening family farms, local manufacturing,
and independent business.

Webinar pricing

Register now for this webinar and others in our series. Discounts available when you register for all of the remaining webinars!

• General public: $25 per webinar

• Series partners: including business members of BALLE networks; investors with RSF, Investors' Circle and Portfolio 21; members of Slow Money or AEO: $15 per webinar

• Staff and board of BALLE networks: Free!

Thanks to our ACC Series Partners

RSF Social Finance

Slow Money

Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO)

Portfolio 21 Investments
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This month's webinar:
Local Investment Clubs: A Replicable Example from Slow Money Maine

Webinar Speakers:
Eleanor Kinney and Christopher Hallweaver, founders of the No Small Potatoes Investment Club, an initiative of Slow Money Maine

Date and Time:Slow Money Maine
Tuesday, September 6 at 10am PT
(11am MT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET)

About the topic:
The No Small Potatoes Investment Club is a group pooling funds and making micro-loans to farmers and food businesses in Maine since the fall of 2010. The club provides working capital in the form of low-interest loans, and meets three times a year to evaluate loan applications.

Initially, the club made individual self-directed loans, but since April of this year has been pooling funds and making loans as a group. Loans thus far have ranged from $2,000 to $15,000, with $5,000 as the investment commitment to join the club. Learn about some of the club's loan recipients:

* Heiwa Tofu in Camden
* Lalibela Farm in Dresden
* Thirty Acre Farm in Whitefield

Though this investment club is focused on micro-loans to food producers, the model is replicable in many other living economy sectors by BALLE networks, Slow Money chapters, and a wide range of formal or informal networks of community investors.

The model will also be featured at the 3rd Annual Slow Money National Gathering in San Francisco, October 12-14, 2011.
About the speakers

Eleanor Kinney Eleanor Kinney is a Founder and Vice-President of the No Small Potatoes Investment Club. She is on the Slow Money Maine steering committee and is an investor in several food businesses around the state. Eleanor serves on the board of Maine Farmland Trust and is a member of the Environmental Funders Network, a group of foundations and philanthropists making grants to Maine nonprofits.

Christopher Hallweaver Christopher Hallweaver is also a founder of the No Small Potatoes Investment Club and serves as its treasurer. By trade, Chris is a software entrepreneur who in the 1980s founded a software and system integration company. Chris has turned his attention to improving our local food systems with an ultimate goal of figuring out how Maine can feed Maine. He is opening his newest venture, Northern Girl, an organic vegetable processing center.
Accelerating Community Capital Webinar Series
For the first time, a growing number of investors are considering local options. With a new generation of local investment institutions and supportive public policies, literally trillions of dollars could move from Wall Street to Main Street, creating millions of new jobs and helping to build vibrant local economies.

What are the most promising new models to connect your local businesses with local lenders, investors, and donors? How can you earn “a living rate of return” while supporting your favorite businesses support local food, renewable energy, and independent retailers? What are the potential benefits for investing in your home, your own energy efficiency, and your family?

This webinar series will review pioneering efforts around the country with respect to local banking, credit unions, slow-money investing, cooperatives, self-directed IRAs, local investing clubs, and local stock exchanges.

Who should participate? Investors, bankers, businesspeople, community developers interested in creating new, community-based sources of debt or equity capital to support local living economies. We especially encourage groups—formal or informal—that include all these interest parties from one area to build a coordinated effort to accelerate community capital locally.

Equal Energy For All: Can We Democratize the Grid?

2011-08-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

From Shareable.net
By Beth Buczynski
08.25.11

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) recently published an e-book (PDF) advocating complete democratization of the electric grid by abandoning a system that is dominated by large, centralized utilities for a 21st century grid made of independently-owned and widely-dispersed renewable energy generators

A democratized system for creating and distributing electric power ensures that the economic benefits of electricity generation are as widely dispersed as the ownership.

Why Now?

As long as communities still rely on centralized, fossil-fuel powered energy plants to generate power, democratization of the electrical grid will remain a dream. But the past 10 years have seen an exponential growth in the adoption of renewable energy alternatives, namely home solar and wind power, which presents an unprecedented opportunity for transformation.

As the technology and installation of these systems continues to drop in price, more private property owners are able to take advantage of their pollution and money-saving benefits. This increased accessibility makes it possible to turn any rooftop or open field into a mini-power plant. It is this level playing field that makes the dream of a locally-owned and managed electrical grid into a reality.

Examples of Democratic Energy

The key to democratizing the electrical grid is convincing municipal governments that distributed power generation is every bit as robust as centralized distribution. One way to visualize differences between a distributed and centralized grid is to think about the way that the internet is made up of files that live on millions of servers and computers around the world instead of one central server.

Power companies claim that home power plants creating more than 5-10 percent of local grid electricity would cause major technical problems, but in communities around the world, this has not proven to be true.

Germany has installed over 10,000 MW of distributed solar photovoltaics (PV) – mostly on rooftops – in the past two years and renewable energy now constitutes 17 percent of overall electricity generation. Half of Germany's wind power and three-quarters of its solar is locally owned.

The city of Kona, Hawaii, uses a 700 kilowatt (kW) solar array provides 35 percent of the capacity of the local distribution feeder. In Las Vegas, 10 MW of commercial solar PV on a distribution line provides 50 percent of capacity (and up to 100 percent during periods of low load).

California plans to add 12,000 MW of distributed electricity power by 2020, and 16 additional states have added a distributed generation mandate on top of their renewable electricity requirements.

“The battle for the future control and ownership of our energy system is on,” ILSR senior researcher Farrell maintains. “Utilities are fighting back by encouraging policy makers to put up roadblocks to a democratic energy future and by belittling renewable energy’s potential. The major barriers are not technical, but political.”

Creating a Shareable Grid

Farrell and other renewable energy advocates say that policy changes are necessary to overcome barriers to a democratic grid.

Those barriers include federal regulatory agencies that provide significant financial incentives for centralized energy projects and new high-voltage transmission; incentives that are unavailable to distributed electricity generation. In fact, many federal and state energy incentives discriminate against locally owned distributed energy generation in favor of centralized, absentee owned power plants.

But bureaucracy, industry lobbyists, and economic woes make it unlikely that we’ll see these barriers removed in a timely fashion. So encouraging a distributed grid may fall to entrepreneurs and community organizers instead.

In Canada, residents of Ontario can invest in local solar power projects by buying SolarShare bonds. The $1,000 bond provides a 5 percent annual return over five years and the money is invested in solar power projects across the province.

Investors also become voting members of the SolarShare cooperative, a project of the TREC Renewable Energy Cooperative that both develops community-owned renewable energy projects and educates Ontarians about renewable energy, energy conservation and the community power model.

In a similar effort, U.S.-based Solar Mosaic brings the popular crowdfunding technique to the clean tech industry by developing a way for communities to create their own renewable energy without going into debt.

Solar Mosaic members increase solar financing options in their neighborhood by purchasing "tiles" a $100 share of a community solar project. Participating property owners get to enjoy the low cost of clean energy without huge up-front costs or high interest rates from banks. Individual investors are paid back over time from the revenue the Tile generates while earning some fun goodies along the way.

Take Action

We may not be able to convince Congress that it’s time to throw the full weight of the U.S. economy behind the renewable energy industry and the formation of a democratic, distributed electrical grid, but it is possible to advocate important change in your own community.

Consider contacting your state representatives about the need for CLEAN Contracts (i.e. feed-in tariffs) and regulations that would require local utilities to share data about the current distribution network, allowing distributed generators to locate the best opportunities for developing new projects.

Also, look for opportunities to educate local officials about passing solar access laws that grant everyone the right to capture sunshine on their property for solar electricity and by changing building codes to encourage or require more on-site power generation.

The Global Solidarity Economy Movement

2011-08-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

Justice Rising: Building an Economy for People and Nature
Alliance for Democracy
by Emily Kawano

In a surreal twist, right-wing conservatives—
whose neoliberal policies of deregulation and
laissez-faire brought us this latest economic crisis—
seem to be riding a groundswell of support
in the world of domestic electoral politics.
However, a different truth is gaining traction in
the global economic grassroots. Long-term economic
distress, concerns about climate change
and rising oil prices, and dissatisfaction with business-
as-usual have led many people and communities
to engage in economic practices that put
people and planet ahead of profit maximization.
The US Solidarity Economy Network has formed
to strengthen and connect the myriad unconnected
alternative economic enterprises that have
grown out of this historic moment.
One example is in Port Clyde, Maine, where
fishermen broke with hundreds of years of
staunch individualism to form a co-op. Instead of
going for the biggest haul—overfishing—which
had led to the decline of the fishing industry, they
now make do with smaller catches and get better
prices by cutting out the middleman, selling
directly to local residents, and starting their own
fish processing plant.
In each continent there has been a steady
growth of Solidarity Economy movements. These
networks and economic enterprises are connected
through RIPESS (Réseau Intercontinental de
Promotion de L'Économie Sociale Solidaire), the
Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of the
Social Solidarity Economy.
RIPESS North America has brought together
Solidarity Economy organizations from the US,
Canada and Mexico at various meetings including
the US Social Forum in June 2010. This past summer,
RIPESS LAC (Latin America and Caribbean)
held a meeting in Medellín, Colombia that brought
together 350 people from 18 different countries. In
October, the African Solidarity Economy network,
which is still in the formative stage, will be
coming together in Morocco. In Europe
as well, many Solidarity Economy organizations
are working towards forming a
RIPESS-Europe network. The recently
formed Asian Alliance for the
Solidarity Economy has taken on the
considerable task of hosting the next
RIPESS Globalization of Solidarity
Forum in 2013.
The labor movement is beginning to
engage with the Solidarity Economy,
which it sees as a way to create jobs and address
poverty. The International Labor Organization
(ILO) is running a training this fall on the social
Solidarity Economy in Turin, Italy. It is also working
with Chantier (see page 2) in Quebec to organize
an international conference in October, 2011
on policy and the role of the state in the social
Solidarity Economy.
The crisis of climate change is driving economic
and political shifts that the Solidarity Economy supports.
For example, in April, 2009 the Declaration
on the Rights of Mother Earth that emerged from
the People’s Summit on Climate Change in
Cochabamba, Bolivia, was heavily influenced by
indigenous world views and calls for a whole new,
non-exploitative relationship to land, water, resources,
other creatures and among each other. We welcome
the strong emergence of this perspective.
With so much good work going on, it is critical
to foster economic integration so that these
pieces work together in order to grow and
strengthen the Solidarity Economy. The global
mapping process is a key piece to accomplishing
this goal. There are some great mapping platforms
that serve a number of functions including,
1) enabling consumers to find Solidarity
Economy goods and services; 2) enabling
Solidarity Economy producers and suppliers to
connect to build solidarity supply chains; 3) collection
of data for research that can identify best
practices and be used for the construction of supportive
policies; and 4) the promotion of linkages
between individuals, organizations, networks and
movements involved in the Solidarity Economy
through social networking. This kind of multifunctional
mapping and economic integration is
crucial in the next and necessary stage of building
an economy for people and nature.
Emily Kawano is the Coordinator of the US
Solidarity Economy Network.
The Global Solidarity
Economy Movement

Growing the Solidarity Economy

2011-08-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

Justice Rising: Building an Economy for People and Nature A Publication of the
Alliance for Democracy
by Nancy Neamtan, excerpted from her talk at the USSF

The Solidarity Economy—
what we call the
social economy in Quebec—refers to cooperative,
collective and non-profit, democratically-
controlled enterprises, that emphasize the
primacy of people over capital and embrace a
philosophy of empowerment, equality and
inclusivity. Their goods and services respond to
the needs of the community. These enterprises
do not move away, sell out, or lay off masses of
workers in order to maximize return to shareholders.
They are born out of the need and
aspirations of the community, which will not let
them fail. Even conservative politicians want to
keep jobs in their community.
We used to define our institutions as a community
radio station, or a fair trade organization,
or a co-op with no common umbrella for
defining institutions as part of the economy.
Then in 1996, we came together to establish
the Chantier de l'économie sociale. Our first victory
was for the government and the private
sector to recognize that we are part of the economy,
which gave us the standing to engage in
the policy dialogue.
As a result, the
Chantier or its allies
proposed every piece of
successful public policy
in the last 15 years. The
old top-down approach
does not work, because
you cannot force programs
on people.
Having useful public
policy means that the
priority has to come
from the bottom up.
You have to find out
what the needs are.
We have done a lot of
work around access to
capital. We raised private
money and a government
match to create
a $10 million fund
that made non-guaranteed
loans up to
$50,000 to co-ops and
non-profits. Everybody
thought we were crazy.
But, we were able to
show that this was one of the most solid ways
of investing in job creation. Now lots of local
funds have opened up to collective enterprise.
The next issue became access to equity,
because as our projects grew, we cannot just be
borrowing millions of dollars and then have to
pay it back the next day. That is not the way
General Motors or any other big corporation
works. If they need money, they sell you shares
on the market. And if you want your money
back the next day, you can sell it back on the
market, but the enterprise does not have to pay
it back. So, of course they can develop.
But the Solidarity Economy mission is not
to give return on investment to outside shareholders.
On top of this, when venture capital
comes in to finance an enterprise, they will
share the risk, but they also share the power. We
cannot do that with democratically controlled
enterprises. So we needed to create democratically
controlled tools for investment.
As a solution, in 2006 we were able to
negotiate seed money from the Canadian government
and leveraged some other capital to
create a $52 million investment fund controlled
by the Chantier Trust. Now we have financial
instruments responding to the needs of the
Solidarity Economy actors and enterprises.
In Quebec, the biggest venture capital
investors now belong to the movement. Unions
negotiated with the government to create a $7
billion pension fund that gives a tax credit if
you put money into it. In return, the fund has
to invest 60% of their money to create and
maintain jobs in small and medium-size businesses.
And there is a similar fund with a billion
dollars that invests in self-management, environmental
or Solidarity Economy enterprises.
Now we have the venture capitalists running
after us, because we came out of the crisis on a
smooth economic rise. When comparing risk to
margin of return, we come out smelling like a
rose. The circle just grows and grows and grows.
Nancy Neamtan is President and Executive Director of
the Chantier de l'économie sociale. For the past 20
years, she has been involved in various organizations
devoted to community economic development and labor
force development and training.
Growing The
Solidarity Economy
Economic Twists
• The economy is the work people do every day.
The economy is not the stock market
• The financial crisis shows that private enterprises
are more dependent on government support than
non-profits and co-ops.
• Why is it that private companies that provide
public services get government contracts that pay
high wages and a tidy profit, while non-profits providing
public services only get grants that pay low
wages and allow no year-end surplus?
• Solidarity Economy enterprises should pay lower
taxes and receive subsidies because they produce
social benefits.
• Private businesses that harm the public good
should pay higher taxes and receive no subsidies.
• Nobel Prize winner Elinor Olstrom points out that
the best way to manage resources is not through
the private sector and not through the government
bureaucracies, but by democratic organizations
controlled by users.
• Private enterprise thinks that market share belongs
to them. But many things are better done by the
Solidarity Economy.
• When a co-op fails, it is not because the model is
not good.
• When a private business fails, it may well be
because the model is not good.
Nobel Prize
winner Elinor
Olstrom points out
that the best way to
manage resources is
not through the
private sector and
not through the
government bureaucracies,
but by democratic
organizations
controlled by users.

It was better when they turned bad checks

2011-08-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

Cospa Abruzzi: it was better when they turned bad checks
August 23, 2011
(translated from Italian poorly into English by Babelfish)

All speak about the crisis, from the most picked to more ignoring, from richest to poor and thus via saying, but nobody has understood truly which it is the financial cause of this disaster, many less political You than turn, indeed of alternated turn.

We are sure that none of you is to acquaintance of the second currency, that which came used from the small and average enterprise. This virtual currency allowed the Italian entrepreneurs to survive by autofinanziandosi, an effective and fast method, a system that the banks would have to put into effect for the resolution to this damned crisis, than with a next effect dominates door to touch the bottom to all. A currency parallel to that be them that it gave wide breath to the entrepreneurial world to which approached with simple banking transactions, now has been abolished from the bureaucrats, unaware of of what it could happen. In truth it was not a lawful method, however it works them that she allowed anyone was in difficulty, to resume itself in case of lacked gain for causes act of God.

“The second currency is not other that the bancari checks and I will pay puttinges in circle.”

These titles them, to time issued ones came turned in order to pay the creditors, than to they they yielded them to time in payment to others, until and to exhaust the space for the turn, in this way, in the time had created a system parallel to that lawyer. At last, the titles them after to have girovagato in the entrepreneurial world, it re-entered in payment near the credit institutions after varied months. This second currency came used for the management of the companies, while the legal currency, came used for the payment of the taxes or other services. The checks once puttinges in circulation, before being embedded passed several months, once re-entered to the institute, the account holder had all the time necessary to honor the title it in liquidity lack on the account. What that now is not more possible. This allowed the companies that crossed a period of lean, to simply exceed it with a check turn between friends. The banks were to acquaintance of the situation, but for having the situation under control, they have taken agreements to the aim to force the entrepreneurial world to abandon the turns on the titles them, with norms established from the credit institutions. These normative new have put out of service the second currency, that flebo that it held the Italian economy while still alive, not understood from who perceive the wage of true money. Today, with ignoring politics, far from the entrepreneurial, far world from the requirements of the citizens, the Italians find again themselves without money for guilt of who did not know the existence of the second currency. That virtual currency that for decades has allowed the economic development of Italy.

Time Banking, Independence, and Community

2011-08-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

by Charles Eisenstein
http://charleseisenstein.com/2011/08/16/167/

Adrianne McCurrach of the Santa Fe Time Bank wrote in her email newsletter about her experience at the recent Time Banking Conference,

There were times I bent my head to wipe away an escaping tear. SO many people in one place working to transform our culture into a place where all people are recognized for what we have to offer and where those assets are recorded and rewarded. Certainly we are meeting needs that would otherwise not be met if we were only using cash. We are also rewiring our brains: I want to know the people around me and engage in my whole community. This is the hard work - really committing to re-build community. Some of us may already know that it can be sticky sometimes - communication styles vary and we're so used to depending on the dollar to meet our needs. What happens when we depend on PEOPLE? Believe me, I know how hard that is. A few have heard me say that I was raised to believe that I am the only one I can count on and that if someone does me a favor I owe them. I am so tired of keeping that tally in my brain, and I am so tired of declining help, even if I need it. Fortunately, its not "all or nothing." We can do one thing a day, a week, a month and start to make change. Many of you have joined the time bank and haven't yet started exchanging... take the leap... go meet someone you don't know in the time bank. Invite them to coffee/tea/food. It really is something simple you can do to make a difference - a call to action really.

Indeed, so used to depending on the dollar are we that to depend on actual people is scary. But in fact, we are not really becoming more dependent when we enter the world of time banking. We are simply exchanging dependency on distant strangers for dependency on people we know. And that, as Adrianne implies, is what community is. It is a group of mutually dependent people.

We cannot have it both ways -- we cannot have independence and community at the same time. Community is not an add-on to a modern consumer life; it is a fundamental shift in being.

There will always be ways in which we depend on distant strangers. Ours is an interconnected world with a global coordination of labor, or, we might say, of gifts. If you use technology, for example a telephone or the internet, you are dependent on millions of people around the world who contribute to the production and maintenance of high-tech systems. That is why I think a money economy will continue to exist. It will occupy a diminished role, however, as we turn toward local providers to meet those needs that CAN be met locally.

In our highly monetized society today, we hardly depend on anyone we know; in fact, we pride ourselves on not depending. But like Adrianne, many of us are getting tired of living in an alienating, atomized society. We want not independence, but ties. But to develop them can be scary, because immersed in the mythology of the separate self, we want not to depend on anyone. To have money meant, "I don't need your gifts, I can pay for it, thank you." To receive gifts, to receive charity, puts us in a position of obligation, of debt. Strange it is to me, that people prefer to owe money to vast impersonal institutions than to owe favors to those around them.

Time banking and other forms of local gift economy entail a shift of consciousness, so that we no longer fear connection. To receive is to owe: even if no one is keeping track, when we receive the gifts of others we are cast naturally into a feeling of gratitude, and from it, the desire to give in turn.

The freedom of financial independence is a fake freedom, because it means dependence on distant strangers. It is also a useless freedom, because whether or not moved by obligation, we desire to give anyway. Are we so stingy that we wish never to owe anyone a favor?

How America Could Collapse

2011-08-18T17:25:00.000-07:00

by Matt Stoller
from The Nation
July 27, 2011

A few months ago, a friend in the entertainment industry told me of a new business model in Hollywood: hoarding videotapes. Apparently, the earthquake in Japan knocked offline a Sony factory that makes certain types of tape. That factory was also in the tsunami zone, so now there’s a serious tape shortage threatening the television industry. The NBA scrambled to get enough tape to broadcast the NBA finals; one executive told the Hollywood Reporter, “It’s like a bank run.”

In the last few years, economists have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about bank runs. A bank run happens when depositors think a bank is weak and scramble to get their money out before it collapses. “Tight coupling” of financial institutions, like when banks are overly dependent on each other, can create a cascading series of problems for the system itself. We saw this with Lehman Brothers when it went bankrupt. Its AAA-rated debt instruments lost value unexpectedly; that caused money market funds that held those presumably safe bonds to suddenly lose value. A shadow bank run was the result, as investors rushed to withdraw from the money market funds.

Worryingly, there’s been very little consideration of how systemic collapses can happen in another, perhaps more dangerous realm—the industrial supply system that keeps us in everything from medicine to food to cars to, yes, videotape. In 2004, for instance, England closed one single factory, which caused the United States to lose half of its flu vaccine supply.

Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation has been studying industrial supply shocks since 1999, when he noticed that global computer chip production was concentrated in Taiwan. After a severe earthquake in that country, the global computer industry nearly shut down, crashing the stocks of large computer makers. This level of concentration of the production of key components in a globalized economy is a new phenomenon. Lynn’s work points to the highly dangerous side of globalization, the flip side of a hyper-efficient global supply chain. When one link in that chain is broken, there is no fallback.

Lynn has continued to study industrial supply shocks and says, “What I have found most interesting recently is the apparent role supply chain shocks played in triggering a synchronized slowdown of industrial economies in April—production down (in USA, China, Europe, Southeast Asia), jobs down, demand down, GDP numbers down—due almost entirely to the loss of a single factory that makes microcontroller chips for cars.”

Today, the problem manifests as shortages of videotape or auto parts, but the global supply chain is so tangled and fragile that next time it could be electronics, weaponry, or even food or medicine. As Lynn noted in an interview with Dylan Ratigan, China controls 100 percent of the national supply of ascorbic acid, which is a basic food preservative. Leading oncologists are already warning that we are experiencing severe shortages of generic yet pivotal cancer drugs, because there’s no incentive for corporations to make them.

According to Lynn’s groundbreaking book End of the Line, the essential problem is a basic shift in the way that American multinationals operate. In the 1980s, the competitive manufacturing threat from Japan led most large companies to eliminate waste in their production facilities. As a result, they stopped keeping spare parts on hand. Eventually, companies began outsourcing production itself, as profits came increasingly from extractive monopolistic power over an economic system. Walmart is an important example; its profits come from the power it can exert on its suppliers, telling them what to make and how to make it, while the company itself functions as a giant autocratic marketplace and trading operation. Increasingly, this is the model of success in our global economy. Boeing, Cisco, Apple—all of them rely on their power over an ecosystem of production facilities halfway around the world. They have become rent extractive profit-machines, which is a relatively new phenomenon.

It was in the 1990s that American multinationals, spurred by government policy, began outsourcing operations to China. At the same time, the Clinton administration steadily relaxed antitrust enforcement, leading to massive corporate consolidation and the creation of the virtual firm. By the early parts of the last decade, the ideal American multinational made its profits by using its market power to gut labor and supply prices and by using its political power to eliminate taxation. All of this turned giant American institutions against making things. This is why we rely on a British factory to make our flu vaccine, why global videotape production was knocked offline by a tsunami and why that same event slowed the gigantic auto industry. US corporate leaders now see the idea of making things as a cost of doing business, one best left to others. What has happened as a result is that much of the production for critical products and services that make our economy run is constructed by a patchwork global network of suppliers all over the world in unstable regions, over which we have very little control. An accident or political problem in any number of countries may deny us not just iPhones but food, medicine or critical machinery.

Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, has made the case that America needs to be building things here, investing here and manufacturing here. We need the know-how and the ecosystem of innovation. The more corporate America seeks to push production risk off the balance sheet onto an increasingly fragile global supply chain, the more it seeks to wound the state so there is no body that can constrain its worst impulses, the more likely we will see a truly devastating Lehman-style industrial supply shock.

There’s a good amount of grumbling about the state of American infrastructure—collapsing bridges, high-speed rail, etc. But American infrastructure is not just about public goods, it’s about how the corporations that enforce, inform and organize economic activity are themselves organized. Are they doing productive research? Are they spreading knowledge and know-how to people who will use it responsibly? Are they creating prosperity or extracting wealth using raw power? And most importantly, are they contributing to the robustness of our society, such that we can survive and thrive in the normal course of emergencies?

The answer to all of these questions right now is “no.” And while this may not be hitting the elite segments of the economy right now, there will be no escape from a flu pandemic or significant food shortage. The re-engineering of our global supply chain needs to happen—and it will happen, either through good leadership or through collapse. This means that our government and our society needs to reorient our economy toward manufacturing and rededicate our corporations to productive uses. This will require a new conception of antitrust laws to ensure that monopolistic or oligopolistic practices in pivotal industries aren’t placing our culture at risk. It means understanding the networks of suppliers and sub-suppliers. And it means ending the race to the bottom that pushes deflationary pressures on labor and the social safety net. All of this can insure a more robust culture and economy, one which can withstand national security or environmental challenges. The sooner our leaders, both in public and private institutions, recognize how highly vulnerable we are to a societal collapse, the better chance we have of avoiding collapse.

An Economy Turned Upside Down

2011-08-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

from Shareable.net
by Mira Luna
08.15.11

While mainstream America is hoping for federal economic reform, some social justice organizations have a radically different idea, and are organizing low-income communities to build a new economy from the grassroots up. Tired of asking for change from the top down, they are taking their economy into their own hands. Social justice organizations, having a strong membership base rooted in community, are ideal spaces to cultivate alternative economic projects, as relationships of trust and solidarity have been nurtured over time through education and a history of taking action for justice. Here are some exciting examples of grassroots alternative economy projects for social justice.

Read the rest of the article here.

Participatory Budgeting Gains Steam in San Francisco

2011-08-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

By Michael Levitin
08/10/11

Participatory budgeting becomes a mayoral campaign issue in San Francisco, which could lead to San Francisco becoming the first U.S. city to adopt participatory budgeting on a city-wide basis.

When Mayor Ed Lee ventured across San Francisco’s 11 districts this spring talking with residents about what to cut and what to save from the budget, he won praise for opening what some called a new era in fiscal discourse: giving people a more direct say about where their money is spent. But what if, rather than the mayor in the driver’s seat, it was the community itself that presented, weighed and voted on district budgets? The idealistic notion under consideration in San Francisco, sometimes called “participatory budgeting,” hands decision-making power for budgets to the residents of neighborhoods and whole cities.

Read the rest of the article on Shareable.net.

Alternative Currencies and Monetary Systems Comparison Chart

2011-08-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

Check out Michel Bauwens "Alternative Currencies and Monetary Systems Comparison Chart" on Social Compare and the P2P Foundation sites.

This powerpoint I developed last year for a 4 hour presentation on community currencies for the US Social Forum gives a detailed but dated comparison as well.