Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

much tnx to Ed a nearby mkt grower, one of the very few articles I can 
endorse 100%. On a personal note, starting this list discussion & low tech 
market growing, several years ago, was my own effort in this so-called New 
Economy direction, but with a sustainability twist. There are many ways to 
think outside the box, to build the models for the future inside the shell of 
the old, in the words of Bucky Fuller.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
----------------------------

The Rise of the New Economy Movement
Activists, theorists, organizations and ordinary citizens are rebuilding the 
American political-economic system from the ground up
by Gar Alperovitz
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/22-2

Just beneath the surface of traditional media attention, something vital has 
been gathering force and is about to explode into public consciousness. The 
“New Economy Movement” is a far-ranging coming together of organizations, 
projects, activists, theorists and ordinary citizens committed to rebuilding 
the American political-economic system from the ground up.

The broad goal is democratized ownership of the economy for the “99 percent” 
in an ecologically sustainable and participatory community-building fashion. 
The name of the game is practical work in the here and now—and a hands-on 
process that is also informed by big picture theory and in-depth knowledge.

Thousands of real world projects -- from solar-powered businesses to 
worker-owned cooperatives and state-owned banks -- are underway across the 
country. Many are self-consciously understood as attempts to develop working 
prototypes in state and local “laboratories of democracy” that may be applied 
at regional and national scale when the right political moment occurs.

The movement includes young and old, “Occupy” people, student activists, and 
what one older participant describes as thousands of “people in their 60s 
from the '60s” rolling up their sleeves to apply some of the lessons of an 
earlier movement.

Explosion of Energy

A powerful trend of hands-on activity includes a range of economic models 
that change both ownership and ecological outcomes. Co-ops, for instance, are 
very much on target—especially those which emphasize participation and green 
concerns. The Evergreen Cooperatives in a desperately poor, predominantly 
black neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio are a leading example. They include a 
worker-owned solar installation and weatherization co-op; a state-of-the-art, 
industrial-scale commercial laundry in a LEED-Gold certified building that 
uses—and therefore has to heat—only around a third of the water of other 
laundries; and a soon-to-open large scale hydroponic greenhouse capable of 
producing three million head of lettuce and 300,000 pounds of herbs a year. 
Hospitals and universities in the area have agreed to use the co-ops’ 
services, and several cities—including Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Washington, DC 
and Amarillo, Texas are now exploring similar efforts.

The name of the game is practical work in the here and now—and a hands-on 
process that is also informed by big picture theory and in-depth knowledge.

Other models fit into what author Marjorie Kelly calls the “generative 
economy”--efforts that inherently nurture the community and respect the 
natural environment. Organic Valley is a cooperative dairy producer in based 
in Wisconsin with more than $700 million in revenue and nearly 1,700 
farmer-owners. Upstream 21 Corporation is a “socially responsible” holding 
company that purchases and expands sustainable small businesses. Greyston 
Bakery is a Yonkers, New York “B-Corporation” (a new type of corporation 
designed to benefit the public) that was initially founded to provide jobs 
for neighborhood residents. Today, Greystone generates around $6.5 million in 
annual sales.

Recently, the United Steelworkers union broke modern labor movement tradition 
and entered into a historic agreement with the Mondragón Cooperative 
Corporation and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center to help build worker-owned 
cooperatives in the United States along the lines of a new “union-co-op” 
model.

The movement is also serious about building on earlier models. More than 130 
million Americans, in fact, already belong to one or another form of 
cooperative—and especially the most widely known form: the credit union. 
Similarly, there are some 2,000 municipally owned utilities, a number of 
which are ecological leaders. (Twenty-five percent of American electricity is 
provided by co-ops and public utilities.) Upwards of 10 million Americans now 
also work at some 11,000 employee-owned firms (ESOP companies).

More than 200 communities also operate or are establishing community land 
trusts that take land and housing out of the market and preserve it for the 
community. And hundreds of “social enterprises” use profits for social or 
community serving goals. Beyond these efforts, roughly 4,500 Community 
Development Corporations and 1.5 million non-profit organizations currently 
operate in every state in the nation.

The movement is also represented by the “Move Your Money” and “bank transfer 
day” campaigns, widespread efforts to shift millions of dollars from 
corporate giants like Bank of America to one or another form of democratic or 
community-benefiting institution. Related to this are other “new banking” 
strategies. Since 2010, 17 states, for instance, have considered legislation 
to set up public banks along the lines of the long-standing Bank of North 
Dakota.

Several cities—including Los Angeles and Kansas City— have passed 
“responsible banking” ordinances that require banks to reveal their impact on 
the community and/or require city officials to only do business with banks 
that are responsive to community needs. Other cities, like San Jose and 
Portland, are developing efforts to move their money out of Wall Street banks 
and into other commercial banks, community banks or credit unions. 
Politicians and activists in San Francisco have taken this a step further and 
proposed the creation of a publicly owned municipal bank.

There are also a number of innovative non-public, non-co-op banks—including 
the New Resource Bank in San Francisco, founded in 2006 “with a vision of 
bringing new resources to sustainable businesses and ultimately creating more 
sustainable communities.” Similarly, One PacificCoast Bank, an Oakland-based 
certified community development financial institution, grew out of the desire 
to “create a sustainable, meaningful community development bank and a 
supporting nonprofit organization.” And One United Bank—the largest 
black-owned bank in the country with offices in Los Angeles, Boston and 
Miami—has financed more than $1 billion in loans, most in low-income 
neighborhoods.

A broad and fast-growing group seeks to end “corporate personhood,” and still 
others urge a reinvigoration of anti-trust efforts to reduce corporate power.

Ex-JP Morgan managing director John Fullerton has added legitimacy and force 
to the debate about new directions in finance at the ecologically oriented 
Capital Institute. And in several parts of the country, alternative 
currencies have long been used to help local community building—notably 
“BerkShares” in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and “Ithaca Hours” in 
Ithaca, New York.

Active protest efforts are also underway. The Occupy movement, along with 
many others, has increasingly used direct action in support of new banking 
directions—and in clear opposition to old. On April 24, 2012 over 1,000 
people protested bank practices at the Wells Fargo shareholder meeting in San 
Francisco. Similar actions, some involving physical “occupations” of bank 
branches, have been occurring in many parts of the country since the Occupy 
movement started in 2011. Large-scale demonstrations occurred at the Bank of 
America’s annual shareholder meeting in May 2012.

What to do about large-scale enterprise in a “new economy” is also on the 
agenda. A number of advocates, like Boston College professor Charles Derber, 
contemplate putting worker, consumer, environmental, or community 
representatives of “stakeholder” groups on corporate boards. Others point to 
the Alaska Permanent Fund which invests a significant portion of the state’s 
mineral revenues and returns dividends to citizens as a matter of right. 
Still others, like David Schweickart and Richard Wolff, propose system-wide 
change that emphasizes one or another form of worker ownership and 
management. (In the Schweickart version, smaller firms would be essentially 
directly managed by workers; large-scale national firms would be nationalized 
but also managed by workers.) A broad and fast-growing group seeks to end 
“corporate personhood,” and still others urge a reinvigoration of anti-trust 
efforts to reduce corporate power. (Breaking up banks deemed too big to fail 
is one element of this.)

In March 2012, the Left Forum held in New York also heard many calls for a 
return to nationalization. And even among “Small is Beautiful” followers of 
the late E. F. Schumacher, a number recall this historic 
build-from-the-bottom-up advocate’s argument that “[w]hen we come to 
large-scale enterprises, the idea of private ownership becomes an absurdity.” 
(Schumacher continuously searched for national models that were as supportive 
of community values as local forms.)

Theory and Action

A range of new theorists have also increasingly given intellectual muscle to 
the movement. Some, like Richard Heinberg, stress the radical implications of 
ending economic growth. Former presidential adviser James Gustav Speth calls 
for restructuring the entire system as the only way to deal with ecological 
problems in general and growth in particular. David Korten has offered an 
agenda for a new economy which stresses small Main Street business and 
building from the bottom up. (Korten also co-chairs a “New Economy Working 
Group” with John Cavanagh at the Institute of Policy Studies.) Juliet Schor 
has proposed a vision of “Plentitude” oriented in significant part around 
medium-scale high tech industry. My own work on a Pluralist Commonwealth 
emphasizes a community-building system characterized by a mix of democratized 
forms of ownership ranging from small co-ops all the way up to 
public/worker-owned firms where large scale cannot be avoided.

Around the country, thinkers are clamoring to meet and discuss new ideas.

Writers like Herman Daly and David Bollier have also helped establish 
theoretical foundations for fundamental challenges to endless economic 
growth, on the one hand, and the need to transcend privatized economics in 
favor of a “commons” understanding, on the other. The awarding in 2009 of the 
Nobel Prize to Elinor Ostrom for work on commons-based development underlined 
recognition at still another level of some of the critical themes of the 
movement.

Around the country, thinkers are clamoring to meet and discuss new ideas. The 
New Economy Institute, led primarily by ecologists and ecological economists, 
hoped to attract a few hundred participants to a gathering to be held at Bard 
College in June 2012. The event sold out almost two months in advance! An 
apologetic email went out turning away hundreds who could not be accommodated 
with the promise of much bigger venue the next year.

And that’s just one example. From April to May 2012, the Social Venture 
Network held its annual gathering in Stevenson, Washington. The Public 
Banking Institute gathered in Philadelphia. The National Center for Employee 
Ownership met in Minneapolis—also to record-breaking attendance. And the 
Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) held a major conference 
in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Other events planned for 2012 include the Consumer 
Cooperative Management Association’s meeting in Philadelphia; the U.S. 
Federation of Worker Cooperatives’ gathering in Boston; a Farmer Cooperatives 
conference organized by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives; 
and meetings of the National Community Land Trust Network and the Bioneers. 
The American Sustainable Business Council, a network of 100,000 businesses 
and 300,000 individuals, has been holding ongoing events and activities 
throughout 2012.

Daunting Challenges

The New Economy Movement is already energetically involved in an 
extraordinary range of activities, but it faces large-scale, daunting 
challenges. The first of these derives from the task it has set for 
itself—nothing less than changing and democratizing the very essence of the 
American economic system’s institutional structure.

Most of those in the New Economy movement understand the challenge as both 
immediate and long-term: how to put an end to the most egregious social and 
economically destructive practices in the near term; how to lay foundations 
for a possible transformation in the longer term.

Even viewed as a long-range goal, the movement obviously confronts the 
enormous entrenched power of an American political economic system dominated 
by very large banking and corporate interests—and bolstered by a politics 
heavily dependent on the financial muscle of elites at the top. (One recent 
calculation is that
400 individuals at the top now own more wealth than the bottom 160 million.)

A second fundamental challenge derives from the increasingly widespread new 
economy judgment that economic growth must ultimately be reduced, indeed, 
even possibly ended if the dangers presented by climate change are to be 
avoided—and if resource and other environmental limits are to be responsibly 
dealt with.

Complicating all this is the fact that most labor unions—the core institution 
of the traditional progressive alliance—are committed to growth as absolutely 
essential (as the economy is now organized) to maintaining jobs.

History dramatizes the implacable power of the existing institutions—until, 
somehow, that power gives way to the force of social movements. Most of those 
in the New Economy movement understand the challenge as both immediate and 
long-term: how to put an end to the most egregious social and economically 
destructive practices in the near term; how to lay foundations for a possible 
transformation in the longer term.

And driving the movement’s steady build up, day by day, year by year, is the 
growing economic and social pain millions of Americans now experience in 
their own lives—and a sense that something fundamental is wrong. The New 
Economy Movement speaks to this reality, and just possibly, despite all the 
obstacles—as with the civil rights, feminist, environmental and so many other 
earlier historic movements—it, too, will overcome. If so, the integrity of 
its goals and the practicality of its developmental work may allow it to help 
establish foundations for the next great progressive era of American history. 
It is already adding positive vision and practical change to everyday life.

*  *  *

This essay is the first installment of 'New Economic Visions', a special 
five-part AlterNet series edited by Economics Editor Lynn Parramore in 
partnership with political economist Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy 
Collaborative, where creative thinkers come together to explore the exciting 
ideas and projects that are shaping the philosophical and political vision of 
the movement that could take our economy back.
© 2012 Alternet
Gar Alperovitz

Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the 
University of Maryland and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. Among 
his most recent books are America Beyond Capitalism and (with Lew Daly) 
Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We 
Should Take It Back.