Tag Archives: Around the Globe

Local Living Economies & Co-ops

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A little over a year ago, I wrote about a conference taking place here in Bellingham, Washington, an annual event put on by the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).

I wrote in that post how, in the face of federal, state, and local government failure to adequately address economic and environmental crises, the best solution is for local communities to take charge and make change happen on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, town-by-town basis, and that’s what BALLE is all about.

It’s a nice coincidence that today is the first day of the 2012 BALLE conference, and I just happened to come across an inspiring article at Fast Company that totally fits this subject.

Hippie Capitalism: How An Impoverished U.S. City Is Building An Economy On Co-ops

With sky-high unemployment, Richmond, California, is not a place where traditional business models alone can dent poverty. The city has turned to co-ops in hopes that people who might be unemployable in the traditional economy gain access to both jobs and control over their own labor.

What’s really remarkable in this story is that the local government, led by an ambitious mayor, is spearheading this movement.

“There’s not a lot of help coming from the federal government, or the state government,” says the city’s Green Party mayor, Gayle McLaughlin. “So we’re kind of on our own.” Two years ago, she went all the way to Spain in search of another economic model that might reinvigorate her city…

The Basque Country in Spain is home to the world’s most famous worker-owned co-op, the Mondragon Corporation, based in the town of Mondragon. The 55-year-old corporation includes some 250 smaller co-ops, with more than 80,000 employees, the vast majority of them members and owners themselves…

And so she brought the idea back to California and hired what is probably the only official municipal worker co-op consultant in the country. As of January, the first co-op born from this campaign, the aptly named Liberty Ship Café, is up and running, with plans for new bike shop, bakery, urban agriculture, and solar installation co-ops on the way.

Mayor McLaughlin’s program is in its infancy, but you have to admire the bigness of her vision, and hope, for the sake of struggling Richmond, that she can succeed.

Video Fridays: Dispelling Stereotypes of African Men

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Today’s Video Fridays installment could easily be a Tweet of the Day installment as well.

Chris Anderson, the TED curator, tweeted a wonderful and badly-needed video produced by African NGO Mama Hope.

Here’s a little something about Mama Hope:

Vision:
At Mama Hope we believe that there are enough resources in the world for every human being to live healthy, happy lives. We envision a world where resources are correctly shared across the globe to provide the tools communities need to thrive.

Through our projects Mama Hope has unlocked the potential of over 76,000 people in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana and Uganda…and we are just getting started.

Mission:
Mama Hope works in close partnership with local African organizations to connect them with the resources required to transform their own communities.

All our projects are managed for and by partner communities themselves to ensure sustainability. So far, we have achieved our mission by funding the completion of schools, health clinics, children’s centers, clean water systems and food security projects.

The video is particularly noteworthy for how it takes a deadly serious subject and injects humor without diluting the message.

Shame on Hollywood for participating in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes of African men, and thank you to Mama Hope for reminding us all that there are realities beyond the movie screen.

Tweet of the Day: @NaomiAKlein

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A downer of a topic, but this Tweet of the Day recalls a post of mine from February 2011 titled The Cruel Joke of Austerity Measures.

Eyecatchers: Street Art by BLU

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It’s been a while since I featured a street artist in an Eyecatchers installment, but I was inspired to do so today when I came across the work of Italian artist BLU, via Street Art Utopia.

Of the last artist I featured, Sam3, I said that his work was particularly noteworthy for having, “…a distinct touch of sweetness that is often missing in the edgy world of street art.”

Which is not to say that I don’t appreciate edgy art. Indeed, edginess is practically inherent in street art, specifically because there’s often a conflict in the mere existence of it — in works created on a large, in-your-face scale — and the act of creation itself is often illegal.

Digging deeper, as I wrote on the subject back in March 2011, street art can be seen as a powerful reminder, to an economic elite wearing blinders, that injustices keep them elite, an elite that wants to, “…cocoon themselves in their squeaky clean estates, trying to blot out visions of tin shack shanty towns and war-ravaged landscapes.”

Well, BLU’s work is loaded with statements, both subtle and overt, about the inhumane ugliness wrought by the wealthy and powerful, so it seems more appropriate for me to just hand it over to him, via the following photos, as well as a stunning “making of” video of a piece he did in Valencia. (Be sure to check out BLU’s website too for even more of his work, including some amazing animations he’s done.)

Click on the images to enlarge:

Tweet of the Day: @TreeHugger

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While I can handle the idea of generating energy from human waste, and I understand that the following idea could save a LOT of trees…

…eeeeewwwww!!!

When The Earth Moves

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This morning, one of my new favorite bloggers, a Westerner who has visited and lived in Sri Lanka for many years and the author of the The Wanderlust Gene blog, wrote about having just experienced an earthquake that originated across the Indian Ocean in Indonesia.

I really connected with it.

Having years ago lived in Los Angeles for a time, as I read the post I immediately remembered the terrifying feeling of having the earth move beneath me, and not in that silly, cliché, romantic way.

Earthquakes are so profoundly unsettling. Anyone who has ever experienced motion sickness from being on a boat in open ocean knows how comforting it is to be back on land, and even if you can still feel the motion at first, you know that it’s just residual and that the solid, unmoving earth will eventually make you feel much, much better.

How unnerving, then, to have that dependable foundation move and shake, for the seemingly solid buildings and other structures built upon it to sway and possibly crumble.

How precarious it all becomes for us puny bipeds.