This article appeared in the February 2012 edition of Green Fire Times.
We’re well into 2012 now, and I hope I’m not the first to say that everyone, everywhere seems to going through major transformation. In December, 2011, I made a huge leap and decided that, based on my own interests, knowledge and skills, I would jump into the world of freelance, independent consulting on local economy issues. Since 2006, the economy was my head-on, my rock-up-a-hill, my cross, my work, my duty. Little did any of us know that the bottom would drop out in 2008, and pushing the rock up the hill would only become more difficult. But what I am feeling and seeing today, as we settle into 2012, is the need to push the new local economy movement even further, in every city across America.
What is the new movement? Look around you. It’s Occupy Wall Street, it’s Move Your Money, it’s Buy Local, it’s Eat Local, it’s green jobs and climate change, it’s triple-bottom-line business, it’s waste streams into money streams, it’s sharing your best practices with your biggest competitor, it’s social media, it’s social capital. It’s a new and emerging economy. It’s a new way of doing business. I love the idea that a new economy is emerging all over this country. I want to continue to help those who are envisioning a future for their own communities that can be better.
The Santa Fe Alliance has had such great impact that I can now watch TV and see a commercial from a locally owned appliance store using Buy Local as their message for the holidays. We linked farmers and chefs to each other. We made Local a household idea again. We’ve explained the multiplier effect so that a fifth-grader can understand it. Literally. I have taught fifth-grade classes on local economies. Congressman Ben Ray Lujan put out a public announcement in support of Buy Local as a way to keep New Mexico’s economy strong for years to come. Santa Fe County commissioners adopted a resolution to Buy Local. I don’t believe we’ve reached everyone. And that’s ok.
My goal is to help other communities now, to heal and transform their own economies and job losses by thinking Local First. Across America we are seeing more businesses take matters into their own hands to pay living wages, provide good benefits and give back to their communities. They care about climate change and green space in their towns. They want more jobs, better jobs, more meaningful jobs in their own back yards. And I want to help them achieve that transformation through community activism training, policy changes, business networking events and campaigns for Local First.
Transformation is a big concept, and while I feel like the results of our work on local economies are not easily measured, I do believe that the impacts are long lasting. It seems to be me that more businesses are taking on local, even advertising it more, than ever before. This is it. The time is now. The economy will not return to the old days of yore. It’s a new economy. A transformed one and we are all a part of it.
It takes a community to heal its own economy. What I hope for is a community to learn the impacts of supporting itself. Buy eggs from your neighbor, create a product for a local store to sell, be a responsible business owner and pay a living wage, give your employees the benefits they deserve so they can be happy participants in our community. Be good to each other, think local first, buy local first, eat local first, hire local first, think of our community first. That is how an economy is transformed, one person, one employee, one business owner at a time. Now that’s a multiplier effect!
I am honored to have helped move it forward for Santa Fe, and to be a part of this community that embraces it so adoringly. I have described Santa Fe to many national colleagues as “fiercely local.” Be fierce in your localism, Santa Fe. Be fierce about community.
