Community cooperation and capitalism: Not mutually exclusive!

$10 food coop veggie boxes at the LA Eco-Village

Dear community:

Please pardon the major lapse in time since I last blogged. I am studying for the LSAT (law school admissions test), establishing a school garden, and working on the GMO Film Project, and have been sucked into the vortex of life outside of blogging. Minimal blogging will probably be the state of things for the next month as I take the test on Oct. 6. I hope you wish me luck. :)

I want to share a comment currently awaiting moderation that I just left on a Zocalo Public Square article during a study break. The article describes Janesville, Wisconsin, the city that Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's running mate, is from.

The article was fascinating and lead to a great series of comments from the public, ignited by Jim Mueller, who wrote to the author:

Your description of Janesville history during the time of Ryan’s coming of age sounds like a place of insecurity and disappointment, which helps me understand Ryan’s individualist mentality: if my community erodes around me, what else can I depend on but by my efforts alone, freed from taxes and regulation, and other ties to community. The strongest will survive and reproduce and the weakest will die alone. Let the devil take the hind-most.

The American people have to begin to see our communities as places to nurture and develop our children, starting with secure family and community life anchored by a dependable source of income, wisely managed. In the intensely urban and diverse populations of the future, individualism will not secure the general welfare. The American people can only do that in cooperative community.

This comment led to a very interesting debate on competition, business, capitalism vs. community cooperation/collaboration.


Here is my two cents:

Bruce and others reading the comments here:

Firstly, I really appreciate this dialogue. Not only is it interesting, but it is a reflection of the times we are in and the philosophical challenges we face as a society as we struggle with trying to figure out how to move forward as a nation filled with a BROAD diversity of ideas, cultures, needs, etc.

My thoughts on competition vs. cooperative community is the following:

I do believe competition is an inherent characteristic of human nature (and probably much else of nature), but I don’t think that it intrinsically signifies pure self-interest or precludes cooperative community engagement.

‘Markets’ have existed for thousands of years – people trading or selling things they grew/made/somehow acquired in competition with others. Today ‘market’ generally refers to capital markets, and somehow people think this means a disconnect from trade markets of the past. In past societies, you saw villages of people living in support of each other. People didn’t bury or birth each other just for money. Even today, sure mainstream American ways of doing things are generally based on post-industrialism and capitalism, but even in the United States many people do things for reasons other than money or primarily seeking self preservation.

For example – Detroit after the flight of GM and other car manufacturers has in recent years turned into a city with more urban vegetable gardens than any other US city. Urban community and backyard vegetable gardens are starting to be planted increasingly throughout the US and the world. These spaces are places where people give away tons of free food, and where people willingly volunteer their time.

The example above is in large part a response to mainstream US profit only driven mentality. Agro-industry makes a LOT of money by growing massive amounts of only a few kinds of crops (which require pesticides and these days incorporates genetic modification – which is also a source of profit due to patents and monopolies, etc) by companies trying to maximize profit and minimize costs. These farming practices and globalization (like NAFTA) mean that low wage (and often illegal) immigrants are the primary farmworkers in the US, and that village farms in much the rest of the world (like Mexico) have been forced closed by increasing establishment of massive monoculture farms. Further – and for many – most importantly, food is highly expensive when much of it can be grown for free or for low cost in the ground.

Bruce also mentioned that the US manages and contributes to charity more than other places in the world. Well let’s think about this for a moment. In places where villages still exist – like much of Africa, Asia, parts of Latin America, and even parts of Europe, there was simply no need for ‘charity’. People took care of each other. If a kids parents died, if someone was sick and old, if someone was mentally ill, etc., people took care of each other – for custom and community health – not for profit. In many Asian, Latin American and African families today – even those living in the US – it is common for the younger generations to care for older generations until death without a second thought. Not because they are profiting from it, but because that is just what is expected. The community garden example, for me, is also an example of people in the US today, in our major cities, bringing back this village mentality in a beautiful, refreshing, and modern way.

The point is, It is a fallacy to say that competition or even capitalism exist at the exclusion of community cooperation. They can and should work together. I might volunteer to run a school garden twice a week, but if I can get enough of the community involved and we can grow enough produce, perhaps we can sell veggies at local markets, or to local gourmet restaurants, earn a profit, and pay ourselves for our efforts, while collaborating and benefiting each other. And these types of stories happen everyday and increasingly so, exacerbated by the Great Recession.

I believe it is time to rethink the false division between community cooperation/collaboration and capitalism/business and see what kind of innovation and societally holistic benefits can come out of it. I think our politicians should consider this also.

What is participatory decision-making?

Image via Community Empowerment Collective

The World Bank released a report in 2005 in which the authors succinctly describe five core principals of participatory decision-making that they suggested be implemented across World Bank policy and decision-making. Find these copied below. Their suggested principals could easily be applied to any governing institution. These principals applied to local, state and national governing methods, would go FAR in strengthening democracy at its core.

Click HERE to access the document in pdf.

Check it out:

• Transparency and Access to Information. Effective transparency mechanisms make information available to citizens in ways that the information can influence their political choices. They provide complete information about activities and options before key decisions are made, and in local languages, culturally appropriate formats, and in ways that are readily accessible and affordable.

• Inclusiveness. Inclusiveness requires that all people have the opportunity to participate in making decisions that will directly affect their lives. In particular, it involves bringing in politically disenfranchised or marginalized groups that might ordinarily be excluded from decision-making processes. This may include efforts to systematically identify all those whose rights may be affected or who may bear the risks associated with the decision; and to reach out to them and provide whatever assistance they may need to participate (e.g. translation services, travel support, etc).

• Quality of Discourse and Deliberation. Deliberative processes allow affected people to freely and equally express their competing interests, perspectives, and visions of the public good. For decision-making to be based on deliberation rather than raw political power, marginalized stakeholders must be enabled to participate on an equal basis with more entrenched interests. Thus, where contested issues are highly technical, all participants should have comparable access to the expertise necessary to independently challenge the technical claims of other parties. Participants must also have the option to withhold their consent to an agreement if their concerns are not adequately addressed.

• Fairness under Rule of Law. Fairness requires that both the process and its substantive outcomes comport with shared principles of justice and equity. Procedural fairness requires that policies, rules and standards be developed and enforced in impartial and predictable ways, and that processes of representation, decision-making and enforcement are clear, mandatory and internally consistent. Substantive fairness requires that the distribution of costs, benefits and risks from policy outcomes are just and equitable.

• Accountability. Accountability implies that decision-makers must answer for their actions and, depending on the answer, be exposed to potential sanctions. Accountability mechanisms allow citizens to control the behavior of government officials and representatives to whom they have delegated public power. Effective accountability mechanisms require compliance and enforcement. Compliance involves evaluating their actions against clear standards that are based on publicly accepted norms. These include both procedural standards (regarding transparency, inclusiveness, etc.) and standards for assessing outcomes (e.g., on poverty reduction, social equity, and human rights). Enforcement involves imposing sanctions for failing to comply with those standards.

These principles can help to structure participatory, responsive and predictable decision-making processes that can lead to better, more sustainable development outcomes by reconciling competing interests and visions of the public good through deliberation and negotiation. To do so, they must be applied with an eye towards redressing the profound inequities of voice, access and political power between different interests in development debates. If they are applied in this way, they can be powerful tools to enhance the capacity of poor and marginalized people to influence the decisions that affect their lives. If they are not, they are unlikely to improve outcomes very much.

Everything is related

Everything is connected. We live on a globe. A globe, by definition, is a 3-D circle, and what is a circle if not a closed circuit. Something that happens on the other side of town or the other side of the planet may exist in isolation in certain regards, but in the bigger picture, they are directly correlated.

The chaos that human society faces today is a direct result of choices that our forefathers and mothers have made, putting modern humans in the difficult situation of having to reevaluate things that have been taken for granted for generations in the United States as 'good' or at least as not harmful to humans and our local communities.

This blog post is just about sharing information about a few things going on in the world locally from Los Angeles to the global level. We ask that you reflect on these connections, who is benefitting in the short or long term, and who is being harmed. We argue that in the long run, no one benefits from selfish investments, not even the profit seekers. As mentioned above, we live on a closed circuit. Everything cycles back around, at some point.

Occupy LA (see Tony Velloza video above), building Los Angeles factories in low income/people of color neighborhoods (see opening video to this blog post), selling and increasingly planting genetically modified foods regardless of human/environmental health risks, food costs, and government investment into shady energy deals are all fundamentally related issues.

Local to Global Life Works photo taken of Ciclavia in 2011

So what can you do?

The first thing is to educate yourself. Let what you learn (and the likely resulting repulsion) inspire you to get creative -- yes, that's right, use the problems in the world to help you find your own creative ways to step out of the cycle of destruction that has been created for us by powers outside of our control. 'Our' refers to ALL people alive today, since one person is just part of a bigger picture, even if one person can make a huge impact on the world. Try to work on thinking of the plants, animals, peoples and elements around you as intrinsically connected to yourself. Work on healing your personal pains and finding peace within. The Dalai Lama says that there will not be peace on Earth until everyone can find peace within themselves. Remember that YOU MATTER! And that the world is still filled with beautiful things and places, and that small steps now lead to big movement in the future.

Lastly, make sure to contact your elected representatives to voice your opinions on things as frequently as possible. If you give up on your government, it will give up on you.

Peace and peas!

Local to Global Life Works

Want to make a difference? Drive your car less and sign a petition.

Petitions are an easy way to let your voice be heard on an issue by lending support to a cause through your signature. Receiving a petition on an issue signed by large numbers of people sends a BIG message to elected officials, by showing them that people care enough about an issue to spend a few moments of their time looking into it and officially stating that they support or oppose it.

As actions speak louder than words, you shouldn't just sign a petition because you feel guilted into it. Instead, think about whether or not you agree with the cause. If you do, sign the petition and think additionally about what you can do in your life to stop perpetuating whatever the root issue is relating to the particular petition.

In this blog post, please find links to three separate petitions fighting against the same issue: American dependance on dirty energy.

Tar sands, via savebiogems.org

One petition is working to gather signatures to stop the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would threaten our country's last remaining nature spaces, would shlep tar sands 1700 miles from Canada down to Texas to be refined. This would pollute vital sources of fresh water, and destroy wildlife habitats and ecosystems. Check the following video for more information:

The other two petitions each take a stance against H.R. 7, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act of 2012. If you can't sign both of these, at least sign one. This bill would open up the Arctic Refuge for oil drilling (one of our LAST remaining wild spaces - it is being saved for a reason!!!) and would allow for deepwater drilling to not only continue in the Gulf, but to drill in even deeper parts of the Gulf than where the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred.

Photo via Oceana

Take a stance against drilling in the Arctic - sign here.
Take a stance against deepwater drilling - sign here.

Finally, probably THE most important thing you can do to prevent some of these horrible things to happen to the plants, animals and ecosystems of this fragile Earth with regard to the petitions above is to drive your car WAY less, use WAY less energy generally (turn off the lights/tv/computer/etc if you aren't using it!), and try to avoid using plastic anything  (which is made of oil) as much as possible. Every time you use one of these things, imagine a big chimney shooting black smoke out into the clean sky. Find a way to make changes in your life, even if they start off rather small.

Take this blog post as a challenge to yourself, or at least as an opportunity to combat boredom, if this is something you experience at times.

Massive smog cloud over China including Beijing. From NASA Earth Observatory.

On jobs - the Keystone Pipeline and H.R. 7 both draw on the concept of 'job creation' to get boosts from voters. Please realize that while jobs are crucially needed in many parts of the country, if we destroy the last of our wild spaces, pollute our air and water, and destroy the last of increasingly fragile natural ecosystems, we will put the future health of our planet in limbo, meaning possible major natural disasters and far fewer jobs for everyone.

'Security' does not lie in more of the same that has gotten us in this mess. 'Security' lies in creating a healthy future for all. Let's invest in education instead of oil. Our future generations should be innovating healthier ways to live.

"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."

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Thanks and peace!