Earlier this year, East Bay Express Publisher Jody Colley
began a project to encourage each of our readers to “Make the Pledge”
to spend $100 of their holiday shopping dollars at locally owned
stores. If each of our readers did so, the effect would be an
additional $8.74 million dollars for the East Bay community. Readers
were encouraged to e-mail their agreement to participate in the
project, with one lucky reader set to win $1,000 in gift certificates
at independent locally owned merchants and restaurants.
Good ideas take root, and this one was no exception. Along with
assistance from the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, the
American Independent Business Alliance, and the Association of
Alternative Newsweeklies, the Express convinced other
alternative weekly newspapers across the country to participate. As of
this writing, more than seventy papers, from Maui to Halifax and
Seattle to Sarasota are participating. An economic analysis shows that
this project could redirect as much as two billion dollars into local
communities. These are dollars that would have left the local
communities served by these papers and ended up as profits for the big
box retailers.
The effect of the large national chains on our communities is well
documented. Most of the big chains are publicly traded companies
subject to the unrelenting demands of Wall Street for quarterly
profits, and the extraordinarily bizarre tenet that layoffs are good as
they improve short-term profits. When these companies move in, small
businesses wither and owners become wageworkers at the big chains. The
creativity that emanates from a diverse mix of local merchants, many of
whom sell what they do because of their interest and knowledge of their
products or services, is lost. This creativity and diversity that comes
from a vibrant local business community helps make neighborhoods
interesting.
The immediate economic effect of these recirculating local dollars
is impressive. As compared with national or international chains, 40
percent more of each dollar spent at a local store stays in our
community. Certainly in these perilous economic times, buying at local
merchants who in turn spend their receipts at other local businesses
instead of shipping them to Wall Street or overseas helps keep our
communities vibrant and livable. The quantitative effects of our local
purchases can have a qualitative effect in our communities.
But what may be most impressive is the stress that this program
places on conscious consumption. If one thing is clear in our time, it
is that mindful living is required in order to have a community and
globe in which we all can enjoy livable lives. During the Bush
administration, encouraged by a mantra of uncontrolled “progress” and
accumulation, oblivious and insensitive actions have led to a world on
the brink. A sense of scale has tilted to a “bigger is better” mantra
that cannot be maintained. Living consciously means consideration for
us and our planet through an attention to the effects of our actions or
inactions.
Like it or not, much of our effect on the community and on our
planet comes from our patterns of consumption — not only what we
buy, but also how we buy it. When we see those five dollar T-shirts in
the big box stores, we need to consider how they could be so cheap. How
could any worker who made or transported these products be paid
anything approaching a livable wage? Acting with a respect for the
labor of those workers may mean paying a few more pennies or dollars
for our products, but the cumulative effect of our actions could be
significant. And, of course, buying at local merchants serves to reduce
our personal carbon footprint, a requirement of conscious and moral
living today.
Buying local is not about privileging your community over others.
But, as Stephen Stills crooned, it means loving the one you are with.
Buying local means knowing from whom you buy. It means being able to
ask someone who can tell you from where the product came. Consumers in
the East Bay have an advantage given the knowledgablility and caring
attitude of most of our small businesses.
At the Web 2.0 Summit held earlier this year in San Francisco, Al
Gore urged a project to “bring about a higher level of consciousness
about our planet and the imminent danger and opportunity we face
because of the radical transformation in the relationship between human
beings and the Earth.” Part of that consciousness must be understanding
the effects of our actions as consumers, on the earth and on our
communities. Local merchants are making a greater effort to locally
source products and to consider the carbon footprints of their
sourcing. We need to support them in their efforts, and to question
them when this is not obvious to us.
While consumption often seems like a personal act, thoughtful local
consuming can be part of conscious living. Giving the enormity of the
problems facing us at this moment in history, this kind of activity is
required if we are able to turn things around. Al Gore believes that if
we are willing to work together and to have the courage to take
disciplined and bold acts that we can succeed. Buying local, as a
community, is one of the ways to do this.
