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| <back | home Green Business Network Goes to Green Mountain State for Conference by Brad Johnson For its fourth annual conference, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) decided to come to a small town in Vermont, which is also the Green Mountain State’s biggest city. On a cool rainy weekend, over 500 participants climbed the steep hill of Burlington’s Main Street to hear talks by speakers such as Ben Cohen, Bill Mckibben and David Korten. BALLE grew out of the socially responsible business movement and organizations like the Social Venture Network. Its vision was further developed by co-founders Laury Hammel and Judy Wicks during retreats which included intellectual ammunition from the likes of Korten and Michael Shuman. Today BALLE has 31 local chapters in places like Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Bellingham, WA. Although the network is decentralized and local chapters set their own agenda, the focus is generally on supporting independent businesses and advocating a triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. Merrian Fuller, who works at the national office in San Francisco and organized the conference, says national organizers help the chapters with consulting, conference calls and online resources but local leaders set their own agenda. “We just provide them with information and resources to help them be more effective.” Despite the solution-oriented approach of BALLE, conference speakers such as Korten were quick to point out the growing environmental and economic challenges we are facing. Korten pointed to the possibility of a “perfect storm” including peak oil, climate change and a weakening U.S dollar which could create profound changes in the way we live. But he also suggested that these challenges could provide an opportunity to create the kind of self-reliant communities which BALLE advocates. BALLE co-founder Judy Wicks paid a special tribute to the late author Jane Jacobs who wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jacob’s advocacy of vibrant, human-scale, urban communities provided Wicks with the inspiration to open the White Dog Café in Philadelphia. Wicks described her efforts to create a truly community-oriented business which emphasizes relationships between her customers, employees and the local farmers who supply much of her food. Her emphasis on relationships inspired her to give a personal loan to a local farmer to buy a refrigerated truck to expand his business, to hold a press conference in Mexico City featuring American business leaders calling for an end to paramilitary violence in Chiapas, and to establish relationships with minority-owned “sister” restaurants in Philadelphia. In smaller sessions and workshops, the BALLE conference featured a lot of advice from socially conscious entrepreneurs on issues such as finance, vision and values. Burlington is already home to nationally known independent businesses such as Seventh Generation (cleaning supplies) and Magic Hat Brewery. But at the BALLE conference, there were green entrepreneurs from far and wide. Glyn Lloyd of City Fresh Foods in Roxbury, MA talked about opening a catering business in an economically challenged area. Paul Saginaw of Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor talked about how he diversified and expanded his food business while maintaining the original vision, giving employees part ownership, and choosing not to expand beyond Ann Arbor. On Friday night the conference moved from Champlain College to the Intervale, an agricultural center within the city that includes 13 independent farms and other businesses on land that was at one time a dump and a struggling slaughterhouse. If anything exemplifies the idea of a local living economy, it’s Intervale. Current projects include a garden supply business, giant piles of the city’s compost which are bagged and sold, a youth employment garden, consultant work, and of course the farms. Founder Wil Raap gently nudged the “male doomsdayists” who had spoken earlier during the conference about an impending ecological crisis. His hopeful vision started with a personal story about how he accidentally stumbled onto the Intervale in the early 80s when his car was stolen and dumped on the derelict land. Today the land is producing a large chunk of Burlington’s food and recycling a lot of its organic waste as well. The participants at the BALLE conference were a mixture of old and new. Established networks such as Philadelphia and San Francisco sent sizable contingents, while new faces came from places like Asheville, Gainesville and West Virginia reflecting the network’s desire to grow especially in the south and rural areas. BALLE’s Merrian Fuller says “I think the message that BALLE is putting out is pretty broad and can appeal to people across the spectrum, depending on what you emphasize. I think most people in the south want strong, local, sustainable communities, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a radical leftist sort of thing.” The organization is also seeking to diversify the membership of an organization that so far has mostly been white and affluent. Fuller says that chapters in cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia are actively reaching out to the minority business community and trying to train new entrepreneurs with programs like Philadelphia’s Social Venture Institute which focuses on women and minorities. “We’ll never force people to do environmental things if they don’t want to” Fuller says. “Ideally the members of BALLE are not just hardcore environmentalists, but they come from a broad spectrum of backgrounds, and learn new types of socially responsible business practices as they become involved in the network.” There were a good number of younger participants at this year’s conference. Some were MBA students seeking to incorporate green values into their studies. Others like Omar Freilla of Green Worker Cooperatives in the Bronx, NY were young entrepreneurs attempting to grow sustainable businesses. Michelle Long of the Bellingham, WA BALLE chapter talked about creating “new norms” in her community by making the concept of buying local and her organization Sustainable Connections familiar to residents through marketing campaigns such as their buy local coupon book which is a bestseller in Bellingham. For Long, creating a local living economy means evolving the economy “sector by sector.” That means “growing” new farmers in the agriculture sector to meet the increasing demand for local food, and educating government officials about green building techniques and standards. One reason groups like Sustainable Connections may be so successful is they are playing a role that the Chamber of Commerce in big cities has neglected. Fuller notes that in many cities the Chamber is often dominated by corporations and big business. “They really neglect the needs of their small business members and locally-owned businesses” she says. “There’s a huge need for business marketing support, and connecting to other businesses, and Sustainable Connections has been able to provide things the local chamber hasn’t.” On the other hand, the Chambers of Commerce of several small towns in California which cater to small, local businesses have become BALLE members. In Vermont, you can already catch a glimpse of a more self-reliant, sustainable future. It’s an agricultural state that values farming and is taking pro-active steps to maintain it. That means not only land conservation programs but pro-active steps to make farming profitable, such as the state’s consultancy partnership with Intervale. Despite such progressive thinking, speaker Long pointed out the challenges that a local first movement faces when she described how her agricultural region of Washington still imports organic fertilizer from Texas despite the abundance of local sources. For one weekend at least, Long’s goal of creating new economic norms seemed not only achievable but normal. After spending two days conversing and networking with like-minded entrepreneurs and community organizers, one could walk outside to a pedestrian and bike-friendly city. You don’t see a lot of chain stores in Burlington, and many of the most familiar brands are locally-owned, independent ones like Magic Hat Brewery, Seventh Generation, or Green Mountain Coffee. Throw in some sympathetic public officials (Vermont congressman Bernie Sanders and gubernatorial candidate Scudder Parker spoke at the conference) and BALLE’s vision seems not so far-fetched at all. Of course for some of us, an economy not dominated by cars, chains, processed food, malls, and suburbs could take some getting used to. But in order to achieve the “great turning” towards earth community that BALLE board member David Korten speaks of, such a shift will surely be necessary. If the BALLE conference and the locally-oriented economy in Vermont is any indication, however, such a shift might not be so painful. <back | top^ |