feeling humbled by all the love & support. (ie vermont resilience lab thinks i’m kinda smart)

so it turns out that i am not the only one that cares about what i’m writing.

just last week i ran into two folks – one i’ve known for almost 15 years and one more recent in my life – that were like “hey thanks for writing stuff on your blog. keep it up! i really like what you have to say.”

which for me is essentially a giant sparkly sequined high-five from the universe and a sign that i am not just blah-blah-blah-ing into the ether. i mean, it’s a blog, so i am just blah-ing into the ether.

(side note: there is a bumper-sticker in the world that says “nobody cares about your blog.” i want it! it’s true. nobody cares. most days i don’t even care about my own blog. i just think it’s funny, and true, is all.)

ok, so also, all i want to do is post this link to AN INTERVIEW WITH ME from Vermont Resilience Lab (yes, another bloggity blog blog). because, apparently Amy Kirschner thinks i’m smart enough to (a) interview me and then (b) post it on the internet!

so that’s all. check it out. i have some smart and not so smart things to say.

 

oh, and also, if you need to get inspired about your life, have someone interview you! it was an amazing experience to tell some stranger about everything i’m doing and remember that i’m doing a lot of really amazing stuff and that i pretty much love my life. and hopefully you do too. and, it helps that VRL is also doing a lot of exciting stuff. so maybe it was a mutual remembering of all the amazing things we are all doing.

 

how do we disrupt cycles of poverty through town planning?

Have I mentioned I am taking a law class? It feels a little bit like double jeopardy and double-hard to take a law class in business school. Except my professors are awesome and our readings are relatively amazing and interesting.

Last week we did a unit on Land Use and Planning. Which is utterly fascinating to me. Especially moving from suburbia to a major city to rural-as-possible to small town Vermont.

We watched these really awesome and interesting videos about projects in New Hampshire that focused on town planning as a source of economic development. Here’s the link to them, they total about 30 minutes if you’ve got the time.

The gist of the videos is how to use town planning, zoning, etc as a way to create and attract a thriving downtown and economic vitality in small towns (in New England).  Brattleboro, the town I have lived in for the past 3 years, has a really cute downtown. It was claimed as one of the top 20 small towns in the US and one of the top Walkable Places to Live by some schmancy magazine. And I don’t agree. It’s totally cute and has a great downtown and it’s part of why I live here. It is not very different from the town I grew up in, Madison, NJ, which is white, wealthy NYC suburb, population 16k, with a downtown that is often used to film movies and commercials with a “cute quintessential Main St.”

The main question I have coming out of this unit and also secretly a big piece of why I went to MBA school to begin with, is that town planning and redevelopment takes money. Kinda the whole you gotta spend money to make money mentality. It takes a lot of taxpayer dollars to expand a whole sidewalk network and put in bike-paths and create a town green where there wasn’t one before. It takes a lot of money to retrofit the old mill building into affordable housing units. All of these pieces are part of the recipe for developing a strong local economy and vibrant downtown.

Oh, right, my question.

How does this work in low-income communities and how do cycles of poverty exist on larger, town and geographic-wide scales? The cute adorable town I’ve had the privilege to live in have money. Some more than others, for sure. Nonetheless, there is some amount of money already there. So I wonder how low-income and poor communities’ strategies for revitalization looks different with different access to wealth. And also, how do cycles of poverty that are often talked about on individual/family levels work on town and regional levels? And most importantly, how are those cycles being disrupted?

I feel like I have some historical knowledge (keyword some) of what internal and external factors create economic downturns. Old mills being shutdown, such as in Bellow Falls, VT. A major company that provides jobs moving out of state or the country. The Cross-Bronx Expressway and other eminent domain projects that tear up urban black and brown neighborhoods.  Just to name a few.

And maybe this is stuff that is new to my white, middle-class eyes. And by maybe, I guess I mean yes it definitely is a part of my curiosity and interest. So what are examples of ways that low-income rural communities (across racial demographics) are able to disrupt these geographical based cycles of poverty?

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Ok kids. I’ve been having a hard time keeping up with school, busy tax season, and doing anything with this blog. I am committed, so I’m gonna try a new tactic here.

In most of my classes we have to do these online forum posts. So, I figured, instead of writing a forum post and then explaining it and giving it tons of context and rewriting everything, I’m going to (a) do a more direct cut and paste and (b) put the question out to y’all so that (c) you can also respond and give some insights into topics that are important to folks beyond those of us enrolled in an MBA program.

So this week in my Law class, the following question was posed:

What form of property ownership would be most conducive to making a community sustainable?

Here is my response:

We just showed the film “Born In Flames” tonight. It’s a film from the 80s that takes place after a fictitious socialist revolution in the US and focuses on a collective of radical lesbian feminists who create a Women’s Army of sorts. I am thinking about some pieces from that film, the Singer article and the question about sustainability. What I keep coming back to is the importance of ideals and utopias as goals, as things to fight for and strive towards.

I say that because when I first saw the question, I was thrown back to my more anarchist days of declaring no ownership of property. Because, in my understanding and opinion, that is the root of social ills like a police state, wealth disparities and slavery. It is the root, some have argued, of conquering the earth, of owning her resources instead of appreciating and borrowing them.

Luckily the question is not followed by “And what laws would need to change to create that?” Because I don’t know what it looks like, exactly. It is a complete mental and cultural (paradigm?) shift from where we are. Which doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It just means, to me, that we do not know what the road towards that goal looks like until we start walking it.

So….. what do you think? What form of property ownership is conducive to creating sustainable communities?

confessions of a corporate crush

Ok I have a confession. I think I am experiencing my first corporate crush. And I’m having a hard time coming to terms with it.

Let me give some quick background. I love crushing. I think it’s healthy and awesome and admitting crushes is the first step to removing them from some self-created pedestal. Over the years, I have used a multitude of crush categories to help me with this. They are pretty self-explanatory and look like this:

–  Friend Crush: I am excited to become better friends with you.
–  Classic-Make-Out Crush: I want to smooch & maybe date you.
–  Organizer/Political Crush: You have amazing politics and I admire your organizing skills.
–  Organizational Crush: You are a kick-ass organization doing incredible work in the world.
–  I-Want-To-Be-You Crush: You are all-around awesome and I want to be around you and emulate your ways (borderline creepy).
–  Housemate Crush: I want to live with you. Forever.
–  Dog-Owner Crush: I want your dog. Careful, I might steal your dog.
–  Career-Crush: Your job is awesome. I want it or something like it.

In a grand public gesture, I shall now add to the list:

Corporate Crush: You are a large corporation that proves to be so fucking awesome & non-traditional in the world of capitalist business that it gives me a glimmer of hope as to effectively enact change from within. You are not perfect. Neither am I.

Who is the lucky recipient of my affections? Patagonia. Yup, that endearing hippie-powered nature-loving company of outdoor gear you can’t afford for hobbies you didn’t know existed.

I used to have this struggle with my mom about how I needed to buy new clothes. I grew up in a wealthy New Jersey suburb where status was a serious thing. Self included. Until I went to college, got all radicalized and had a bit of an anarcha-crusty-hippie-jock-queer style. Which mostly meant I had a lot of clothes with holes in them & refused to by anything new. When I would come home for weekends, my mom would manage to throw out the most offensive (read: my favorite) clothing items. It finally came down to buying new underwear and I had to admit she was right. So we went to Patagonia. If I was going to buy new clothing I wanted it to be organic cotton, fair trade and cooperatively manufactured. Nearly seven years later, my mom would still approve of their condition! Way to go underwear options. Oh yeah, the flip side is that it is expensive. And I probably would not have chosen to spend my own money on ethically produced underwear at the time. Wealth privilege hypocrisy in action.

Flash forward to my first post-college job at Title IX Sports Apparel. They are a pretty awesome women’s sports apparel company headquartered in the Bay Area known mostly for their kick-ass sports bras. It was my first full-time job out of college – working in their warehouse – and I became good friends with Krystal, the COO at the time. Chief of Operations. Krystal is awesome and to this day a good friend. She worked at Patagonia for a long time in the past. In fact, I learned from Krystal that Patagonia was one of the leaders in making the move towards organic cotton. They worked directly with farmers to create a transitional program so that Patagonia wouldn’t dump their current supply chain for a new one (common “sustainable business” practice) and create mayhem and worse conditions for their suppliers.  Also, Patagonia worked with other major clothing corporations (I want to say Levi’s?) to create enough demand so as to actually create a viable market for organic cotton. Organic cotton equals healthier conditions for workers and the land.

And now I am in business school. Where I hate everything and everyone. Just kidding. Where lots of major businesses are applauded for single-focused activities that ignore the entirety of the business. Like how Wal-Mart is the number one supplier of organic food despite their detrimental economic impact on the local level. And no farmer I know has benefitted from their supply chain changes. You know what I mean.

 

  One of the books I am reading for my Human Resource class is Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation  of  Business Will Win by Jeffrey Hollender, the dude that founded 7^th Generation (yay Vermont). What    will they win? I  have  no idea. And who’s culture will they appropriate in the meantime? The Iroquois Nation who    consider their impacts  on  seven generations out. Whatever. Digression. Criticism abounds.

So I am reading this book and its talking about Patagonia this and Patagonia that. Like how the company hires  folks from their target community. Meaning the sales rep you are talking to about your high-altitude backpack  zipper that just broke might actually be a high-altitude climber. Stuff like that.

The straw that really tipped it for me was Patagonia’s take on sustainability. Which is that no business is ever  going to be truly sustainable. A big business like Patagonia is always going to have a negative impact on the  earth because it is dependent on extracting resources from the earth. In their own words:

We know that our business activity – from lighting stores to dyeing shirts – creates pollution as a by-product. So we work steadily to reduce those harms. We use recycled polyester in many of our clothes and only organic, rather than pesticide-intensive, cotton.

Patagonia takes a harm-reduction approach that involves some radical honesty.  In fact, Patagonia’s mission statement looks like this:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

In a world of corporate green washing, where the terms “sustainable” or “sustainability” mean very little, it is refreshing to see a company that is completely honest with what they are doing and their impacts on the environment and communities in which it operates. So while they have some pretty awesome HR policies, are not a publicly owned company that is beholden to shareholders, it is the simple characteristic of honesty that has won over this little anti-capitalist heart.

There you have it. The first admission of a corporate crush. What about you? Do you have any corporate crushes you care to share?

the myth of sustainable investment

There is a good chance someone out there is going to disagree with everything I’m about to say. In fact, I know it’s true because I’m reading a whole book for my Corporate Finance class about how investing in sustainable businesses is going to solve a lot of our problems.

Except for what I think is one of the most foundational problems we face today: growing wealth disparities. There are so many reasons why we need to focus on addressing issues of economic justice. I never really understood the phrase “you can eat your cake and icing too.” I really think of it more as “I can eat my cake and so can you!” At least that’s how I envision a sustainable world: where we can all share and have similar access to resources in order to make decisions about our own lives.

One of the major new learnings that I’ve stumbled across in the past year that to me clearly indicates a need for some major economic systemic shake up is the reality that the wealthiest folks in the world consume an absurd amount of resources as compared to the poorest folks in the world.

Here are some shocking UN facts & figures (If you have non-UN resources about these sorts of things, please please please share them with me.):

Inequalities in consumption are stark. Globally, the 20% of the world’s people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures – the poorest 20% a minuscule 1.3%.

More specifically, the richest fifth:

• Consume 58% of total energy, the poorest fifth less than 4%.
• Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth 5%
• Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth 1.5%.
• Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth 1.1%.
• Own 87% of the world’s vehicle fleet, the poorest fifth less than 1%.”

— Human Development Report 1998 Overview, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

Perhaps you are thinking: Cool, great, fuck the rich. And maybe what does this have to do with sustainable investing? Could you please stay on topic for once.

My answers are yes, a lot and it’s all connected so stay with me.

Sustainable investing, in my understanding, is a way for folks with wealth to invest and support the operations (and usually growth; see this post about economic growth) of big businesses that are doing good (often defined as neutral) things for people and the environment while still turning a hefty profit and excellent returns to their shareholders.

On the one hand I’m all, “Yay, support businesses even pretending to talk about this stuff. That is a concrete change we can make now. Stepping stones to a radically different economic structure.”

But really, I’m mostly all, “That’s a really awesome way to not address some fundamental issues of global sustainability. Like class divides and global wealth inequities. I want a sustainability revolution that has access points for folks across class and wealth divides.”

This is what I wrote about it for class:

I still see investment – and especially sustainable investment – as a way for wealthy folks with a conscience to give themselves a big pat on the back without looking at the ways their own individual & institutional privileges are based on the backs of those with less. We can do a lot to change *how* people acquire their wealth. But to me, the question still remains how much wealth is enough & how do we go about changing that?

Sustainable investment is an awesome strategy to maintain class divides, keep the wealth where it has remained and once again think that capitalism has its positive potential, it just needs to be greened up a bit. It totally follows that if you believe in green capitalism, sustainable investments are the way to go. I say, it’s still capitalism.

I just can’t get behind any conversation or solution that sees (any form of) capitalism as an end goal. I’m all for talking about and strategizing about stepping stones towards a more just and equitable world. As long as we’re talking about the same long-term vision. (Look, I even wrote out some concise thoughts here.) From what I’ve seen thus far, the sustainable investment industry is not talking long term systemic change.

Sustainability – in my understanding – is based on a notion of flourishing for all. Investment is a strategy and tool accessible by the rich for the rich to stay rich. Nothing sustainable in that.

how i got to business school

disclaimer: this is my first blog post on my first ever blog. excited and terrified. and perhaps rambly.

i suppose an important backdrop for this blog is why i am in business school and why, in particular, the school i’m at. i’ll do my best to explain.

let me be the first to tell you that some days, i’m not sure why i’m in business school: incurring thousands in debt, partaking in the higher educational system and having less and less time for the organizing and farming that feed my soul.

here’s the short version: i’m in business school to take down capitalism.

ok, but for real. several years ago, i started teaching myself bookkeeping, as a way to offer a tangible skill to radical non-profits and grassroots organizations. i saw radical and progressive organizations ignoring the reality of money and their own financial impacts. that, and i love numbers and talking about money. so, i taught myself basic bookkeeping skills and set out to change the world of grassroots organizations’ finances. or make some money and be useful. or both.

i was also farming at the time. and found myself unemployed in maine in november after an amazing growing season. so, naturally, i started thinking about going back to school. then i moved to vermont. farmed for the season. and found myself unemployed in vermont in november after another amazing growing season. and again, i thought about going back to school. i also started thinking what i could do in the farming off-season. and duh, i circled back to bookkeeping. and that is where i think the story should end. in summer/fall 2012, i started a bookkeeping business, open bookkeeping. and it’s going really well.

but i wanted to do more than simply handle the finances of businesses, because where’s the revolution in that? so i got to thinking: how do you combine anti-capitalist politics and business consulting? i know that i’m against capitalism, but what does that mean in tangible terms? what are we (anti-capitalists) building as an alternative? can capitalism be taken down without causing mass destruction to those that are the most vulnerable and most affected by its impacts? what about the two-pronged theory of destroying the beast from the inside and outside? i think you get the point. i had a lot of questions. and i’m not sure i have answers to any of those questions.

i don’t really know how it happened but after thinking about going to hippie lefty new age business school for about two years, i started looking into sustainable MBA programs. and there was one based in Brattleboro, VT at the Marlboro College Graduate School. honestly, i talked to the admissions guy (hey there Joe!) and was pretty much like, “i would like to go to your school and take down capitalism, specifically the prison industrial complex. how are you going to support me in doing that?” and Joe was pretty much like “that sounds great. you are a genius and you should bring all your organizing background and explicit politics here to this school.” and then i pretended to look at other schools, but really just wrote some essays, got my transcripts from fancy undergrad together and started school in the fall of 2012. here is a brief excerpt from my admissions essay about sustainability and the role of entrepreneurs, today and in the future:

…Businesses are based on, and working within, a free-market capitalist economy, a system that is inherently flawed. Part of its flaw is in extracting non-renewable natural resources. But the majority of its intrinsic flaws are the upward (and unregulated) flow of money, power and resources.

Capitalism does not strive to create an equal playing field for all involved. Capitalism, by design and by default, extracts resources from people and from the land and hordes it amongst the power elite. In the form of money, labor, oil, minerals. In the era of the Occupy Movement, it is no big surprise to claim that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. That the wealth gap is widening. That the so-called middle-class is shrinking. That we are on the verge of economic collapse. That bailouts do not work. That capitalism is failing.

What this means for entrepreneurs and managers when thinking about sustainability is that we must re-envision the way we do business. The way business exists. And what kind of business is necessary. It is not sustainable for only a few to benefit. We must create an economic system in which everyone is benefitting, everyone is engaging and everyone’s needs are met. A way of running businesses that changes the relationship between a profiteering boss-man and a debt-incurring worker. A way of understanding our interconnectedness and dependency on each other such that we are setting ourselves up to support one another, not profit from and benefit off of one another.

As business entrepreneurs and managers, we need to think not only about businesses based on their profitability and consumption of natural resources, I believe we also need to think about the true necessity of each business. It is our job to ask the hard questions and come up with some real answers. A very real, and very controversial example is private prisons. It costs most states too much money to run their own prison systems. Instead of asking the question of which private prison company should they outsource to, what if states were asking themselves whether or not prisons were necessary? Reducing the amount of energy consumed by the Prison Industrial Complex (a term referring to the entire system including prisons, policing, surveillance & intelligence, courts, parole, etc.) by being more efficient is drops in a jar compared to the radical change it would create to figure out how to abolish prisons.

I know that this is a goal, a dream, a vision: to radically shift the way we understand our relationships to one another as human beings – not to mention the earth. We are not ready to undo capitalism, to simply take her down and divvy up the pieces. But we are ready to create stepping-stones and lay forth a path to move towards the vision of a just and equitable society. That, I believe, is the role of business entrepreneurs and managers, now and in the future.

[who wouldn’t admit me to business school with a pro-business essay like that?]

so then there came all these new questions as i got ready for my life as a business school student: am i going to be a freak? am i going to get into heated debates with professors and students about how incredibly unsustainable capitalism is? am i going to get brainwashed and start to preach about how capitalism needs to simply be reformed? am i going to be too political for business school and too mainstream for my political community? how do i hold all these tensions and also share the wealth of information i now have the privilege to access?

rest assured, i am not alone. the program is generally based on the notion that capitalism is unsustainable. there are as many ideas of how to move forward as there are brains in the program. so that is exciting. more on that later/soon.

as for the last few questions – how to stay connected, grounded and in conversation with my political community – i thought maybe a blog would help achieve all those goals. so here i am: attending business school. running a small bookkeeping business, farming in the summer and trying to remain grounded and visionary about my hopes for the future.