Orion Kriegman

I discovered a source of hope for our future this weekend. In the Mahaiwe Theater of Greater Barrington, I was attending the E.F. Schumacher Society’s Annual Lectures.

Majora Carter of the Sustainable South Bronx was the first speaker. She shared the story of how members of her community are organizing to propose the creation of an eco-industrial park to create clean-tech greencollar jobs. Instead, the city is planning to build a prison on the same parcel. Marjora asked us, “Do you know that the US is just 5% of the world’s population and yet is 25% of …”

“Green house gas emissions,” shouted someone from the audience.

“True. And yet how many of us know we are also 25% of the world’s prison population,” She finished.

The next speaker was Chuck Turner, the District 7 Boston City Councilor who has worked with the Industrial Cooperative Association and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. He spoke with passion and eloquence about the fact that we are facing a major transition – he said that the old order is rapidly fading – that humanity’s survival will require a transformation of our consciousness and relationship to energy. He asked us all to read Rudolf Steiner’s An Outline of Esoteric Science.

The last speaker was Michael Shuman, author of Go Local and the Smallmart Revolution, who first asked us how many of us banked with local banks (the majority of the room raised their hands) and then he asked us how many of us had our retirement savings invested in local business (and no one raised their hands). Why don’t we invest in local businesses? Well prior to the Great Depression many communities did have local equity markets to facilitate this. Some of them were better run than others, and ultimately many of them were outlawed by Congress in an effort to protect small investors from fraud. However, this has led to the unfortunate situation of today when local businesses do not have access to the local investors, even though they generate 60 to 80% of net new jobs and 13 times more patents per employee than large firms.

I was mostly inspired simply by the fact that the EF Schumacher Society exists to host these lectures and create public forums for engaged citizens to grapple with the latest thinking and the challenges of creating a life-affirming planetary civilization.

And far from just talk, the E.F. Schumacher Society has organized a community currency, the BerkShare, for the Pioneer Valley. One million one hundred and fifty thousand BerkShares are now in circulation, supporting the local businesses of Greater Barrington and ensuring that resources generated locally are invested back into the community. And the E.F. Schumacher Society continues other experimental efforts such as a community land trust, and a microcredit program.

And what really gives me hope for the future is the the birth of this new art form, which my friend Joel shared with me when I got home, as it shows the true hybridity and creativity of the emerging global culture.