A few weeks ago in Berkeley (”Beserk-lee”) California, The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) hosted its Fifth Annual Conference. In attendance were more than 700 business owners, community activists, economists, government officials, and network leaders from all around the country and Canada.

The conference actually started two days before we arrived, with a day-long pre-conference on Economic Development and the role of Local Governments. On Thursday, two pre-conferences were held, one on Green Manufacturing and another on Local and Alternative Currencies.

Several themes emerged as the weekend wore on, and the keynote speakers seemed at times to be in conversation with one another. Four of the themes that I’d like to expand upon below are: Food Systems, “Is this a Movement?”, Eco-equality, and Happiness.

Over all, what BALLE really excels at is dispersing and amplifying great stories, case studies and models. I hope that as the organization and this event evolves, they will also learn to facilitate deeper conversations among the attendees, which would greatly improve the breakout sessions and the general experience of the conference.

Food Systems
Food is always a major theme at BALLE events, partly because it clearly demonstrates the value of local economies (it is often so much tastier), and partly because so many of BALLE’s early adopters and founders owned food-related businesses, like Judy Wicks of the White Dog Cafe. This group has a real passion for food. Back to the Earth Catering really did a great job, offering tasty organic and often local foods morning noon and night.

Our experience of the conference began with a tour of the Edible Schoolyard, an exceptional school garden program at King Middle School in Berkeley. We have done a separate post about this program, so I won’t dwell on it. The second part of the tour was the Eco-house. It consists of a small house which was re-developed in green fashion, and a perennial food and learning garden with California’s first constructed wetland and gray water irrigation system. It is located adjacent to the Karl Linn Memorial Community Garden, and across the street from the Peralta Community Garden, which is unique for its artistic elements, including its beautiful metal gate. We got back from the tour excited about the role that food can play in the life of a healthy community.

Judy Wicks continued the conversation about food systems and their relationship to Local Living Economies in her talk on Friday. Her story is part of BALLE’s creation myth, and I had heard it before– but she is a great and endearing storyteller and I love hearing it again. Her journey started in the White Dog Cafe kitchen and nearby Pennsylvania farms, during her quest to rid her kitchen of industrial meats. The truly pivotal moment, though, came well after she had succeeded in creating an entirely humane menu. Her “eureka” moment was when she realized that if she really cared, and if she really needed these farms to succeed, then she would have to give up her “niche” and share her hard-earned knowledge and networks with other businesses. This is one of BALLE’s critical lessons– that by sharing resources and working cooperatively, businesses can become more than the sum of their parts. And it all started with food!

Saturday’s Keynote Panel was called “Local Food Systems” and was composed of Denise O’Brien, a 2006 Candidate for Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture post; Joanne Neft, of Placer Grown; and Malaika Edwards, co-founder of People’s Grocery. Michael Dimock moderated, and started by making the point that the panel was made up entirely of women.

Joanne Neft talked mostly about bringing art and fun into her work, and encouraging us all to do the same. Her organization, Placer Grown, is a non-profit operating in Placer California that works to promote locally grown produce and partners intensively with local artists to do so.

Denise O’Brien was very impressive and she spoke with a 30 foot picture of her grandchild projected on the screen above her head. She ran for Secretary of Agriculture in Iowa to bring attention to the fact that, though Iowa has a huge concentration of farms, much of it is nonetheless a “food desert”, where fresh produce and healthy foods are hard to come by. This is fueled by the state’s reliance on large mono-cultural and industrial farms– many of them growing corn for processing. She hoped to encourage the growth of smaller, more diverse farms, that might grow food for local communities.

People’s Grocery is located in a different type of “food desert”, in urban Oakland California. They’ve created a robust program, including the famous Mobile Market, a Food & Justice Camp, and several urban agriculture initiatives. They are currently working towards a physical storefront market.

Is this a movement?
Laury Hammel, BALLE co-founder and current co-chair, opened up the event Thursday, and asked “Is this a movement?”. His opinion, clearly, was “yes”. And not only that, but it is a growing movement– each year the BALLE conference attracts many more people, and the number of BALLE chapters grows (the current total is around 52 or so). Micheal Shuman, author of one of my favorite books about the subject The Small Mart Revolution, reminded us Friday morning that this is much bigger than just a “BALLE” movement. After all, AMIBA (the American Independent Business Alliance) was around several years before BALLE started and also has about 50 chapters around the country (Portland Buy Local, in which I am an active member, is a member of AMIBA). And add to that the handful of Chambers of Commerce and other economic development organizations that have drunk the kool-aid, and this movement starts to really have legs. This idea has some real momentum, and a diverse group of supporters.

Don Schaffer, the Executive Director of BALLE, stood up the following evening and quoted Wendell Berry’s “In Distrust of Movements”. His speech felt from the heart, and responded directly, and with some scepticism, to Laury’s enthusiasm the night before. In particular, Don reminded us to be wary of self-righteousness, narrow-mindedness and exclusionary behavior. These are all criticisms that they have heard before, and are right to be wary of. At last year’s conference, for instance, they alienated the Republicans in the crowd with over-zealous and partisan political talk. It seemed to me that they made some real strides over the last year overcoming some of those challenges, and they’ve made it a goal to welcome and include people from more diverse cultural, political, and racial worlds. If they continue to do so, the movement will continue to grow exponentially, because its values appeal to such a wide audiences.

And then Paul Hawken closed the conference with an amazing demonstration of just how big this movement truly is. His new book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One saw it Coming puts all of these conversations, and all of BALLE’s work into context within a global movement, made up of “more than one million organizations and the one hundred million individuals who actively work towards ecological sustainability, economic justice, human rights, and political accountability work on issues that are systemically interconnected and intertwined.” (from the website Wiser Earth) By reminding us how our work is connected to the work of others around the world, he made a powerful statement that stuck with me. I think I actually cried.

Eco-Equality
Starting with the tour of the Eco-House on our first day, the theme of “eco-equality” quickly came to the fore. Tondre, our guide through the project’s garden, talked about how the workshops they planned and facilitated there were intended to spread the tools, materials, and knowledge needed to take green practices home. And not just as backyard hobbies, but as part of a new economy.

This was powerfully reinforced Thursday night by Van Jones in his keynote speech. Van Jones is co-founder of the Ella Baker Center in Oakland. He and his organization are advocating to unite the social justice and “green” movements. In particular, he’s looking for the creation of “green collar jobs” to raise people out of poverty. He asked us, “Who will you leave behind?” and laid out a worst-case scenario of “eco-aparteid”, a dismal thought. (After his keynote he travelled to Washington to testify before Congress, here is his report on how that went). Van Jones is an incredibly moving speaker, and he set the tone for a lot of the formal and informal conversations that followed.

During Saturday’s Panel on Food Systems, Malaika Edwards, founder of the People’s Grocery in West Oakland shared some of her stories and hard-earned lessons about working near this crossroads of social justice and environmentalism. Her words were wise and heartfelt. In particular, she warned those present to avoid the common and easy trap of patronizing people unintentionally. During her years at the People’s Grocery, her assumptions about people were constantly challenged- people surprised and amazed her with, among other things, their desire for and knowledge of healthy, fresh, and wholesome food. She also reminded us that we have to be respectful, and that sometimes you have to know your place. One of her young, white, privileged, socially conscious interns wanted desperately to go door to door- and came back disheartened and feeling abused. She found her place in the organization fund-raising and organizing, and People’s Grocery learned the importance of engaging neighborhood residents in outreach and communication efforts.

Jack Stack and Bo Burlington shared the stage on the last day of the conference and added what I thought was an important ingredient to this conversation about social justice and the economy. Jack Stack is the famous initiator of Open Book Management practices and “The Great Game of Business”. He runs a business, not a non-profit. The lesson I took from his stories was that it isn’t enough to create jobs– it is equally important to teach people about business and money. In particular, he emphasized teaching people the difference between income and wealth. His employees, at every level of the business, understand how to read a balance sheet, and know that by reinvesting in the company, they are creating wealth for themselves and their community. They in turn teach others in the community about how to manage a business and what a sound financial statement looks like.

These four speakers, and several others, connected in my mind to become a conversation about the values of this “movement”. In this very business-focused environment, they were asking us what differentiates our vision for the future. Does it empower people, engage people, and teach people. Or does it simply leave them behind. If our values are becoming more and more mainstream, this is an important time to be asking those questions.

What is it all about: Happiness
On the last day of the conference, Michelle Long, co-director of Sustainable Connections, asked “why do we Buy Local?” Part of her answer was simply that we do it because it makes us happy. It helps us connect to other people and to our place (and other places too).

Two other speakers really emphasized “joy” and “happiness” as crucial elements in their work and reason for being. Judy Wicks, is a big believer in having fun, and many of her stories revolve around dancing in the streets, dressing up in costumes, festivals, and general revelry. For example, she will be in the “dunk tank” at this years SBN Philadelphia Buy Fresh, Buy Local festival. Joanne Neft also really emphasized the importance of incorporating fun and frivolity into her work at Placer Grown. She had some great pictures of some food sculptures made for their yearly contest and food festival.

Last year, Bill McKibben quoted research that said Americans are increasingly unhappy, and have fewer good friends than any other time in the last fifty years. We have cultivated social isolation. Buy Local campaigns and Farmers Markets are incredible ways to meet people, engage socially with your community, and just plain have fun. That’s the magic of Buy Local, it feels better, it is satisfying, and it is just more fun.