(submitted to Fairfield Weekly, September 30, 2009)
Dear Editor,
That chain businesses are taking notice of a growing consumer consciousness that prizes buying locally is gratifying, but only up to a point ("The Local Lie", Fairfield Weekly, September 13-23, page 15). As was the case with the push to weaken organic food standards in the 1990s, big business is reacting now as it did then, by attempting to change perceptions of what the public wants, rather than changing what it offers.
Of course, expecting name retailers like Wal-Mart to become localized is as reasonable as expecting the proverbial lion to lie down with the lamb. They would no longer be what they are if they tried. But there is another form of false localism that is more subtle and pervasive.
In the name of promoting the city's economy, Stamford's Downtown Special Services District--in partnership with UBS and Heineken, among other PR-hungry multinationals--channels city taxes to its activities, limiting the full potential by which dollars spent in Stamford can actually benefit Stamford, because so much of the funding for DSSD programs leaves town.
The current estimated expenses of DSSD operations for Stamford residents is $195,000 (Fiscal Year 2009/2010 Mayor's Operating Budget Request). While it has not changed from 2008, much could be saved by localizing the events, themselves, and keeping more money circulating in town, while cultivating social bonds and culture.
No one can contest how the DSSD has revitalized the Bedford Street/Broad Street area since its inception in 1993. It has dramatically pulled people to member shops and restaurants through a year-round series of activities, ranging from September Arts & Crafts on Bedford, the Alive @ Five concert series, as well as the (forthcoming) cumbersomely-titled SAC Capital Advisors, LP Giant Balloon Inflation Party. Still, can such franchised event management really equate with the fostering of authentic vitality for any city?
Contrary to DSSD Director of Retail Development Jacqueline Wetenhall's stated goal, there is more to robust commerce than having young professionals dine downtown "to leave with shopping bags full of retail offerings.” Truly independent commerce has as much to do with mutual ties of familiarity and good will as it does with the provenance of the goods and services being exchanged--not to mention a more democratic determination of WHAT is being exchanged.
For example, why can't the majority of Alive @ Five performers be drawn from an area pool of up-and-coming talent, rather than relying so heavily on name acts, like Blues Traveler or Sugar Ray? September Arts & Crafts on Bedford could do more to welcome artists and exhibits representing the high schools, UConn and the Loft Artists Association, right here in town, while being more accommodating to younger children's active participation. In addition to face-painting and the Stamford Museum & Nature Center's Petting Zoo, what about something like, say, a sidewalk chalk art competition? Over the years, some Stamfordites have acquired notoriety for the elaborate Halloween displays they put up on their lawns each year. It would have been fun and timely to have included them, or have their input on a how-to presentation.
Publicly-mediated community events have been done elsewhere with enthusiastic success. Cash-strapped Willimantic introduced do-it-yourself parades in recent years, where residents improvised with boom boxes to create an event with its own spontaneous character. Because no significant expenses are involved, something like this could be duplicated in different sections of Stamford--not just in pre-designated development zones, where even benefiting merchants must pay a membership fee.
Maybe the ultimate means of invigorating regional economic health is reconsidering what instrument of negotiation people rely upon. With the only thing keeping the U.S. dollar afloat is the willingness of credit-bearing nations to continue to support U.S. debt, as cited by Julian Robertson of Tiger Management, the introduction of local currency helps residents better support one another, while cushioning the impact of a major economic shock. Thread City Bread is alternative money used to sustain independent businesses in Willimantic. New Haven's more intimate approach takes the axiom "time is money" to a literal extreme, wherein participating neighbors trade one hour out of their day with one another to teach new skills, cook meals, walk pets, repair fences and so on. Because time is the one commodity everyone possesses, the SHARE Haven Time Bank is immune from inflationary or deflationary influences.
The only thing false about the creativity, conviviality and economy of such alternative ways of building local commerce, is that, in fact, they are about building community.
Rolf Maurer
Stamford Mayoral Candidate,
Green Party
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Poultry's Promise
September 11, 2009 (9/20/09, Stamford Times)
The welcome piece in the August 23 edition of the Stamford Times, "A Home to Roost: Resident Leads Push to Keep Backyard Poultry" (page 3) enumerates advantages to this trend that only begin to, well, scratch the surface.
Besides the appeal of unusual and personable pets, or even the convenience of fresh eggs, backyard poultry could serve as the backbone to the comeback of literal home economics in Stamford--as economics originally addressed the management of finances and resources in the household.
Combined with World War II-style Victory gardens and a city-wide implementation of community gardens, before too long, raising chickens and other birds might be vital to local sustenance, while stimulating a sense of community solidarity more valuable than the transitory associations formed around society's current consumeristic preoccupations.
Many may still be reeling from the sub-prime mortgage debacle and the extractive consequences of the bank 'bailouts', but economists warn that we still have to wait out the impact of the credit and derivatives bubbles. While they are considering the prospects of hyperinflation, any efforts to reassert local control of agriculture would be vital, if the prices for food and other essentials skyrocketed overnight, in the manner of Weimar Germany.
In addition to their usefulness as both food and pest controllers, natural gardening pioneer Masanobu Fukuoka (author of One-Straw Revolution) prizes chickens for the value of their droppings as fertilizer. Marrying this to a renewed emphasis on home canning and other traditional food-preserving practices can help gradually wean us off dependency on big box supermarket chains.
Despite the fecundity of their offerings, the year-round accessibility of fruits and vegetables they provide comes at a precarious toll in fuel-intensive transport from remote places, as well as in reduced nutritional integrity and safety, due to harmful inputs from agribusiness.
Recent food safety legislation, like H.R. 759: Food And Drug Administration Globalization Act, the Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)-sponsored H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 and the pending S. 510: FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, among others, emphasize quick fixes for food-borne safety issues, increasing the application of hormones and toxic pesticides, while doing nothing to address the underlying problems of factory farming, such as lack of basic sanitation and poor government inspection practices.
Penned to the benefit of Monsanto and other industrial food giants, collectively, such legislation's regulations and penalties are so extreme, they could threaten the future of independent farms, local farmers' markets and even organic food co-ops.
With the weight of massive national debt, the threat of more wars on the horizon by the new administration and the unrelenting promise of a serious flu epidemic, establishing local food autonomy is an indispensable tool to adapting to our turbulent times.
Rolf Maurer
Green Party Mayoral Candidate
The welcome piece in the August 23 edition of the Stamford Times, "A Home to Roost: Resident Leads Push to Keep Backyard Poultry" (page 3) enumerates advantages to this trend that only begin to, well, scratch the surface.
Besides the appeal of unusual and personable pets, or even the convenience of fresh eggs, backyard poultry could serve as the backbone to the comeback of literal home economics in Stamford--as economics originally addressed the management of finances and resources in the household.
Combined with World War II-style Victory gardens and a city-wide implementation of community gardens, before too long, raising chickens and other birds might be vital to local sustenance, while stimulating a sense of community solidarity more valuable than the transitory associations formed around society's current consumeristic preoccupations.
Many may still be reeling from the sub-prime mortgage debacle and the extractive consequences of the bank 'bailouts', but economists warn that we still have to wait out the impact of the credit and derivatives bubbles. While they are considering the prospects of hyperinflation, any efforts to reassert local control of agriculture would be vital, if the prices for food and other essentials skyrocketed overnight, in the manner of Weimar Germany.
In addition to their usefulness as both food and pest controllers, natural gardening pioneer Masanobu Fukuoka (author of One-Straw Revolution) prizes chickens for the value of their droppings as fertilizer. Marrying this to a renewed emphasis on home canning and other traditional food-preserving practices can help gradually wean us off dependency on big box supermarket chains.
Despite the fecundity of their offerings, the year-round accessibility of fruits and vegetables they provide comes at a precarious toll in fuel-intensive transport from remote places, as well as in reduced nutritional integrity and safety, due to harmful inputs from agribusiness.
Recent food safety legislation, like H.R. 759: Food And Drug Administration Globalization Act, the Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)-sponsored H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 and the pending S. 510: FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, among others, emphasize quick fixes for food-borne safety issues, increasing the application of hormones and toxic pesticides, while doing nothing to address the underlying problems of factory farming, such as lack of basic sanitation and poor government inspection practices.
Penned to the benefit of Monsanto and other industrial food giants, collectively, such legislation's regulations and penalties are so extreme, they could threaten the future of independent farms, local farmers' markets and even organic food co-ops.
With the weight of massive national debt, the threat of more wars on the horizon by the new administration and the unrelenting promise of a serious flu epidemic, establishing local food autonomy is an indispensable tool to adapting to our turbulent times.
Rolf Maurer
Green Party Mayoral Candidate
UBS Debacle: From Switzerland To Stamford
August 27, 2009 (posted on Advocate website 8/27/09)
Dear Editor,
When it comes to the recent UBS tax evasion controversy, it's interesting to see how what happens on the national level finds local expression. While Obama played golf in Martha's Vineyard with UBS executive Robert Wolf, after the settlement regarding UBS' aiding thousands of American tax evaders, Bradley Birkenfeld, the UBS insider who blew the whistle, lost his freedom for 40 months and his standing in the Swiss banking community--even as his own millionaire client only got probation. Another puzzle: while the IRS will investigate 4,450 millionaires with UBS accounts, Birkenfeld originally submitted 52,000 to the U.S. authorities. Will any action be taken against them?
The contradiction is obvious: how can U.S. courts on the one hand condemn one party for illegal activity, yet simultaneously condemn another for bringing it to their attention? Feeling cornered, it's as if the government resents exercising its lawful authority, and is making an example of Birkenfeld, so it won't have to call organizations like UBS to account in future.
When it comes to big business, Stamford seems to suffer from a similarly accommodating attitude. Twenty years past, when corporations first came to define the city's character, they demanded a variety of concessions under threat that they would leave. Though Stamford held the upper hand, it gave in.
When it first came to town in 2006, UBS was welcomed as a prestigious harbinger of new business and employment for Stamford. Enjoying a tax abatement and subsequent office expansion, it is now laboring under the weight of not just this scandal, but the stigma of having written down more than $18 billion in exposure to sub-prime loans, with job losses in the thousands in the offing. Pegging the vitality of a community to the unexamined mystique of multi-national businesses that have no lasting stake in it makes no sense in the long run. While, in more manageable proportions, corporate presence in any town can be part of a healthy socio/economic mix, an authentic, more resilient strength (especially during a period of economic upheaval) comes from a renewed emphasis on locally/regionally-based commerce.
Rolf Maurer
Green Party Candidate for Mayor
Dear Editor,
When it comes to the recent UBS tax evasion controversy, it's interesting to see how what happens on the national level finds local expression. While Obama played golf in Martha's Vineyard with UBS executive Robert Wolf, after the settlement regarding UBS' aiding thousands of American tax evaders, Bradley Birkenfeld, the UBS insider who blew the whistle, lost his freedom for 40 months and his standing in the Swiss banking community--even as his own millionaire client only got probation. Another puzzle: while the IRS will investigate 4,450 millionaires with UBS accounts, Birkenfeld originally submitted 52,000 to the U.S. authorities. Will any action be taken against them?
The contradiction is obvious: how can U.S. courts on the one hand condemn one party for illegal activity, yet simultaneously condemn another for bringing it to their attention? Feeling cornered, it's as if the government resents exercising its lawful authority, and is making an example of Birkenfeld, so it won't have to call organizations like UBS to account in future.
When it comes to big business, Stamford seems to suffer from a similarly accommodating attitude. Twenty years past, when corporations first came to define the city's character, they demanded a variety of concessions under threat that they would leave. Though Stamford held the upper hand, it gave in.
When it first came to town in 2006, UBS was welcomed as a prestigious harbinger of new business and employment for Stamford. Enjoying a tax abatement and subsequent office expansion, it is now laboring under the weight of not just this scandal, but the stigma of having written down more than $18 billion in exposure to sub-prime loans, with job losses in the thousands in the offing. Pegging the vitality of a community to the unexamined mystique of multi-national businesses that have no lasting stake in it makes no sense in the long run. While, in more manageable proportions, corporate presence in any town can be part of a healthy socio/economic mix, an authentic, more resilient strength (especially during a period of economic upheaval) comes from a renewed emphasis on locally/regionally-based commerce.
Rolf Maurer
Green Party Candidate for Mayor
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