If we look at the economy of a mid-sized city like Baltimore what would happen if all paper money and coin disappeared? We saw the food riots on the video---we know riot policing and martial law will be close behind. A government provides services and programs from tax revenue---that tax revenue comes back to each community for goods and services. Our American WEST was developed by individual citizens staking claim in building a community and bartered among themselves for what they needed. This is kind of what ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE global 1% are trying to install for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE. The difference between MOVING FORWARD poverty and rebuilding American economic structures is this----that global 1% will still be in control of any governance ----it will break down at any time anything people build so we must GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS and STOP MOVING FORWARD in order to return to an economic system for the 99% black, white, and brown citizens.
Below we see one of many articles written by global 1% Wall Street players using that hybrid GOLD/SILVER/FIAT MONEY economy we promote only they see this all integrated into the WORLD CENTRAL BANK ONLINE DIGITAL currency which is basically keeping the same WORLD CENTRAL BANK in place -----that is NOT what we are suggesting. There was plenty of economic writing before REAGAN/CLINTON about getting back to PRE-US FED======Our government before the Robber Baron FDR period used Wall Street money VERY LITTLE.
'In their 2014 book Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy — and What We Can Do About It, authors Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames propose a modified gold standard. They write, “The twenty-first century gold standard would fix the dollar to gold at a particular price…. The Federal Reserve would use its tools, primarily open market operations, to keep the value of the dollar tied at that rate of gold.”'
WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% DON'T HAVE TO REINVENT---WE HAVE CENTURIES OF STABLE ECONOMIC POLICY TO RETURN.
'The gold standard or gold exchange standard of fixed exchange rates prevailed from about 1870 to 1914, before which many countries followed bimetallism'.
Since the Robber Baron pols moved all US gold and silver stores from US Treasury and sold them to global 1%----WE THE PEOPLE will not have IMMEDIATELY any PRECIOUS METAL upon which to gauge a value for money this is why FIAT MONEY/trade of goods and services must be the start of rebuilding of local economies.
Below we see a LOCALIZE IT movement that looks just like Baltimore City's LOCALIZE IT movement-----being directed by global Wall Street Baltimore Development and global Johns Hopkins 'labor and justice' organizations. The difference between REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE LOCALIZE IT movements and these are ------WE WORK TO STOP MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES and global corporate campuses that will NOT allow any of what we build to exist beyond the time it takes to build those global corporate campuses. THIS IS A FALSE LOCALIZE IT MOVEMENT.
Localize It! What Resilience Looks Like
Save the Dates: Saturday-Sunday, October 21-22, 2017
Localize It! What Resilience Looks Like
A two-day solutions focused convergence for leaders and collaborators engaged in accelerating a localizing movement, in our region; Systemic renewal in an age of climate crisis, economic injustice, and frayed democratic systems.
Join us at the Vermont Law School (South Royalton VT) to engage in lively discussion with a wide array of leaders and experts in numerous break out sessions, and these keynote speakers:
Sponsors: Local Futures, Vermonters for a New Economy, Sustainable Future Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation, New Economy Law Center at Vermont Law School, BALE (Building A Local Economy), and New England Resilience and Transition Network.
Chris Wood of BALE (Building A Local Economy) explains the premise for the convergence:
“Intentional localization of production and all life-sustaining activity is key to our future thriving. This important work is joyous when done in community. There are many pathways toward greater local self-reliance and resilience.”
– Pamela Boyce Simms
Climate change, soaring inequality, social injustice… is this really the best our economy can do? Is this the society we choose to embrace?
I know that we care about these things… and I am aware that we mostly feel powerless to change the way things are. I hear those voices that say making the kind of fundamental change really needed is far beyond the capacity of us here in our communities. The forces that drive the global economy to which we seem inextricably tied are both powerful and seemingly invisible. The system seems rigged against us, or at least against achieving decent lives for most of us.
Consider, however, that the global economic model that now drives much of the commerce, politics and culture of this world is really only several decades old. Even more importantly, it is human made. This means that if it was created by us, we can undo it.
True… it won’t be easy. The forces that promote globalization control most of the avenues of information to which people have access, and their propaganda saturates the media and internet. But the fact is that, not just where I live in the White River Valley of Vermont, but all over the world, there is a prevailing movement away from the structures of globalization. In Vermont, our local food system’s transformation is helping to lead the way. And there is so much more that can be turned toward local capacity.
For me, 2017 is the year to powerfully advance the concept of “localizing” and reimagining the appropriate scale under which systems should work. I have worked with many others to help shape one organization that has consciously worked to advance a new narrative that runs in contrast to the old story. That new narrative is called localization. Our intention has been to create as many powerful locally-driven and inspired initiatives as possible and to clearly speak our truth about what is at the heart of what we need to change if we are to survive. To that end, we offer this systemic solution…. a solution that, if strong and powerful enough, can build resilience against the forces of those familiar injustices we’ve internalized and tolerated for too long. Surely, it’s not the only answer because we need many, but it’s what will help build what I believe is a desperately needed new story of living on this planet.
The essential first step in this process is to scale down and localize economic activity with the goal of meeting our needs – our basic needs in particular – closer to home. This does not mean an end to trade; not even international trade. And it does not mean reverting to isolation or nationalism or tribalism, the counter-productive framework that appears to drive a Donald Trump.
As Helena Norberg-Hodge, Executive Director of Local Futures observes: “Localization is the real solution multiplier, with immediate economic, social and ecological benefits. By reducing the scale and reach of the economy, the environmental impacts of economic activity shrink as well. And the argument for localizing goes well beyond the environment. Among other things, localization allows us to live more ethically as citizens and consumers. In human scale economies, people are more connected to each other – something that, as we are increasingly realizing, is crucial to our health and well-being.”
It will take determined effort in localities everywhere to create – or restore – local knowledge and local (scale-appropriate) democracy. It can be done. There are alternative energy coops to emerge, there is an ever-more powerful local food system that could provide good food to everyone (not just the well-off), there are localized transportation models to develop, there are cooperatives and socially aligned businesses to emerge in every sector, there can be credit unions with true community social missions, there are time banks and strong barter systems that operate outside the dollar economy, there are creative artists and craftspeople providing clothing and wares made from local resources. And, surely, there are hundreds of other initiatives that will emerge and inspire us.
To be clear, this is not just adaptation to a status quo (e.g. taking the lead on climate adaptation is not the answer if you have not changed the hearts and mind of those involved in that work).
To some, these ideas may seem relatively small and inconsequential, but just imagine that they are happening a hundred thousand times over in other communities around the world. Localizing done right – that is, in an inclusive way – offers the best path toward maintaining and building regional cohesion.
Localizing is a slow, patient path that requires trust, persistence, and hard work. Such mundane work may sound boring in a time of political crisis and turmoil. But we do need to build a future that will sustain us… and the rest of nature in which we can thrive… even as the old story unravels.
Chris Wood is the Director of BALE (Building A Local Economy), a community resource center for local initiatives in the White River Valley of Vermont that seeks to bring forward a systems focus to our economy, ecology, culture and society. Pamela Boyce Simms is a trainer for Transition US, an organization that supports building communities that are resilient to the challenges of peak oil and climate change. Local Futures works to protect and revitalize cultural and biological diversity by strengthening local communities and economies worldwide.
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Baltimore as with all US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES simply have LOCALIZE MOVEMENTS cleaning up communities and building green space and gardens on real estate that will soon be used for global corporate campus and global 1% living -------what happens when this city local economy is displaced? If a group is not fighting US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES AND GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS ECONOMIES TIED TO GLOBAL WALL STREET-----they are not building REAL LOCALIZED ECONOMIES.
In Baltimore we have a small group of citizens building what they are calling TUBMAN CITY----great food gardens that could be that local trading partner to another Baltimore community having talent in furniture building et al. When you are building a Tubman City or a MICA/Johns Hopkins trade shops these will not be in the hands of local citizens --the sharing economy is being built by global Wall Street and the global 1%-----NOT THE 99%.
Below we see a citizen saying the same thing-----only this person is saying it on TEDX BALTIMORE which is global 1% WORLD MEDIA outlet. Our Baltimore City Paper has been in the hands of BALTIMORE SUN for several years so we like this message but question Ericson as a leader in building a REAL LOCALIZED ECONOMY.....never heard City Paper shout out against MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES---they even said they support global Wall Street Baltimore Development.
AGAIN, PLEASE WATCH WHAT LEADERS TAKE HOLD OF GOOD POLICY LIKE REBUILDING OUR LOCALIZED ECONOMY.
We cannot rebuild a localized economy in the midst of global corporate campus building----these policies for WE THE PEOPLE ARE LIFE AND DEATH for the 99% of citizens.
The dangers of having land confiscated by global corporate campus development in US cities is REAL for WE THE PEOPLE----the first act of localization is STOP MOVING FORWARD ---NO TO GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND GLOBAL FACTORIES.
Feb. 2, 2015 1:42 pm
At TEDxBaltimore, City Paper’s Edward Ericson slams ‘sharing economy’
Reprising a written piece from over the summer, Ericson asked TEDx attendees: What is the social cost of Uber and Lyft?
At TEDxBaltimore, City Paper’s Edward Ericson slams ‘sharing economy’
Edward Ericson Jr. speaks at TEDxBaltimore 2015.
(Photo by Andrew Zaleski)
Edward Ericson Jr., the bearded, bespectacled Baltimore City Paper staff writer, took the stage just after 5 p.m. during the final session of Friday’s TEDxBaltimore event to pose three questions. When confronted with any problem:
As he told the crowd of hundreds still remaining in the auditorium of Morgan State University’s fine arts center: The sharing economy is “predicated on the idea that there’s always going to be a huge pool of people who are willing to work desperate hours for no pay and no benefits.”
Ericson’s precise beef is with ridesharing services Uber and Lyft, both of which have been available in Baltimore city since 2013. (And, at least in Uber’s case, involved in a protracted war with state regulators.) In a reasoned argument that was both incisive and self-effacing, Ericson’s essential allegation is that technological progress of the kind Uber and Lyft have exploited is really just an upending of the social compact that ensures people can earn a decent salary to get by, have a life, maybe raise a family, and retire comfortably.
“To some people in the tech industry, civilization is an obstacle,” he said. “Innovation is progress, minus the Enlightenment.”
Ridesharing services, in this context, are only possible today because their business models have “nothing to do” with workers making a living.
Observe the language employed by ridesharing services, Ericson said: Their “driver-partners” are “micro-entrepreneurs” who are “building businesses.” By the way, we’ll take 20 percent of what you earn, flood the streets with drivers to drive down fares, and provide zero benefits for you.
Ericson argued that this makes Uber and Lyft no better than the taxi companies they routinely criticize. After all, the taxi industry began transforming its drivers from full-time employees into independent contractors beginning in the 1970s, ensuring bigger profits for taxi companies at the direct expense of drivers.
It’s not a wholly new insight for Ericson. He previously outlined this beef in a City Paper piece — “The desperate hustle as a way of life” — that went online in early June. (Indeed, it was the reason he was invited to speak at TEDxBaltimore.) Ericson told the crowd the piece received 60,000 views in a couple of days, a figure amounting to 20 times more traffic than the average City Paper blog post.
Now here was Ericson at a TEDx event — arguably the bastion of chummy, buzzword-laden technological back-slapping — to lay down his argument, in verbal form, at the feet of folks probably more likely than anyone in Baltimore city to hitch a ride in the closest Uber or Lyft vehicle.
As Ericson asked at the end of his talk: “What are the sharing economy people choosing, and what are you going to do about it?”
-30-Andrew Zaleski is a freelance journalist outside Washington, D.C. He's written for Wired, Backchannel, Popular Science, Fortune, the Washington Post Magazine, the Atlantic and elsewhere.
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How did the OLD WEST AMERICA build its government? Citizens volunteered to work in government agencies in lieu of taxes----the local government buys everything from local citizens and their businesses----this is a local economy and the US FED AND WALL STREET were not to be seen.
The problem for WE THE PEOPLE today as opposed to back in 1700-1800s is this----we have higher population numbers and concentrated US cities with real estate being held hostage by that dastardly 1% for future corporate development.
It is essential to stop the global corporate campus use of our decaying community lots to establish REAL LONG TERM LOCAL FOOD, BUILDING TRADE businesses------so a TUBMAN CITY will be in existence longer than a decade or two it takes to build a global corporate campus over top.
We don't want to hinder any attempts at small business start ups for our youth IF they have a future and if they do not depend on MONEY. WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% must wrap our minds around going back to basics of life and building business systems around that. Someone making TSHIRTS from scratch and not simply stylizing already made TSHIRTS for example. If we are making our own clothes from scratch we don't need to be in a global market---we don't need wealth to buy these products. We don't depend on global corporations to buy our product---we are making them for the 99% citizens of Baltimore and may well trade them to get goods and services we need as well.
MADE IN BALTIMORE must start with buying living in Baltimore--if we depend on global 1% and their 2% living in US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----we will always be that third world impoverished citizen.
WE ARE SHOUTING -----REBUILDING LOCAL ECONOMIES ON TOP OF GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND GLOBAL FACTORIES IS NOT LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVISM ----as this article states-----it is POP-UP SHOPS----temporary and hustling rather than build real stable, lasting, small businesses filling the needs of fellow 99% of citizens.
“Made in Baltimore” Label Designed to Boost Local Economy
By Johnny Magdaleno | April 11, 2017
Made in Baltimore pop-up shop
Rasheed Aziz doesn’t see young drug dealers navigating the streets of Baltimore as people who are inherently lawless. In fact, he says they’re usually some of the top performers when he’s able to get them involved in his CityWide Youth Entrepreneurship Program.
“They were already involving themselves in entrepreneurship,” he says. “It just was entrepreneurship that wasn’t positive.”
This year he’ll have 35 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 learning how to design their own clothing brands with CityWide’s support. That program doesn’t pay, but he runs another program called Frozen Desert Sorbet that lets those students learn how to run their first business venture by selling snow cones in their neighborhood, pocketing the profit from each sale.
The budding clothing designers who make it through both programs will be just a few of the local talents qualifying for a new city-run program called Made in Baltimore. Taking a page from successful buy-local campaigns like SFMade in San Francisco, Andy Cook, the city staffer who founded the program, says it’s a marketing designation that can bring new types of opportunity to Baltimore’s economy.
“Seventy-five percent of the people in Baltimore don’t have a college degree, so there are a lot of issues and questions when we’re talking about ‘job creation’ here,” he says. “With entry-level ‘job creation’ what we’re often seeing is service sector employment, which is part time and doesn’t come with benefits.”
A 2014 study of more than 1,000 job seekers in Baltimore commissioned by the Opportunity Collaborative found that there are “practically no entry-level jobs” for those without a college degree that pay $22 an hour — enough to support a small family. It also noted that job seekers from low-income neighborhoods are kept out of traditional employment by the high dollar and time costs of traveling from said neighborhoods to booming job centers, and about a fifth of job seekers can’t qualify for traditional jobs because of criminal records.
Cook says giving small businesses the extra boost of being backed by a city-led marketing campaign can help them scale, and create jobs that are “good quality but also accessible to those without higher education.” They’ll be able to put the “Made in Baltimore” logo on their product label, or in their storefront window, but they’ll also benefit from technical support from the city on how to thrive as a business and how to recruit employees.
He started building the program after helping compile a piece of research for the city. Using census data collected between 2003 and 2012, he found that advanced manufacturing companies without employees grew in number by 57 — marking a nine-year increase of 257 percent. Other manufacturing establishments (again, without employees) rose by 67 percent in the same time period.
Alongside those jumps, employees in the manufacturing sector declined.
“We see big companies shedding jobs but see a lot of people starting up their own in light manufacturing,” he says. Manufacturing is traditionally thought of as big operations churning out thousands of high-tech items like cars or computers, but the mother of two making jams in her kitchen and selling them at local farmers markets falls within the industry too.
Made in Baltimore wants to help individuals like that jam producer turn her work into a full-time gig by giving entrepreneurs a network of other local producers through which they can lift each other up. Cook has coordinated four pop-up shops that highlight Baltimore businesses, with the most recent one last December featuring 45 makers. He says they’ve generated an average of $25,000 to $30,000 in sales per event.
“There’s lines out the door, a lot of press coverage,” he says. “It seems, anecdotally, that it’s something that people are craving.”
Keith Bradley, manager of the Made in Kansas City retail stores in Missouri’s largest city, says they work with about 120 local artists and makers who’ve seen similar success by associating their name with the brand.
“It’s exciting, because you watch these smaller companies go from doing something that’s their passion on the side to quitting their day jobs and getting to do that full time,” says Bradley.
Cook’s key influence, SFMade, is also reporting strong growth. It works with more than 640 local certified manufacturers with a payroll total of 5,000-plus employees. They’re getting ready to debut a 4-floor, 50,000-square-foot industrial workshop where small-scale producers can rent space starting in June 2018.
As small-scale manufacturers get pushed out of San Francisco’s pricier real estate and into poor neighborhoods like Bayview-Hunters Point, SFMade helps owners recruit local talent from the low-income communities. “A lot of the times, without SFMade, [manufacturers] just don’t know that the workforce resources are available in the area,” says Janet Lees, SFMade’s chief program officer. Transplanted manufacturers and workers from the traditionally black neighborhoods southeast of San Francisco are now working together to “access the very affluent consumer base that’s here,” she says.
Going forward, Made in Baltimore will work to paint a detailed picture of the local maker scene. They want to know just how many small-scale producers there are, crafting gems in their kitchens or backyards or garages that they then sell to neighbors. “We don’t think a lot of that is being captured by the broader economic studies going on in the city,” Cook says.
They’re also scanning for real estate in industrially zoned areas with the hope of creating a space similar to what SFMade is creating for rental spaces. Meanwhile, one of Baltimore’s newest makerspaces, Open Works, has offered to let Made in Baltimore run some of its workshops and presentations at their facility.
As for drivers of the local industry like Aziz, he says the new program will turn even more youth with great ideas off the street and into the local economy. “Maybe they haven’t scaled as of yet, but I’m out here. I see them,” he says. “They’re coming.”
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NEXT CITY is global 1%----it is tied to CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY----we do not want to build a pipeline of SUBCONTRACTORS TO SUBCONTRACTOR BUSINESSES
'Inspiring Better Cities
Next City is a nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire social, economic and environmental change in cities through journalism and events around the world.
Our vision is for a world in which cities are not in crisis and are instead, leading the way toward a more sustainable, equitable future'.
Below we see what US 99% of citizens do not want as a local economy------what starts as stenciling TSHIRTS becomes an UNDERARMOUR SWEAT SHOP CONTRACTOR. This is how Foreign Economic Zones work overseas =====it is wildly exploitative---it always includes child labor and we feel this is what is growing as local economies in our US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
Please think about returning to our strong US economic model of free trade with small businesses----do not aspire to be that THIRD WORLD GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SUBCONTRACTOR TO SUBCONTRACTORS. Sadly this has become these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA outsourced government spending.
THINK TO OURSELVES---IF AN ECONOMY HAS NO MONEY HOW WILL I KEEP MY FAMILY SAFE AND SUPPORTED----TRADE WITH COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHAT PEOPLE REALLY NEED IN EVERYDAY LIFE.
This Chinese economic system of subcontractors to subcontractors already holds our US cities----what we are seeing is LOCALIZE IT MOVEMENTS simply expanding these same Chinese models in our US cities-----THIS IS THE OPPOSITE of rebuilding a local economy.
St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
New Study Lambastes China Subcontractors for Nike and Reebok
By Ap
Read previewArticle excerpt
Subcontractors making shoes in China for Nike and Reebok use workers as young as 13 who earn as little as 10 cents an hour putting in 17 hours daily in enforced silence, a watchdog group charges.
Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange provided a study of the Chinese factories to The Associated Press. He said Global Exchange was acting for two human rights groups in Hong Kong that interviewed scores of workers from four major sports shoe subcontractors in China's Pearl River Delta. The four factories, which employ almost 80,000 people, were monitored in 1995 and again in June and July of this year.
The subcontractors at all four sites are violating not only "the most basic tenets of Chinese labor law, they're also flagrantly violating (Nike's and Reebok's) own codes of conduct," Chan Ka Wai, assistant director of Hong Kong's Christian Industrial Committee, said Saturday. The 30-year-old private, nonprofit group wrote the report with Hong Kong-based Asia Monitor Resource Centre. The two groups are funded by church groups and private donations worldwide, Wai said. At the Wellco plant in Dongguan Province, owned by a Korean subcontractor for Nike, people as young as 13 reportedly were doing sewing and cutting work, workers said. …
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THIS IS NOT BUILDING A LOCAL ECONOMY FOLKS------we see Chinese economics filled with subcontractors to subcontractors with only these FACTORY HOUSE 'entrepreneurs' making some earnings. No one owns anything being used to create these products----we watched overseas as these kinds of business structures kept citizens toiling and impoverished for decades. Ultimately almost all that is produced at these WORKSHOPS will be enfolded into global corporate campuses and global factories and their outsourced work. Our Latin American, Asian, Middle-Eastern global labor pool citizens can tell WE THE PEOPLE where these LOCAL ECONOMY structures lead.
WHY NOT RETURN TO REAL MADE IN AMERICA ECONOMICS AND NOT INSTALL MADE IN CHINA ECONOMIC STRUCTURES HERE IN US.
SFMade zeroes in on tenants for its first affordable maker space in San Francisco
Jul 6, 2017, 1:16pm PDT Updated Jul 6, 2017, 3:46pm PDT
Industries & Tags
Commercial Real Estate
Alejandra Reyes-Velarde Editorial Intern San Francisco Business TimesCarolyn Seng
When San Francisco's first affordable maker space opens next year, it will house screen printers, an apparel company and medical device makers. Those are just some of the businesses that intend to rent space at 150 Hooper Ave., where PlaceMade, a non-profit developer of affordable manufacturing space, is under construction on a 56,000-square-foot maker hub.
We do not need MEGA FARMS in LOCALIZE IT----we need subsistence farming on lots large enough to grow the material that becomes CLOTH for our clothing. We need lots of timber growth pine et al as material for building our furniture. Growing food is critical but a REAL LOCALIZE IT economy grows material for all community product needs.
If we return to growing HEMP to sell to the highest buyer ---and not to build our communities and citizens----we will be MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE GLOBAL LABOR POOL CORPORATE CAMPUS ENSLAVEMENT.
This article from LA TIMES is of course the same global Wall Street players and pols thinking how to create their next CASH CROP-----please think what will WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% DO IF WE HAVE NO MONEY.
Baltimore City has plenty of real estate for these small businesses that REALLY is building a structure for A LOCALIZE IT ECONOMY the 1% are simply keeping it locked up to global corporate campus development.
Op-Ed A tip for American farmers: Grow hemp, make money
June 25, 2014
After a 77-year break, hemp plants are growing in American soil again. Right now, in fact. If you hear farmers from South Carolina to Hawaii shouting "God bless America," the reason isn't because Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper (he did). Nor is it because the canvas that put
the "covered" in pioneer covered wagons was made of hemp, nor that the hemp webbing in his parachute saved George H.W. Bush's life in World War II.Nope. It's because U.S. policy is finally acknowledging that hemp can help restore our agricultural economy, play a key role in dealing with climate change and, best of all, allow American family farmers to get in on a hemp market that, just north of us in Canada, is verging on $1 billion a year.
Hemp is a variety of cannabis — and thus a cousin of marijuana — that contains 0.3% or less of the psychoactive component THC. (Marijuana plants typically contain 5% to 20% THC.) You can't get high from hemp, but starting in 1937, U.S. drug laws made cultivating it off-limits.
Finally, the U.S. hemp industry is back. A provision in the 2014 farm bill signed by President Obama on Feb. 7 removed hemp grown for research purposes from the Controlled Substances Act, the main federal drug law.
Not a moment too soon. American farmers have been watching as Canadian farmers clear huge profits from hemp: $250 per acre in 2013. By comparison, South Dakota State University predicts that soy, a major crop, will net U.S. farmers $71 per acre in 2014.
Hemp takes half the water that wheat does, and provides four times the income. Hemp is going to revive farming families in the climate change era. -- Colorado farmer Ryan Loflin
Canada's windfall has been largely due to the American demand for omega-balanced hempseed oil. But hemp is also a go-to material for dozens of applications all over the world. In a Dutch factory recently, I held the stronger-than-steel hemp fiber that's used in Mercedes door panels, and Britain's Marks and Spencer department store chain used hemp fiber insulation in a new flagship outlet. "Hempcrete" outperforms fiberglass insulation.
Farmers I've interviewed from Oregon to Ohio have gotten the memo. In a Kansas-abutting corner of eastern Colorado, in the town of Springfield, 41-year-old Ryan Loflin wants to save his family farm with hemp. "It takes half the water that wheat does," Loflin told me, scooping up a handful of drought-scarred soil so parched it evoked the Sahara, "and provides four times the income. Hemp is going to revive farming families in the climate-change era."
From an agronomic perspective, American farmers need to start by importing dozens of hemp varieties (known as cultivars) from seed stock worldwide. This is vital because our own hemp seed stock, once the envy of the world, was lost to prohibition. This requires diversity and quantity because North Dakota's soil and climate are different from Kentucky's, which are different from California's. Also, the broad variety of hemp applications requires distinct cultivars.
Legally, farmers and researchers doing pilot programs in the 15 states that have their own hemp legislation (including California) now have the right to import those seeds. The point of the research authorization in the farm bill is explicitly to rebuild our seed stock. Such research is how the modern Canadian hemp industry was kick-started in 1998.
But one final hurdle has been placed in front of American hemp entrepreneurs. In Kentucky, U.S. Customs officials, at the behest of the Drug Enforcement Administration, in May seized a 286-pound shipment of Italian hemp seed bound for the state's agriculture department. After a weeklong standoff, a federal agency had to be reminded by the federal courts that the law had changed and Kentucky's seed imports were legal.
The problem is as much an entrenched bureaucratic mind-set as the ink drying on the new federal hemp policy. DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart told a law enforcement group last month that the hoisting of a hemp flag above the U.S. Capitol last July 4 was "the low point in my career."
It should have been a high point. Hemp's economic potential is too big to ignore. When he was China's president, Hu Jintao visited that nation's hemp fiber processors in 2009 to demand that farmers cultivate 2 million acres to replace pesticide-heavy cotton. Canada funded its cultivar research for farmers, with today's huge payoff.
Even Roger Ford, a politically conservative Kentucky utility owner, told me his Patriot BioEnergy's biofuels division would be planting hemp on coal- and tobacco-damaged soil the moment it was legal. Why? To use the fiber harvest for clean biomass energy. "We have a proud history of hemp in the South," Ford told me.
Congress knows the farm bill hemp provision is just a baby step. The real solution is the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), which would allow nationwide commercial hemp cultivation. Colorado, already ahead of federal law on legalizing psychoactive cannabis, is also in front on hemp; it has a state law allowing commercial hemp cultivation. At least 1,600 acres were planted this season.
Wyden's bill should be fast-tracked. In the meantime, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) believes hemp is so important for the Bluegrass State that he's not waiting for another brouhaha over seed imports. He added an amendment to a bill that controls the DEA's budget to specifically protect imported hemp seeds from seizure. It passed in the House 246 to 162 on May 30.
It's a necessary move: Just last week at the Canadian border, the DEA seized another shipment of hemp seeds, this time bound for Colorado farmers. This counterproductive nonsense must stop.
American farmers and investors need our support to catch up with Canada's and the rest of the world's hemp head start. Now. As Loflin put it when I toured his family's 1,200-acre Colorado spread, "I'm planting hemp to show my neighbors that small farmers have a real option as businesspeople in the digital age."
We're down to 1% of Americans farming; it was 30% when our world-leading hemp industry was stymied in 1937. The crop is more valuable today than it was then. We should be waving flags and holding parades for the farmers ready to plant the crop that Thomas Jefferson called "vastly desirable." I know I'm ready. To cheer, and to plant.
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We like how this discussion states clearly----the US has been exporting INFLATION for these few decades---this means the FIAT MONEY scheme creating new 'TOOLS' for the US FED ended with manipulated and fraudulent zero rates for inflation along with interest rates ----hiding the fact that US inflation was always that same 5% and indeed has been climbing through these several years of Obama.
We like as well how this video makes clear---the objective is war driven by global banking----no matter whether a Trump or a Hillary. It is the chaos of war when global 1% install new MONETARY structures and this is when WORLD CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL ONLINE CURRENCY will replace the US DOLLAR.
REMEMBER, DON'T GET MAD AT 99% OF WHITE, BLACK, BROWN CITIZENS WHEN WE HAVE NO MONEY---HOLD THAT 5% TO THE 1% ACCOUNTABLE.
The plan will be to send in the IMF/World Bank for a few decades of receivership controlling all economic development---but what the goal will be as we shout----GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SOCIALISM where WE THE PEOPLE eat, live, work, are schooled on these campuses in exchange for being paid ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. ...so no money is needed. Only those global 1% and their 2% will have currency they exchange for designer manufacturing, designer services.
End of the Dollar?
Is the dollar coming to its end? We look at the potential of economic collapse, the influence of the IMF, Chinese inflation, and how to advance the economy w...
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Those having followed Citizens' Oversight Maryland for a decade or more know what STEFAN is saying in this video is exactly what we have shouted these several years since the 2008 economic crash. I like all he says except the very last statement about DON'T BLAME FREE MARKET CAPITALISM----we agree but the 1913 creation of US FED was not a government agency----the FED has always been PRIVATE ----that was only one of the problems.
We will discuss health care policy next week----please GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS AND STOP MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
STEFAN is right wing-----we are left wing----and we both agree!
This video done in 2014----things went wild after this video
Dead Dollar Walking: The Truth About Government Debt
Global government debt has reached over one hundred trillion dollars. But where has all of that money really gone? There will be no economic recovery. Prepar...
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Below we see one of many articles written by global 1% Wall Street players using that hybrid GOLD/SILVER/FIAT MONEY economy we promote only they see this all integrated into the WORLD CENTRAL BANK ONLINE DIGITAL currency which is basically keeping the same WORLD CENTRAL BANK in place -----that is NOT what we are suggesting. There was plenty of economic writing before REAGAN/CLINTON about getting back to PRE-US FED======Our government before the Robber Baron FDR period used Wall Street money VERY LITTLE.
'In their 2014 book Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy — and What We Can Do About It, authors Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames propose a modified gold standard. They write, “The twenty-first century gold standard would fix the dollar to gold at a particular price…. The Federal Reserve would use its tools, primarily open market operations, to keep the value of the dollar tied at that rate of gold.”'
WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% DON'T HAVE TO REINVENT---WE HAVE CENTURIES OF STABLE ECONOMIC POLICY TO RETURN.
'The gold standard or gold exchange standard of fixed exchange rates prevailed from about 1870 to 1914, before which many countries followed bimetallism'.
Since the Robber Baron pols moved all US gold and silver stores from US Treasury and sold them to global 1%----WE THE PEOPLE will not have IMMEDIATELY any PRECIOUS METAL upon which to gauge a value for money this is why FIAT MONEY/trade of goods and services must be the start of rebuilding of local economies.
Below we see a LOCALIZE IT movement that looks just like Baltimore City's LOCALIZE IT movement-----being directed by global Wall Street Baltimore Development and global Johns Hopkins 'labor and justice' organizations. The difference between REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE LOCALIZE IT movements and these are ------WE WORK TO STOP MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES and global corporate campuses that will NOT allow any of what we build to exist beyond the time it takes to build those global corporate campuses. THIS IS A FALSE LOCALIZE IT MOVEMENT.
Localize It! What Resilience Looks Like
Save the Dates: Saturday-Sunday, October 21-22, 2017
Localize It! What Resilience Looks Like
A two-day solutions focused convergence for leaders and collaborators engaged in accelerating a localizing movement, in our region; Systemic renewal in an age of climate crisis, economic injustice, and frayed democratic systems.
Join us at the Vermont Law School (South Royalton VT) to engage in lively discussion with a wide array of leaders and experts in numerous break out sessions, and these keynote speakers:
- Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for A Small Planet and founder and director, Small Planet Institute
- Frances Moore Lappé is the author or co-author of 18 books about world hunger, living democracy, and the environment. Beginning with the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet in 1971, her books include Democracy’s Edge, Getting a Grip (in two editions), EcoMind, and, most recently, World Hunger: 10 Myths. With a focus on the roots of the U.S. democracy crisis and how Americans are creatively responding to the challenge, her current work includes the online Field Guide to the Democracy Movement and the forthcoming book Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want, coauthored with Adam Eichen (Beacon Press, Sept. 2017).The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., describes Diet for a Small Planet as “one of the most influential political tracts of the times.” In 2008, it was selected as one of 75 Books by Women Whose Words Have Changed the World by members of the Women’s National Book Association. Frances was also named by Gourmet Magazine as one of 25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair, and Julia Child), whose work has changed the way America eats. Her books have been translated into 15 languages and are used widely in university courses.
- Helena Norberg Hodge, Founder and Director, Local Futures
- Author and filmmaker Helena Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement. Through writing and public lectures on three continents, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She is a widely respected analyst of the impact of the global economy on communities, local economies, and personal identity, and is a leading proponent of ‘localization’, or decentralization, as a means of countering those impacts.
- Chuck Collins, senior policy analyst, Institute for Policy Studies
- Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and directs IPS’s Program on Inequality and the Common Good where he co-edits Inequality.org. He is an expert on U.S. inequality and author of several books, including 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It. He is co-author with Bill Gates Sr. of Wealth and Our Commonwealth, (Beacon Press, 2003), a case for taxing inherited fortunes. He is co-author with Mary Wright of The Moral Measure of the Economy, a book about Christian ethics and economic life. His forthcoming book is Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good (Chelsea Green, Fall 2016). He is co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, a network of business leaders, high-income households and partners working together to promote shared prosperity and fair taxation. This network merged in 2015 with the Patriotic Millionaires. In 1995, he co-founded United for a Fair Economy (UFE) to raise the profile of the inequality issue and support popular education and organizing efforts to address inequality. He was Executive Director of UFE from 1995-2001 and Program Director until 2005.
- Jonathan Rosenthal, Executive Director, New Economy Coalition and co-founder, Equal Exchange
- Jonathan Rosenthal is the Executive Director of the New Economy Coalition. He has spent over 30 years working to transform the power of business from a destructive force of accumulation into a healing force honoring the interconnectedness of all people and our earth. He co-founded Equal Exchange, Oké USA and Belmont-Watertown Local First. He has consulted with people and organizations all across the trade justice movement. He is the author of numerous articles and is a frequent speaker at colleges and events, is a board member of the Coffee Trust and an emeritus board member of Root Capital. Jonathan is a lifelong vegetarian foodie and a huge fan of his local Watertown, MA library. He lives with his amazing partner, Ora Grodsky, organizational development consultant, and has two inspiring daughters.
- Sherri Mitchell, Founder and Director, Land Peace Foundation
- Sherri Mitchell was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian Reservation, at Indian Island in Maine. She received her J.D. and a certificate in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy and has practiced law in a public and civil capacity for many years. She founded the Land Peace Foundation to provide low cost legal assistance, alternative dispute resolution and training programs to Indigenous populations, groups, and organizations, in order to protect their human rights, homelands, sacred sites, resources and cultural way of life. Sherri is a leader whose wisdom and vision guide her every step and help to inspire all of those who meet and work with her. “We must recognize that the entire natural system is one life system, not a series of saleable, fragmented parts. The most destructive illusion held by humanity is the belief that everything is tied to an economic engine that has no heart, no compassion and places no value on life. Today, we lack reliable leadership within our world governments. We have misplaced our trust in governmental leaders and the leaders of industry, who are often times one in the same. They have repeatedly failed us by trying to maintain their profits, economies and their power over the people.”
Sponsors: Local Futures, Vermonters for a New Economy, Sustainable Future Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation, New Economy Law Center at Vermont Law School, BALE (Building A Local Economy), and New England Resilience and Transition Network.
Chris Wood of BALE (Building A Local Economy) explains the premise for the convergence:
“Intentional localization of production and all life-sustaining activity is key to our future thriving. This important work is joyous when done in community. There are many pathways toward greater local self-reliance and resilience.”
– Pamela Boyce Simms
Climate change, soaring inequality, social injustice… is this really the best our economy can do? Is this the society we choose to embrace?
I know that we care about these things… and I am aware that we mostly feel powerless to change the way things are. I hear those voices that say making the kind of fundamental change really needed is far beyond the capacity of us here in our communities. The forces that drive the global economy to which we seem inextricably tied are both powerful and seemingly invisible. The system seems rigged against us, or at least against achieving decent lives for most of us.
Consider, however, that the global economic model that now drives much of the commerce, politics and culture of this world is really only several decades old. Even more importantly, it is human made. This means that if it was created by us, we can undo it.
True… it won’t be easy. The forces that promote globalization control most of the avenues of information to which people have access, and their propaganda saturates the media and internet. But the fact is that, not just where I live in the White River Valley of Vermont, but all over the world, there is a prevailing movement away from the structures of globalization. In Vermont, our local food system’s transformation is helping to lead the way. And there is so much more that can be turned toward local capacity.
For me, 2017 is the year to powerfully advance the concept of “localizing” and reimagining the appropriate scale under which systems should work. I have worked with many others to help shape one organization that has consciously worked to advance a new narrative that runs in contrast to the old story. That new narrative is called localization. Our intention has been to create as many powerful locally-driven and inspired initiatives as possible and to clearly speak our truth about what is at the heart of what we need to change if we are to survive. To that end, we offer this systemic solution…. a solution that, if strong and powerful enough, can build resilience against the forces of those familiar injustices we’ve internalized and tolerated for too long. Surely, it’s not the only answer because we need many, but it’s what will help build what I believe is a desperately needed new story of living on this planet.
The essential first step in this process is to scale down and localize economic activity with the goal of meeting our needs – our basic needs in particular – closer to home. This does not mean an end to trade; not even international trade. And it does not mean reverting to isolation or nationalism or tribalism, the counter-productive framework that appears to drive a Donald Trump.
As Helena Norberg-Hodge, Executive Director of Local Futures observes: “Localization is the real solution multiplier, with immediate economic, social and ecological benefits. By reducing the scale and reach of the economy, the environmental impacts of economic activity shrink as well. And the argument for localizing goes well beyond the environment. Among other things, localization allows us to live more ethically as citizens and consumers. In human scale economies, people are more connected to each other – something that, as we are increasingly realizing, is crucial to our health and well-being.”
It will take determined effort in localities everywhere to create – or restore – local knowledge and local (scale-appropriate) democracy. It can be done. There are alternative energy coops to emerge, there is an ever-more powerful local food system that could provide good food to everyone (not just the well-off), there are localized transportation models to develop, there are cooperatives and socially aligned businesses to emerge in every sector, there can be credit unions with true community social missions, there are time banks and strong barter systems that operate outside the dollar economy, there are creative artists and craftspeople providing clothing and wares made from local resources. And, surely, there are hundreds of other initiatives that will emerge and inspire us.
To be clear, this is not just adaptation to a status quo (e.g. taking the lead on climate adaptation is not the answer if you have not changed the hearts and mind of those involved in that work).
To some, these ideas may seem relatively small and inconsequential, but just imagine that they are happening a hundred thousand times over in other communities around the world. Localizing done right – that is, in an inclusive way – offers the best path toward maintaining and building regional cohesion.
Localizing is a slow, patient path that requires trust, persistence, and hard work. Such mundane work may sound boring in a time of political crisis and turmoil. But we do need to build a future that will sustain us… and the rest of nature in which we can thrive… even as the old story unravels.
Chris Wood is the Director of BALE (Building A Local Economy), a community resource center for local initiatives in the White River Valley of Vermont that seeks to bring forward a systems focus to our economy, ecology, culture and society. Pamela Boyce Simms is a trainer for Transition US, an organization that supports building communities that are resilient to the challenges of peak oil and climate change. Local Futures works to protect and revitalize cultural and biological diversity by strengthening local communities and economies worldwide.
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Baltimore as with all US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES simply have LOCALIZE MOVEMENTS cleaning up communities and building green space and gardens on real estate that will soon be used for global corporate campus and global 1% living -------what happens when this city local economy is displaced? If a group is not fighting US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES AND GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS ECONOMIES TIED TO GLOBAL WALL STREET-----they are not building REAL LOCALIZED ECONOMIES.
In Baltimore we have a small group of citizens building what they are calling TUBMAN CITY----great food gardens that could be that local trading partner to another Baltimore community having talent in furniture building et al. When you are building a Tubman City or a MICA/Johns Hopkins trade shops these will not be in the hands of local citizens --the sharing economy is being built by global Wall Street and the global 1%-----NOT THE 99%.
Below we see a citizen saying the same thing-----only this person is saying it on TEDX BALTIMORE which is global 1% WORLD MEDIA outlet. Our Baltimore City Paper has been in the hands of BALTIMORE SUN for several years so we like this message but question Ericson as a leader in building a REAL LOCALIZED ECONOMY.....never heard City Paper shout out against MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES---they even said they support global Wall Street Baltimore Development.
AGAIN, PLEASE WATCH WHAT LEADERS TAKE HOLD OF GOOD POLICY LIKE REBUILDING OUR LOCALIZED ECONOMY.
We cannot rebuild a localized economy in the midst of global corporate campus building----these policies for WE THE PEOPLE ARE LIFE AND DEATH for the 99% of citizens.
The dangers of having land confiscated by global corporate campus development in US cities is REAL for WE THE PEOPLE----the first act of localization is STOP MOVING FORWARD ---NO TO GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND GLOBAL FACTORIES.
Feb. 2, 2015 1:42 pm
At TEDxBaltimore, City Paper’s Edward Ericson slams ‘sharing economy’
Reprising a written piece from over the summer, Ericson asked TEDx attendees: What is the social cost of Uber and Lyft?
At TEDxBaltimore, City Paper’s Edward Ericson slams ‘sharing economy’
Edward Ericson Jr. speaks at TEDxBaltimore 2015.
(Photo by Andrew Zaleski)
Edward Ericson Jr., the bearded, bespectacled Baltimore City Paper staff writer, took the stage just after 5 p.m. during the final session of Friday’s TEDxBaltimore event to pose three questions. When confronted with any problem:
- Do you ignore it?
- Do you try to solve it?
- Or do you exploit it to turn a profit?
As he told the crowd of hundreds still remaining in the auditorium of Morgan State University’s fine arts center: The sharing economy is “predicated on the idea that there’s always going to be a huge pool of people who are willing to work desperate hours for no pay and no benefits.”
Ericson’s precise beef is with ridesharing services Uber and Lyft, both of which have been available in Baltimore city since 2013. (And, at least in Uber’s case, involved in a protracted war with state regulators.) In a reasoned argument that was both incisive and self-effacing, Ericson’s essential allegation is that technological progress of the kind Uber and Lyft have exploited is really just an upending of the social compact that ensures people can earn a decent salary to get by, have a life, maybe raise a family, and retire comfortably.
“To some people in the tech industry, civilization is an obstacle,” he said. “Innovation is progress, minus the Enlightenment.”
Ridesharing services, in this context, are only possible today because their business models have “nothing to do” with workers making a living.
Observe the language employed by ridesharing services, Ericson said: Their “driver-partners” are “micro-entrepreneurs” who are “building businesses.” By the way, we’ll take 20 percent of what you earn, flood the streets with drivers to drive down fares, and provide zero benefits for you.
Ericson argued that this makes Uber and Lyft no better than the taxi companies they routinely criticize. After all, the taxi industry began transforming its drivers from full-time employees into independent contractors beginning in the 1970s, ensuring bigger profits for taxi companies at the direct expense of drivers.
It’s not a wholly new insight for Ericson. He previously outlined this beef in a City Paper piece — “The desperate hustle as a way of life” — that went online in early June. (Indeed, it was the reason he was invited to speak at TEDxBaltimore.) Ericson told the crowd the piece received 60,000 views in a couple of days, a figure amounting to 20 times more traffic than the average City Paper blog post.
Now here was Ericson at a TEDx event — arguably the bastion of chummy, buzzword-laden technological back-slapping — to lay down his argument, in verbal form, at the feet of folks probably more likely than anyone in Baltimore city to hitch a ride in the closest Uber or Lyft vehicle.
As Ericson asked at the end of his talk: “What are the sharing economy people choosing, and what are you going to do about it?”
-30-Andrew Zaleski is a freelance journalist outside Washington, D.C. He's written for Wired, Backchannel, Popular Science, Fortune, the Washington Post Magazine, the Atlantic and elsewhere.
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How did the OLD WEST AMERICA build its government? Citizens volunteered to work in government agencies in lieu of taxes----the local government buys everything from local citizens and their businesses----this is a local economy and the US FED AND WALL STREET were not to be seen.
The problem for WE THE PEOPLE today as opposed to back in 1700-1800s is this----we have higher population numbers and concentrated US cities with real estate being held hostage by that dastardly 1% for future corporate development.
It is essential to stop the global corporate campus use of our decaying community lots to establish REAL LONG TERM LOCAL FOOD, BUILDING TRADE businesses------so a TUBMAN CITY will be in existence longer than a decade or two it takes to build a global corporate campus over top.
We don't want to hinder any attempts at small business start ups for our youth IF they have a future and if they do not depend on MONEY. WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% must wrap our minds around going back to basics of life and building business systems around that. Someone making TSHIRTS from scratch and not simply stylizing already made TSHIRTS for example. If we are making our own clothes from scratch we don't need to be in a global market---we don't need wealth to buy these products. We don't depend on global corporations to buy our product---we are making them for the 99% citizens of Baltimore and may well trade them to get goods and services we need as well.
MADE IN BALTIMORE must start with buying living in Baltimore--if we depend on global 1% and their 2% living in US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----we will always be that third world impoverished citizen.
WE ARE SHOUTING -----REBUILDING LOCAL ECONOMIES ON TOP OF GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND GLOBAL FACTORIES IS NOT LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVISM ----as this article states-----it is POP-UP SHOPS----temporary and hustling rather than build real stable, lasting, small businesses filling the needs of fellow 99% of citizens.
“Made in Baltimore” Label Designed to Boost Local Economy
By Johnny Magdaleno | April 11, 2017
Made in Baltimore pop-up shop
Rasheed Aziz doesn’t see young drug dealers navigating the streets of Baltimore as people who are inherently lawless. In fact, he says they’re usually some of the top performers when he’s able to get them involved in his CityWide Youth Entrepreneurship Program.
“They were already involving themselves in entrepreneurship,” he says. “It just was entrepreneurship that wasn’t positive.”
This year he’ll have 35 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 learning how to design their own clothing brands with CityWide’s support. That program doesn’t pay, but he runs another program called Frozen Desert Sorbet that lets those students learn how to run their first business venture by selling snow cones in their neighborhood, pocketing the profit from each sale.
The budding clothing designers who make it through both programs will be just a few of the local talents qualifying for a new city-run program called Made in Baltimore. Taking a page from successful buy-local campaigns like SFMade in San Francisco, Andy Cook, the city staffer who founded the program, says it’s a marketing designation that can bring new types of opportunity to Baltimore’s economy.
“Seventy-five percent of the people in Baltimore don’t have a college degree, so there are a lot of issues and questions when we’re talking about ‘job creation’ here,” he says. “With entry-level ‘job creation’ what we’re often seeing is service sector employment, which is part time and doesn’t come with benefits.”
A 2014 study of more than 1,000 job seekers in Baltimore commissioned by the Opportunity Collaborative found that there are “practically no entry-level jobs” for those without a college degree that pay $22 an hour — enough to support a small family. It also noted that job seekers from low-income neighborhoods are kept out of traditional employment by the high dollar and time costs of traveling from said neighborhoods to booming job centers, and about a fifth of job seekers can’t qualify for traditional jobs because of criminal records.
Cook says giving small businesses the extra boost of being backed by a city-led marketing campaign can help them scale, and create jobs that are “good quality but also accessible to those without higher education.” They’ll be able to put the “Made in Baltimore” logo on their product label, or in their storefront window, but they’ll also benefit from technical support from the city on how to thrive as a business and how to recruit employees.
He started building the program after helping compile a piece of research for the city. Using census data collected between 2003 and 2012, he found that advanced manufacturing companies without employees grew in number by 57 — marking a nine-year increase of 257 percent. Other manufacturing establishments (again, without employees) rose by 67 percent in the same time period.
Alongside those jumps, employees in the manufacturing sector declined.
“We see big companies shedding jobs but see a lot of people starting up their own in light manufacturing,” he says. Manufacturing is traditionally thought of as big operations churning out thousands of high-tech items like cars or computers, but the mother of two making jams in her kitchen and selling them at local farmers markets falls within the industry too.
Made in Baltimore wants to help individuals like that jam producer turn her work into a full-time gig by giving entrepreneurs a network of other local producers through which they can lift each other up. Cook has coordinated four pop-up shops that highlight Baltimore businesses, with the most recent one last December featuring 45 makers. He says they’ve generated an average of $25,000 to $30,000 in sales per event.
“There’s lines out the door, a lot of press coverage,” he says. “It seems, anecdotally, that it’s something that people are craving.”
Keith Bradley, manager of the Made in Kansas City retail stores in Missouri’s largest city, says they work with about 120 local artists and makers who’ve seen similar success by associating their name with the brand.
“It’s exciting, because you watch these smaller companies go from doing something that’s their passion on the side to quitting their day jobs and getting to do that full time,” says Bradley.
Cook’s key influence, SFMade, is also reporting strong growth. It works with more than 640 local certified manufacturers with a payroll total of 5,000-plus employees. They’re getting ready to debut a 4-floor, 50,000-square-foot industrial workshop where small-scale producers can rent space starting in June 2018.
As small-scale manufacturers get pushed out of San Francisco’s pricier real estate and into poor neighborhoods like Bayview-Hunters Point, SFMade helps owners recruit local talent from the low-income communities. “A lot of the times, without SFMade, [manufacturers] just don’t know that the workforce resources are available in the area,” says Janet Lees, SFMade’s chief program officer. Transplanted manufacturers and workers from the traditionally black neighborhoods southeast of San Francisco are now working together to “access the very affluent consumer base that’s here,” she says.
Going forward, Made in Baltimore will work to paint a detailed picture of the local maker scene. They want to know just how many small-scale producers there are, crafting gems in their kitchens or backyards or garages that they then sell to neighbors. “We don’t think a lot of that is being captured by the broader economic studies going on in the city,” Cook says.
They’re also scanning for real estate in industrially zoned areas with the hope of creating a space similar to what SFMade is creating for rental spaces. Meanwhile, one of Baltimore’s newest makerspaces, Open Works, has offered to let Made in Baltimore run some of its workshops and presentations at their facility.
As for drivers of the local industry like Aziz, he says the new program will turn even more youth with great ideas off the street and into the local economy. “Maybe they haven’t scaled as of yet, but I’m out here. I see them,” he says. “They’re coming.”
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NEXT CITY is global 1%----it is tied to CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY----we do not want to build a pipeline of SUBCONTRACTORS TO SUBCONTRACTOR BUSINESSES
'Inspiring Better Cities
Next City is a nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire social, economic and environmental change in cities through journalism and events around the world.
Our vision is for a world in which cities are not in crisis and are instead, leading the way toward a more sustainable, equitable future'.
Below we see what US 99% of citizens do not want as a local economy------what starts as stenciling TSHIRTS becomes an UNDERARMOUR SWEAT SHOP CONTRACTOR. This is how Foreign Economic Zones work overseas =====it is wildly exploitative---it always includes child labor and we feel this is what is growing as local economies in our US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
Please think about returning to our strong US economic model of free trade with small businesses----do not aspire to be that THIRD WORLD GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SUBCONTRACTOR TO SUBCONTRACTORS. Sadly this has become these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA outsourced government spending.
THINK TO OURSELVES---IF AN ECONOMY HAS NO MONEY HOW WILL I KEEP MY FAMILY SAFE AND SUPPORTED----TRADE WITH COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHAT PEOPLE REALLY NEED IN EVERYDAY LIFE.
This Chinese economic system of subcontractors to subcontractors already holds our US cities----what we are seeing is LOCALIZE IT MOVEMENTS simply expanding these same Chinese models in our US cities-----THIS IS THE OPPOSITE of rebuilding a local economy.
St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
New Study Lambastes China Subcontractors for Nike and Reebok
By Ap
Read previewArticle excerpt
Subcontractors making shoes in China for Nike and Reebok use workers as young as 13 who earn as little as 10 cents an hour putting in 17 hours daily in enforced silence, a watchdog group charges.
Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange provided a study of the Chinese factories to The Associated Press. He said Global Exchange was acting for two human rights groups in Hong Kong that interviewed scores of workers from four major sports shoe subcontractors in China's Pearl River Delta. The four factories, which employ almost 80,000 people, were monitored in 1995 and again in June and July of this year.
The subcontractors at all four sites are violating not only "the most basic tenets of Chinese labor law, they're also flagrantly violating (Nike's and Reebok's) own codes of conduct," Chan Ka Wai, assistant director of Hong Kong's Christian Industrial Committee, said Saturday. The 30-year-old private, nonprofit group wrote the report with Hong Kong-based Asia Monitor Resource Centre. The two groups are funded by church groups and private donations worldwide, Wai said. At the Wellco plant in Dongguan Province, owned by a Korean subcontractor for Nike, people as young as 13 reportedly were doing sewing and cutting work, workers said. …
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THIS IS NOT BUILDING A LOCAL ECONOMY FOLKS------we see Chinese economics filled with subcontractors to subcontractors with only these FACTORY HOUSE 'entrepreneurs' making some earnings. No one owns anything being used to create these products----we watched overseas as these kinds of business structures kept citizens toiling and impoverished for decades. Ultimately almost all that is produced at these WORKSHOPS will be enfolded into global corporate campuses and global factories and their outsourced work. Our Latin American, Asian, Middle-Eastern global labor pool citizens can tell WE THE PEOPLE where these LOCAL ECONOMY structures lead.
WHY NOT RETURN TO REAL MADE IN AMERICA ECONOMICS AND NOT INSTALL MADE IN CHINA ECONOMIC STRUCTURES HERE IN US.
SFMade zeroes in on tenants for its first affordable maker space in San Francisco
Jul 6, 2017, 1:16pm PDT Updated Jul 6, 2017, 3:46pm PDT
Industries & Tags
Commercial Real Estate
Alejandra Reyes-Velarde Editorial Intern San Francisco Business TimesCarolyn Seng
When San Francisco's first affordable maker space opens next year, it will house screen printers, an apparel company and medical device makers. Those are just some of the businesses that intend to rent space at 150 Hooper Ave., where PlaceMade, a non-profit developer of affordable manufacturing space, is under construction on a 56,000-square-foot maker hub.
We do not need MEGA FARMS in LOCALIZE IT----we need subsistence farming on lots large enough to grow the material that becomes CLOTH for our clothing. We need lots of timber growth pine et al as material for building our furniture. Growing food is critical but a REAL LOCALIZE IT economy grows material for all community product needs.
If we return to growing HEMP to sell to the highest buyer ---and not to build our communities and citizens----we will be MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE GLOBAL LABOR POOL CORPORATE CAMPUS ENSLAVEMENT.
This article from LA TIMES is of course the same global Wall Street players and pols thinking how to create their next CASH CROP-----please think what will WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% DO IF WE HAVE NO MONEY.
Baltimore City has plenty of real estate for these small businesses that REALLY is building a structure for A LOCALIZE IT ECONOMY the 1% are simply keeping it locked up to global corporate campus development.
Op-Ed A tip for American farmers: Grow hemp, make money
June 25, 2014
After a 77-year break, hemp plants are growing in American soil again. Right now, in fact. If you hear farmers from South Carolina to Hawaii shouting "God bless America," the reason isn't because Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper (he did). Nor is it because the canvas that put
the "covered" in pioneer covered wagons was made of hemp, nor that the hemp webbing in his parachute saved George H.W. Bush's life in World War II.Nope. It's because U.S. policy is finally acknowledging that hemp can help restore our agricultural economy, play a key role in dealing with climate change and, best of all, allow American family farmers to get in on a hemp market that, just north of us in Canada, is verging on $1 billion a year.
Hemp is a variety of cannabis — and thus a cousin of marijuana — that contains 0.3% or less of the psychoactive component THC. (Marijuana plants typically contain 5% to 20% THC.) You can't get high from hemp, but starting in 1937, U.S. drug laws made cultivating it off-limits.
Finally, the U.S. hemp industry is back. A provision in the 2014 farm bill signed by President Obama on Feb. 7 removed hemp grown for research purposes from the Controlled Substances Act, the main federal drug law.
Not a moment too soon. American farmers have been watching as Canadian farmers clear huge profits from hemp: $250 per acre in 2013. By comparison, South Dakota State University predicts that soy, a major crop, will net U.S. farmers $71 per acre in 2014.
Hemp takes half the water that wheat does, and provides four times the income. Hemp is going to revive farming families in the climate change era. -- Colorado farmer Ryan Loflin
Canada's windfall has been largely due to the American demand for omega-balanced hempseed oil. But hemp is also a go-to material for dozens of applications all over the world. In a Dutch factory recently, I held the stronger-than-steel hemp fiber that's used in Mercedes door panels, and Britain's Marks and Spencer department store chain used hemp fiber insulation in a new flagship outlet. "Hempcrete" outperforms fiberglass insulation.
Farmers I've interviewed from Oregon to Ohio have gotten the memo. In a Kansas-abutting corner of eastern Colorado, in the town of Springfield, 41-year-old Ryan Loflin wants to save his family farm with hemp. "It takes half the water that wheat does," Loflin told me, scooping up a handful of drought-scarred soil so parched it evoked the Sahara, "and provides four times the income. Hemp is going to revive farming families in the climate-change era."
From an agronomic perspective, American farmers need to start by importing dozens of hemp varieties (known as cultivars) from seed stock worldwide. This is vital because our own hemp seed stock, once the envy of the world, was lost to prohibition. This requires diversity and quantity because North Dakota's soil and climate are different from Kentucky's, which are different from California's. Also, the broad variety of hemp applications requires distinct cultivars.
Legally, farmers and researchers doing pilot programs in the 15 states that have their own hemp legislation (including California) now have the right to import those seeds. The point of the research authorization in the farm bill is explicitly to rebuild our seed stock. Such research is how the modern Canadian hemp industry was kick-started in 1998.
But one final hurdle has been placed in front of American hemp entrepreneurs. In Kentucky, U.S. Customs officials, at the behest of the Drug Enforcement Administration, in May seized a 286-pound shipment of Italian hemp seed bound for the state's agriculture department. After a weeklong standoff, a federal agency had to be reminded by the federal courts that the law had changed and Kentucky's seed imports were legal.
The problem is as much an entrenched bureaucratic mind-set as the ink drying on the new federal hemp policy. DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart told a law enforcement group last month that the hoisting of a hemp flag above the U.S. Capitol last July 4 was "the low point in my career."
It should have been a high point. Hemp's economic potential is too big to ignore. When he was China's president, Hu Jintao visited that nation's hemp fiber processors in 2009 to demand that farmers cultivate 2 million acres to replace pesticide-heavy cotton. Canada funded its cultivar research for farmers, with today's huge payoff.
Even Roger Ford, a politically conservative Kentucky utility owner, told me his Patriot BioEnergy's biofuels division would be planting hemp on coal- and tobacco-damaged soil the moment it was legal. Why? To use the fiber harvest for clean biomass energy. "We have a proud history of hemp in the South," Ford told me.
Congress knows the farm bill hemp provision is just a baby step. The real solution is the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), which would allow nationwide commercial hemp cultivation. Colorado, already ahead of federal law on legalizing psychoactive cannabis, is also in front on hemp; it has a state law allowing commercial hemp cultivation. At least 1,600 acres were planted this season.
Wyden's bill should be fast-tracked. In the meantime, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) believes hemp is so important for the Bluegrass State that he's not waiting for another brouhaha over seed imports. He added an amendment to a bill that controls the DEA's budget to specifically protect imported hemp seeds from seizure. It passed in the House 246 to 162 on May 30.
It's a necessary move: Just last week at the Canadian border, the DEA seized another shipment of hemp seeds, this time bound for Colorado farmers. This counterproductive nonsense must stop.
American farmers and investors need our support to catch up with Canada's and the rest of the world's hemp head start. Now. As Loflin put it when I toured his family's 1,200-acre Colorado spread, "I'm planting hemp to show my neighbors that small farmers have a real option as businesspeople in the digital age."
We're down to 1% of Americans farming; it was 30% when our world-leading hemp industry was stymied in 1937. The crop is more valuable today than it was then. We should be waving flags and holding parades for the farmers ready to plant the crop that Thomas Jefferson called "vastly desirable." I know I'm ready. To cheer, and to plant.
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We like how this discussion states clearly----the US has been exporting INFLATION for these few decades---this means the FIAT MONEY scheme creating new 'TOOLS' for the US FED ended with manipulated and fraudulent zero rates for inflation along with interest rates ----hiding the fact that US inflation was always that same 5% and indeed has been climbing through these several years of Obama.
We like as well how this video makes clear---the objective is war driven by global banking----no matter whether a Trump or a Hillary. It is the chaos of war when global 1% install new MONETARY structures and this is when WORLD CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL ONLINE CURRENCY will replace the US DOLLAR.
REMEMBER, DON'T GET MAD AT 99% OF WHITE, BLACK, BROWN CITIZENS WHEN WE HAVE NO MONEY---HOLD THAT 5% TO THE 1% ACCOUNTABLE.
The plan will be to send in the IMF/World Bank for a few decades of receivership controlling all economic development---but what the goal will be as we shout----GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SOCIALISM where WE THE PEOPLE eat, live, work, are schooled on these campuses in exchange for being paid ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. ...so no money is needed. Only those global 1% and their 2% will have currency they exchange for designer manufacturing, designer services.
End of the Dollar?
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Those having followed Citizens' Oversight Maryland for a decade or more know what STEFAN is saying in this video is exactly what we have shouted these several years since the 2008 economic crash. I like all he says except the very last statement about DON'T BLAME FREE MARKET CAPITALISM----we agree but the 1913 creation of US FED was not a government agency----the FED has always been PRIVATE ----that was only one of the problems.
We will discuss health care policy next week----please GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS AND STOP MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
STEFAN is right wing-----we are left wing----and we both agree!
This video done in 2014----things went wild after this video
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