The Alliance convenes community dialogues on a variety of subjects that affect sustainability, bringing together organizations and individuals working on different aspects of an issue to promote partnerships and understanding. All Community Dialogues are free and open to the public.
The community dialogue for July 2004 is “Producing the Good Life: How Can the Economy Work for Us?”
[Note: This Community Dialog was held July 23, 2004]
….
We want to:
- End wasteful, polluting production: no to gas-guzzlers, factory farms, smokestacks, plastic doodads
- Have healthful, local production for human needs: yes to “green” businesses, family farms, co-ops
- Support our local farmers, shopkeepers, workers, businesses, families, communities.
What does a sustainable regional economy look like?
And how do we get there?
- Just tinker with things to reform what is?
- Go for a paradigm shift?
- Create alternatives?
- All of the above?
How do we Think Globally, Act Locally?
Participate in the discussion with:
- Joris Rosse – will start us off with a critique of the Brookings Report: what’s in it and what’s not, what its inherent biases are.
- Martin Boksenbaum – envisioning production for people’s needs, environmental sensibility, stakeholder rights, democratic community decision-making.
- Tom Egan – on financing the transition: getting the money to make it happen.
- Peter Crownfield – obstacles: corporate personhood, corporate subsidies and externalized costs, corporate-dominated politics, lack of involvement
All are in the Alliance’s Corporation Study Group and have been discussing works such as the following:
- The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy by Marjorie Kelly
- Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age by Michael H. Shuman
- Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania by the Brookings Institution (otherwise known as “the Brookings report”)
Facilitated by: JoAnn Jones of the National Coalition Building Institute