3 stories of local ecoentrepreneurship Majora Carter

so today I’m gonna tell you about some

people who didn’t move out of their

neighborhoods

the first one is happening right here in

Chicago

Brenda palms farmer was hired to help

ex-convicts reenter society and keep

them from going back into prison

currently taxpayers spent about sixty

thousand dollars per year sending a

person to jail we know that two-thirds

of them are going to go back I find it

interesting that for every $1 we spend

however on early childhood education

like headstart

we save $17 on stuff like incarceration

in the future or think about it that

$60,000 is more than what it costs to

send one person to Harvard as well but

Brenda not being fazed by stuff like

that took a look at her challenge and

came up with a not so obvious solution

create a business that produced skincare

products from honey okay might be

obvious to some of you it wasn’t to me

it’s the basis of growing a form of

social innovation that has real

potential

she hired seemingly unemployable men and

women to care for the Beast harvest the

honey and make value-added products that

they marketed themselves that were later

sold at Whole Foods she combined

employment experience and training at

with life skills they needed like anger

management and teamwork and also how to

talk to future employers about how their

experiences actually demonstrated the

lessons that they had learned and their

eagerness to learn more less than four

percent of the folks that went through

her program actually go back to jail so

these young men and women learned job

readiness and life skills through

beekeeping and becoming productive

citizens in the process talk about a

sweet beginning now I’m gonna take you

to Los Angeles and you know I know lots

of people know that you know LA has its

issues but I’m going to talk about LA’s

water issues right now they have not

enough water on most days and too much

to handle when it rains currently 20

percent of California’s of energy

consumption is used to pump water into

most

Southern California they’re spending

loads loads to channel that rainwater

out into the ocean when it rains and

floods as well

now Andy Lipkis is working to help la

cut infrastructure costs associated with

water management in urban heat island

linking trees people and technology to

create a more livable city all that

green stuff actually naturally absorbs

storm water also helps cool our cities

because come and think about it you know

do you really want air conditioning or

is it a cooler room that you want how

you get it you shouldn’t make that much

of a difference so a few years ago and

the LA County decided that they needed

to spend 2.5 billion dollars to repair

the the city schools and Andy and his

team discovered that they were going to

spend 200 million of that dollars on

asphalt to surround the schools

themselves and by presenting a really

strong economic case they convinced the

LA government that replacing that

asphalt with trees and other greenery

that the schools themselves would save

the system more on energy than they

spend on horticultural infrastructure so

ultimately 20 million square feet of

asphalt was replaced or avoided an

electrical consumption for air

conditioning went down while employment

for people to maintain that those

grounds went up resulting in a net

savings to the system but also healthier

students and school systems employees as

well now Judy bonds is a Coal Miner’s

Daughter her family has eight

generations in a town called Whitesville

West Virginia and if anyone should be

clinging to the former glory of the coal

mining history and of the town it should

be Judy but the way coal is mined right

now is different from the deep mines you

know that her father and her father’s

father would go down into and then

employed essentially thousands and

thousands of people now two dozen men

can tear down a mountain in several

months and only for about a few years

worth of coal that kind of technology is

called mountaintop removal it can make a

mountain go from this to this in a few

short months just imagine that the air

surrounding you know these places it’s

filled with the residue of explosives

and coal

give some of the people that we were

with is the strange little cough after

being only there for just a few hours or

so

not just miners but everybody and Judy

saw her landscape being destroyed and

her water poisoned and the coal

companies you know just move on after

the mountain was empty

leaving even more unemployment in their

wake but she also saw the difference in

potential wind energy on an intact

Mountain and one that was reduced in

elevation by over two thousand feet

three years of dirty energy with not

many jobs or centuries of clean energy

with the potential for developing

expertise and improvements in efficiency

based on technical skills and developing

local knowledge about how to get the

most out of that region’s wind she

calculated the upfront cost and the

payback over time and it’s a net plus on

so many levels for the local national

and global economy it’s a longer payback

than mountaintop removal but the wind

energy actually pays back forever the

mountaintop removal pays very little

money to the locals and it gives them a

lot of misery the water has turned into

goo you know most people are still

unemployed leading to most of the same

kind of social problems that unemployed

people in inner cities also experience

drug and alcohol abuse domestic abuse

teen pregnancy and poor health as well

now Judy and I have to say totally

related to each other not quite an

obvious Alliance literally her hometown

is called Whitesville Pennsylvania I

mean they’re not like they ain’t

competed be like for the birthplace of

hip hop title or anything like that

Edda but you know the back of my t-shirt

than what she gave me it says save the

endangered hillbillies so you know look

so homegirls and hillbillies we got it

together and totally understand that

this is what it’s all about but um just

a few months ago Judy was diagnosed with

stage 3 lung cancer and um yeah and it’s

since moved to her bones and her brain

you know at a despite it’s so bizarre

that she suffered from the same thing

that she tried so hard to protect people

from but her dream of Coal River

Mountain wind is her legacy and uh you

know she might not

get to see that mountaintop but um

rather than writing yet some kind of

another manifesto or something you know

she’s leaving behind a business plan to

make it happen that’s what my homegirl

is doing so I’m so proud of that

but you know these three people don’t

know each other and but they do have an

awful lot in common they’re all problem

solvers and they’re just some of the

many examples that I’m really privileged

to see meet and learn from in the

examples of the work that I do now

I was really lucky to have them all

featured on my Corporation for Public

Radio radio show called the Promised

Land org now they’re all very practical

visionaries they take a look at the

demands that are out there beauty

products healthy schools electricity and

how the money is flowing to meet those

demands and when the cheapest solutions

involve reducing the number of jobs

you’re left with unemployed people and

those people aren’t cheap

in fact they make up some of what I call

the most expensive citizens and they

include generationally impoverished

traumatized vets returning from the

Middle East you know people coming out

of jail and for the veterans in

particular the VA said that there’s a

six-fold increase in mental health

pharmaceuticals by vets since 2003 I

think that number is probably going to

go up they’re not the largest number of

people but they are so the most

expensive and in terms of likelihood for

domestic abuse drug and alcohol abuse

poor performance by their their kids in

schools and also poor health as a result

of stress so these three guys all

understand how to productively channel

dollars through our local economies to

meet existing market demands reduce the

social problems that we have now and

prevent new problems in the future and

there are plenty of are examples like

that you know one problem waste handling

and unemployment even when we think of

talk about recycling lots of recyclable

stuff ends up getting incinerated or a

land filled and leaving many

municipalities diversion rates or they

leave much to be recycled and where is

this waste handled usually in poor

communities and we know that eco

industrial business that these kind of

business models there’s a model in

Europe called the eco industrial park

where either the wastes of one company

is the raw material for another or you

use recycled materials to make goods

that you can actually use and sell we

can we create these local markets and

incentives for recycled materials to be

used as raw materials for manufacturing

and in my hometown we actually tried to

do one of these in the Bronx but there

our mayor decided that he what he wanted

to see was a jail on that same spot

fortunately and because we wanted to

create hundreds of jobs and but after

many years the city wasn’t they

wanted to build a jail they’ve since

abandoned that that project thank

goodness another problem unhealthy food

systems and unemployment working class

and poor urban Americans are not

benefiting economically from our current

food system

it relies too much on transportation

chemical fertilization big use of water

and also refrigeration mega agricultural

operations often responsible for

poisoning our waterways in our land and

it produces this incredibly unhealthy

product that costs us billions in health

care and lost productivity and so we

know urban AG is a big you know buzz

topic this this this time of the year

but it’s mostly gardening which is as

some value in community billion lots of

it but it’s not in terms of creating

jobs or pre food production the numbers

just aren’t there part of my work now is

really laying the groundwork to our

integrated urban AG and rural food

system to hasten the demise of the three

thousand mile salad by creating a

national brand of urban grown produce

that in every city that uses regional

growing power and augments it with

indoor growing facilities owned and

operated by small growers where now

they’re our only consumers this can

support you know seasonal farmers around

metro areas be who are losing out

because they really can’t meet the

year-round demand for produce it’s not a

competition with rural farmers it’s

actually reinforcements and allies in a

really positive and economically viable

food system the goal is to meet the

city’s institutional demands for

hospitals let’s see senior centers

schools daycare centers and produce a

network of regional jobs as well this is

smart infrastructure and how we manage

our built environment affects the health

and well-being of people every single

day our municipalities rural and urban

play the operational course of

infrastructure things like waste

disposal energy demand as well as social

cost of unemployment drop out rates

incarceration rates and the impacts of

various public health costs smart

infrastructure can provide cost-saving

ways to permanency polities the handle

both infrastructure and social needs and

we want to shift the systems that open

the doors for people who are formerly

tax burdens to become part of the tax

base and imagine a national business

model that creates local jobs and smart

infrastructure

to improve local economic stability so

I’m hoping you can see a little theme

here these examples indicate a trend I

haven’t created it and it’s not

happening by accident I’m noticing that

it’s happening all over the country and

the good news is that it’s growing and

we all need to be invested in it it is

an essential pillar to this country’s

recovery and I call it hometown security

the recession has us reeling and fearful

and there’s something in the air these

days that is also very empowering it’s a

realization that we are the key to our

own recovery you know now is the time

for us to act in our own communities

where we think local and we act local

and when we do that our neighbors be

they next door or in the next state or

in the next country we’ll be just fine

you know the some of the local is the

global hometown security means

rebuilding our natural defenses putting

people to work restoring our natural

systems hometown security means creating

wealth here at home instead of

destroying it overseas tackling social

and environmental problems at the same

time with the same solution yields great

cost savings wealth generation and

national security many great and

inspiring solutions have been generated

across America the challenge for us now

is to identify and support countless

more now hometown security is about

taking care of your own but it’s not

like the old saying charity begins at

home I recently read a book called love

leadership by John Hope Brian and it’s

about leading in a world that really

does seem to be operating on the basis

of fear and reading that book made

Miriam in that phrase because I need to

explain what I mean by that see my dad

was a great great man in many ways you

grew up in the segregated south escaped

the lynching and all that during some

really hard times but he provided a

really stable home for me and my

siblings and a whole bunch of other

people that fell on hard times but I’m

like all of us we had some problems and

and his was gambling compulsively to to

him that phrase charity begins at home

meant that Michael payday you know or

someone else’s would just happen to

coincide with his lucky day

so you know you need to help him out and

sometimes I would loan him money you

know from my after school or or summer

jobs and he always had the great

intention of paying me back with

interest of course you know after he hit

it big and he did sometimes believe it

or not at a racetrack in Los Angeles one

reason to love LA back in the 1940s he

made $15,000 cash and brought up the

house that I grew up in so I’m not that

unhappy about that but um listen I did

feel obligated you know to him and I

grew up then I grew up and I’m a grown

woman now and I have learned a few

things along the way to me

charity often is just about giving

because you’re supposed to or you

because it’s what you’ve always done or

or give it use about giving until it

hurts I’m about providing the means to

build something that will grow and

intensify its original investment and

not just require greater giving next

year not trying to feed the habit I

spent some years you know watching how

good intentions for community

empowerment that were supposed to be

they’re sort of support the community

and empower it actually left people in

the same if not worse position that they

were in before and over the past 20

years we’ve spent record amounts of

philanthropic dollars on social problems

yet educational outcomes malnutrition

incarceration obesity diabetes income

disparity they’ve all gone up with some

you know some exceptions in particular

infant mortality you know but among

people in poverty but you know lots

great world that we’re bringing them

into as well and I know a little bit

about these issues because for many

years I spent a long time in the

nonprofit industrial complex and I’m a

recovering executive director two years

clean but

but during that time you know I realized

that it was about projects and

developing them on the local level that

really was going to do the right thing

for our communities and but I but I

really did struggle for financial

support the greater our success the less

money came in from foundations and I

tell you being on the Ted stage and

winning a MacArthur in the same exact

year gave everyone the impression that I

had arrived by the time I’d moved on

I was actually covering a third of my

agents agencies a budget deficit with

speaking fees and I think because early

on frankly my programs were just a

little bit ahead of their time but since

then the pocket was just a dump it was

featured at of Ted 2006 talk became this

little thing but I did in fact get

married in it over here there goes my

dog who led me to the park