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