Although the forces behind the hyper-commercialization of America seem unstoppable and implacable, there is a quiet revolution going on. It is widely distributed, breaking out in small pockets of America largely unnoticed by the news media, and for this we should probably be grateful.
The best way to summarize what is happening is that small (and some not-so-small) communities are starting to erect defenses against losing their local economies, natural resources, and quality of life to major corporations who are wont to move in, undermine or crush the local small businesses and replacing them with something less wholesome for the local environment, however one chooses to define it.
There are two trends in particularly that I find very hopeful. The first is one that was reported a little over a year ago in this article by Maria Armoudian about how more and more local communities are setting up worker-owned and operated businesses that are designed from the ground up to be cooperative, sharing, and will benefit the communities where they do business. When the article was written in 2009 there were over 11,000 worker-owned companies in the United States, together employing more people than were members of the major labor unions. About one-third of the US population is a member of at least one cooperative. Many of these businesses put money back into the local community to fund everything from civic improvements to the arts. This is a very encouraging development, especially since it seems to be happening of itself, with each group sharing their experience and know-how with others.
The other sign of hope was something I linked to on the Unexpected Leisure Facebook page. It was a piece on Yes! magazine’s web site about how communities are passing ordinances that constrain the power of mega-corporations to impose their will on and exploit American communities. For instance, the city of Mt. Shasta will soon vote on several ordinances, among would be a ban on major corporations drawing water from the local aquifer, outlaw regional cloud-seeding with toxic silver iodide which disrupts local weather patterns. Perhaps most significantly the vote, if it carries, would explicitly refuse to recognize corporate personhood and “…explicitly place the rights of community and local government above the economic interests of multinational corporations…â€Â Mt. Shasta is not alone or unique in this regard. Hundreds of other communities are passing similar laws, and organizations are springing up to advise city councils in how to craft such ordinances so that they will withstand legal assaults by corporate legal departments. And they communities are starting to join forces:
These communities are beginning to band together. When the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatened to sue Packer Township this year for banning sewage sludge within its boundaries, six other Pennsylvania towns adopted similar ordinances and twenty-three others passed resolutions in support of their neighboring community. Many people were outraged when the attorney general proclaimed, “there is no inalienable right to local self-government.”
It’s news like this that makes me think that common sense can and just might prevail. The ironic thing is that as the national Government cedes more and more power to private enterprise, they likewise lose power with respect to small-town America. Many of these local laws are passed even though they conflict with state and even federal laws. The right of local communities to self-government is inalienable, in spite of what the Pennsylvania AG thinks. That’s about as American as government gets. Let’s hope the trend continues.
