Community is more like something that we're remembering than something that we're creating all over again.
I was inspired by physical therapist and sailor Stephen Becket's words at the end of a segment of David Brancaccio's upcoming special edition of PBS Now, Fixing the Future, shown on tonight's PBS Newshour. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the series, and how disappointed I was when Now and Bill Moyer's Journal were cancelled. I was grateful to have another glimpse, and look forward to watching the full segment online this weekend (our local PBS affiliate, KCTS, does not appear to be carrying the show).
We believe in people.
We believe everyone has knowledge and skills that someone in the community can use. We help people find what they need and give what they can. We are neighbors helping neighbors help themselves. We are a community service exchange.
We believe no one is more valuable than you, and neither is their time more valuable. At Hour Exchange Portland everyone's time is equal, an hour for an hour. If you give an hour of your time helping someone, providing a service, then you can receive an hour of someone else's time who provides a service you need. Time is what our members exchange. We are a community currency based on time. We believe all people are created equal, and so is our time. Our time is priceless.
I won't say too much more about the segment, but will include a another one of my favorite excerpts – and embed the 7-minute video – below. The entire hour-long version of Fixing the Future can be found online or seen on many PBS stations this week (at least, outside of Seattle).
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Are you connecting with other people? Are you meeting other people through this?
JENNIFER LUNDEN: This is like the new kind of community. In this country, we have lost a lot of the sense of community, and people are so focused on just surviving economically or doing better than their neighbors economically. We're so focused on stuff, that we have completely lost our sense of community. And Hour Exchange is a way that I have a built-in community. There are about 600 members that I can go to and ask for help.
…
STEPHEN BECKETT: We just have this arbitrary economic system that we all have — you know, have grown up in and believe in and contribute to and work in. If it's not working anymore, then let's do something different. I think the seeds already are planted and sprouted and well on their way.
Indeed, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Comments
4 responses to “Remembering Community: Fixing the Future via Community Currency at Hour Exchange Portland”
Kia ora Joe e hoa,
Very good stuff, and something I think that will be a much more relevant life choice, perhaps quicker than we might imagine. “If it’s not working anymore, than lets do something different”. Absolutely! The recent wealth distribution stats tells us that the truly wealthy have gotten even more wealthy, while of course, the poor and marginalized grow poorer. But it is when middle class, mainly white America, begins to see the American Dream becoming a nightmare that suddenly we hear all about it. One way this is manifested is the emergence of the Tea Party, or that notion that if only we could go back to how it was, not recognizing the fact that is what got us here in the first place. So to see concepts emerge where time is valued for time on an equal basis, and creating community is very heartening, and the road we should be looking at, in my humble view. Have a lovely and Happy Thanksgiving Joe! Kia kaha.
Rangimarie,
Robb
Robb: thanks for pointing out that personal financial crises and struggles are not new for a large number of marginalized and often invisible members of our society. I have been noting a trend in U.S. elections that no one ever talks about the poor anymore: it’s always the “middle class” (and many people below the poverty line still consider them middle class), or occasionally “the working poor”, but it seems that we haven’t heard about the “poor” – from politicians – since the Clinton-era welfare reforms (during a Republican controlled Congress). So I suppose they solved the problem by rendering the poor as undiscussables (as another blogging friend, Dan Oestreich, might put it).
The Tea Party is indeed sounding an alarm, but some of its proponents seem to be buying into the same individualist or corporatist mindset of extraction, exploitation and externalities (as brilliantly captured in Doug Rushkoff’s book, Life, Inc.), that got us into this problem in the first place. Rather than promoting a more collective approach to solving our problems – in alignment with community-oriented efforts like Hour Exchange Portland – some Tea Party efforts seem to be primarily motivated by anti-collectivist – or at least anti-government – themes of reducing taxes so that they can keep more of their money for themselves.
These two paths need not be incompatible – for example, Hour Exchange Portland is a non-governmental entity that is not supported by taxes – but so far, I don’t see much alignment in goals or tactics. And based on the rhetoric I’ve seen or heard from the Tea Party, I would not anticipate strong support for the kind of egalitarian approach offered by Hour Exchange Portland.
Kia ora Joe,
I hope did not give the impression I am in anyway a tea party supporter,I raised that only in juxtaposition to the Hour Exchange Portland. That program I view as progressive,proactive, and acknowledging that the current system is strained beyond repair,where as the tea party is simply lowest common denominator reactionary politics.
Cheers,
Robb
Robb: you did not give me the impression that you are a Tea Party supporter (quite the opposite). My experience with the Coffee Party has heightened my awareness of nonviolent communication, and so I try to be careful in the ways I reference people and organizations, and look for areas of potential common ground … even when I don’t agree with some / many of their goals and tactics.