Peer2Politics

I'm just returning from the annual BALLE conference in Oakland. BALLE (the Business Association for Local Living Economies), is the fastest-growing network of sustainable and value-based enterprises in North America. It was founded some fourteen years ago, but the origins of this networked grassroots movement go back to the 1990s, when Judy Wicks, the founder of the White Dog Café in Philadelphia, decided to source and manage her café 100 percent locally and sustainably, using socially just practices. People loved it and it became a legendary success. But instead of turning her winning formula into a regional or national brand, chain, and eventually an empire, she decided to reinvest her profits in the health and well-being of her local community. She set up a foundation through which she taught everything she had learned to her competitors, using her money to help suppliers upgrade in order to serve all the cafés and restaurants in the region.

Enough. For All, Forever describes an unusual circumstance in our global drama. It recognizes two rapidly emerging global phenomenons: the increasing access to everything worldwide dubbed the birth of the "Post-Scarcity Society" and the urgency to curb the worldwide clamities of climate change, disease, and poverty caused by the increasing access to everything by employing the methods of Sustainable Development.