|
Found an article at Common Dreams by Stacy Mitchell, I've snipped and summarized to better adhere to length rules. Thanks for the nudge mods, learning to link was a necessary piece of the skill set here.
About ten years ago, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance launched the New Rules Project to develop and advocate for policies that would democratize ownership, refashion the economy for long-term sustainability, and nurture strong, self-conscious, and self-governing communities. Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher on that project.
In city after city, independent businesses are organizing and building an increasingly powerful counterweight to the big business lobby on issues as varied as tax policy and global warming. Local business alliances have now formed in over 130 cities and collectively count some 30,000 businesses as members. These alliances are calling on people to choose independent businesses and locally produced goods more often, making a compelling case that doing so is critical to rebuilding middle-class prosperity, averting environmental catastrophe, and ensuring that our daily lives are not smothered by corporate uniformity.
And there is growing evidence that these initiatives are succeeding. During the 2009's slow holiday season, a nationwide survey by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance found that independent businesses actually outperformed chain competitors. What accounted for this relative good fortune? Many of those surveyed said that more people are deliberately seeking out locally owned businesses.
But here's what is perhaps the strongest—and, undoubtedly, the most bizarre—evidence to date that people's priorities are changing: Many massive, globe-spanning corporations are now trying to figure out how they can be "local" too. Corporations desperately want to turn the local economy movement into nothing more than a cheap marketing trick they can appropriate for their own ends.
###
Follow the link to check out a spiffy little three point plan to follow up on the progress made to take our viability back. I've been saying for months that the flow of money to the corporatocracy must stop, well here's just some of the ways to see that through.
http://
|