SOS Asheville

Hey SOS Friends ~  The post below is from Mike Lanier in Raleigh.  Is there a BALLE chapter yet in WNC?  ~Chris 

Recently, a few others from the Chapel Hill area and I attended the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) conference in Burlington, VT. This conference was truly inspiring and certainly measured up to Bill McKibben’s assessment that “the room we were gathered in was the most important room in the country”.

The BALLE philosophy (http://www.livingeconomies.org) of relocalizing economies so that business owners must pay their employees living wages, must take care of the environment where they live among family and friends, cannot extort money from local governments over relocation threats, and keep much higher levels of accumulated wealth in the local community, has the potential to bring much needed change quickly, while making our communities much more sustainable and self-reliant.

Making all this happen may seem like a monumental effort, but one of the conference’s presenters, Michelle Long from Bellingham, Washington and her organization, Sustainable Connections (http://www.sustainableconnections.org) has accomplished incredible things in just four years.

Please, take the time to read through this website and I think you will be amazed at things this organization has been able to accomplish. There is interest in starting a BALLE network in the Chapel Hill/Durham area. If any of you are local business owners who have an interest in this or if you have and interest and are interested in community organizing, please let me know and I will connect you with this group.

Environmental activism has had many successes over the last 30-40 years, but I think that the BALLE approach may get us to where we all want to go much sooner. Sustainably, Mike Lanier Agricultural Economic Development NC Cooperative Extension 919/245-2063