Last January, when Neal Gorenflo announced he was committing to a Year of Living Locally, he had no idea the COVID-19 pandemic would hit and keep most of us indoors and rooted to our local communities.

But, Neal had already been thinking about ways that living hyper-locally would change his consumption habits and have a meaningful impact on his community.

Reading Neal’s posts over the past year, I’ve appreciated his commitment to learn in place and explore familiar surroundings with new eyes. Challenging yourself to adopt new consumption habits, as Neal did, is a great way to investigate the workings of your local economy and become a more thoughtful inhabitant of your community. Rather than the soulless anonymity of one-click purchasing on Amazon, a trip to the local hardware store supports your neighbors and fosters face-to-face interaction

While I admire Neal’s commitment to be a more thoughtful and responsible consumer, it’s his dedication to becoming what he calls a more “engaged citizen” — one who spends more time thinking and working to improve his community’s civic life and political atmosphere — that carries the power to enact real change.

At the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, we advocate for solutions that keep money, power, and decision-making in local hands. Shopping local rather than shipping our dollars out to Amazon is part of our DNA. But while we recognize the value in supporting local businesses, we believe we need to do more to enact the kind of change we need in the economy.

Put simply, individual consumers lack the collective power needed to undo decades of federal and state policies that have favored large monopolies at the expense of local businesses. Even the most competitive local businesses, farms, and banks face structural disadvantages that make it an uphill fight to succeed. That’s why so many of our Main Street enterprises have been disappearing.

More than responsible consumers, we need more engaged citizens. Shopping local is great, but working to influence local, state, and federal policies is the solution to reining in corporate power and building strong local economies and vibrant, self-governing communities.

The post Want community wealth? Buy local but double down on democracy appeared first on Shareable.

1. Form a team

It takes a village to go local. However, every village, movement, and organization usually starts with a small group. Therefore, start your local adventure by forming a small team of friends, family members and/or neighbors. This will keep things manageable while giving you the advantages of mutual support, motivation, and shared work. Many hands make light work, as they say. If you can’t recruit anyone, don’t worry. Get started and look for people to join you along the way or join a group, like Cool Block or Transition Towns, that will support you.

2. Take stock of local resources and opportunities

Create a list of local resources and opportunities for your new local life. Look for ways to substitute your normal products and activity with more local versions. For instance, do you have a farmers’ or local market where you can buy food from your region? Can you get movies from your local library instead of Netflix? What are the volunteer opportunities at your local nonprofits and government agencies? You can also look for opportunities to fill a community need. Those needs can be the basis for projects to lead.

3. Make a plan and plan to have fun

Use your list of opportunities to make a plan. Prioritize things to do that you’re genuinely interested in doing. Tap your interests and passions. The plan doesn’t have to be fancy. Just get your ideas in a document. I used Google Sheets to create a list. I printed that out, pinned it on a wall next to my desk, and used it to help keep myself on track. Don’t forget to make it as fun as possible!

4. Start small

Committing to a whole year of local living was daunting. You might do better by starting with a shorter period, like one or two months. It also helps to think of what you’re doing as an experiment instead of a permanent change. This will help lessen the psychological resistance to change. This mindset also helped me to find small, discrete tasks that I could finish in a reasonable amount of time. These quick wins built my confidence and often led to other opportunities.

5. Create a schedule, establish a routine

Some opportunities have a schedule of their own. Just get those on your calendar. For other things, create a regular schedule and make local life a new, enlivening routine. For instance, I set aside one hour after work during the week and Saturday mornings for my local projects. I also went food shopping with my family at our local farmers’ market on Sundays. Once I established a routine, I started spending more time on my local life than I planned. That was a big bonus. In any case, it’s really important to set aside time and establish a routine. That will help make it a true lifestyle change.

6. Stay flexible, adapt

As Mike Tyson said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Life can destroy your plans, so stay flexible. There couldn’t be a better example than COVID-19. It’s small compared to what others faced, but I had to change my local year plans dramatically due to the pandemic. To stay with the boxing wisdom, I rolled with the punches. I let the closed opportunities go and pursued the ones that opened up, like the chance to do more mutual aid during lockdowns. It wasn’t always easy to adapt, but what else was I going to do? Also, it worked.

7. Track your progress

Some things aren’t measurable, but many are. Track what you can, at least in the beginning. It’s motivating to know how much you’re improving your life, the lives of others, and the local environment. It also motivates your local co-adventurers and can be the basis for more responsibility in your community. For instance, the grounds committee I co-lead gained more responsibility and budget leeway because of the measurable results we got and could show to our community’s board. This has made it much easier for us to contribute work to our community.

8. Enjoy, celebrate!

 Once you get into your local rhythm, savor your new life. If you do it right, it’ll be filled with more purpose, meaning, and simple pleasures. And don’t forget to celebrate your local team’s accomplishments, though living well is its own reward!

Download a free ebook: “A Year of Living Locally” (2021)

The post 8 steps to take right now to live a more local life appeared first on Shareable.

It was slow going at first as I took steps to open channels for engagement. After I launched a Cool Block neighborhood climate action program and the pandemic hit in March, my local activity exploded. Things got a whole lot more local than I expected.

My plans went out the window too. The demands of the pandemic and my interaction with neighbors took things in unexpected yet deeply rewarding directions.

For instance, the Cool Block program spawned multiple, parallel neighborhood projects including a major irrigation system overhaul, regular neighborhood grounds maintenance workdays, a re-negotiated grounds maintenance contract, huge exchanges of goods and ideas facilitated by our new neighborhood Slack channel, and a lot of pandemic-related mutual aid.

I’ve never belonged to such an active neighborhood. The Cool Block program I launched was the catalyst, but most of this activity was led by my neighbors and I just joined in.

When things settled down a bit in the fall, I got back to my list. As I had planned, I switched from a big bank to a credit union, explored our local ecosystem and history, got involved in local elections, explored starting a library of things at our local library, tried on a cosmo-local identity through civic engagement at multiple geographic scales, and continued struggling to reduce my screen time.

Some of these activities resulted in measurable impacts. My Cool Block group reduced annual carbon emissions by 44,148 pounds through 159 actions over six months, our work on grounds reduced water consumption by 62% and saved the community around $25,000, and over 4,400 messages were exchanged on our neighborhood Slack channel.

Last year changed me, perhaps dramatically. While I’m still digesting it, one feeling stands out. I feel deeply humbled. I feel humbled by learning how much I need to know to be a good citizen, how much my success depended on my awesome neighbors, by the enormity of the system change we must undertake, by others who know more about local living, by how much I love and depend on my family, and by how powerfully fate can intervene. Like many, my 2020 was deeply marred by disaster and loss.

What did I learn from such a momentous year? I learned many things. Below are the top 10 lessons learned about local change-making in 2020. Some of these lessons aren’t surprising, but the often painful first-hand experience increased my conviction of long-held hunches.

1. Change takes more time than we give it

We have the most power to make change at the local scale, but Americans only spend about 15 minutes per day on public life total. Little change is possible with such a paltry time commitment. This lesson was hammered home because local life was surprisingly demanding. To change anything, you first need to learn the context including often mind-numbing technical detail. For instance, our neighborhood Cool Block climate change program required us to master a lot of information to make the recommended changes. This was reinforced when repairing our community irrigation system and reviewing city government plans for a car-free downtown Mountain View. To engage effectively, I needed to gain a much wider range of knowledge at a much deeper level than I expected. That takes a lot of time, but learning is just the start. Then the actual work begins. After this experience, I estimate that at least 20% of a local population (i.e., a critical mass) needs to spend two hours a day on public life to have a chance at making the needed changes our age of crisis demands.

2. The promise of replacing screen time with public time 

You might be asking, where am I going to get two hours a day for public life? Well, if you’re like the average American, you can carve it out of the three hours a day spent on screen time. Why is this important beyond the obvious? Sociologist Robert Putnam’s famous 2000 book, “Bowling Alone,” fingered the prime culprit in what he saw as a dangerous erosion of social capital in America — TV. Now, twenty years later, we’re surrounded by screens and carry one with us 24/7. In fact, our main interface is screens, not each other. We’re now living with the results. Social capital has been shredded negatively impacting nearly all aspects of life. That’s to be expected as social capital is an enabler of all human activity. A well-functioning society isn’t possible without such things as social connectedness, trust, and reciprocity — the basic components of social capital. Screen time isn’t the only culprit, but reducing it is something each of us can do to reclaim time for public life.

3. Scheduling helped my lifestyle changes stick

Reducing screen time free up a lot of time, but I didn’t know how to organize it at first. I floundered. Cool Block provided some structure, but most of my Cool Block work happened outside of our scheduled meetings. I also started participating in irregularly scheduled neighborhood workdays. This was too chaotic, so I scheduled local activities one hour after work and two hours on Saturday mornings. After I did this, my local life manifested in a much more tangible way. It felt like a true lifestyle change. The bonus was that once I routinized my engagement, I began spending even more time on local year stuff and felt less anxious. As my friend Harald Katzmair once told me, ritual makes time habitable.

4. Public life must become central

The changes I made in 2020 got me thinking about how culture shapes our choices. The changes I made weren’t easy. I swam against the tide. It was exhausting. Why was it so hard to live in a different way? I came to see that we need to radically rethink democracy with the goal to make it central to our way of life. Over the last 40 years, the U.S. and other powerful countries have centered private enterprise, individualism, consumption, entertainment, and small government. In other words, almost everything but public life. To save ourselves, we need to flip the script and center democracy, participation, mutual aid, rule of law, and the common good in everyday life. We need to make these central to our way of life, not just abstract ideals or occasional side projects. Otherwise, we won’t have the civic muscles to meet the existential crises we face today like climate change.

5. Peer support and social infrastructure makes local living easier

While my local year forced me to swim against the tide, everything significant I accomplished was accomplished with others. It takes a village, as they say. This drove home the lesson that if you want to live in a certain way, it’s extremely helpful to be part of a community of practice. Similarly, if you want to center public life, then it helps to belong to a group that enacts that vision in everyday life.

While being part of a community of practice helps, it’s just part of the solution. The Freakonomics podcast episode, “How to Launch a Behavior-Change Revolution,” documents a telling encounter between Daniel Kahneman and a group of psychologists planning society-scale behavior change initiatives. Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize in behavioral economics, is invited to advise the group. He bursts everyone’s bubble by saying the best way to change behavior, “…is almost always by controlling the individual’s environment, broadly speaking, by making it easier.” In other words, it’s more effective to create an environment that naturally encourages the behavior than to push people to do it. What’s the point in advocating for change if the environment blocks it? We need more social infrastructure to support more local, civically engaged lives.

6. The ability to live well locally isn’t evenly distributed

It took me a while to realize this, but my choice to go local was privileged. While I faced obstacles, I also had many advantages. My area has a vibrant main street, a good local food system, accessible public transportation, a beautiful library, solid infrastructure, and more. My race and class advantaged me. As another example, I could afford to buy more expensive local food. Bottom line, my choice to go local was a luxury. In other communities, especially BIPOC communities, residents often don’t have that choice. They’re trapped in place by poverty and discrimination. That’s often a life-threatening or potential-stunting reality. We need to make high-quality local living available to everyone to beat wealth inequality, climate change, and other critical challenges. As a start, it’s essential to confront the legacy and reverse the impacts of racist land use and housing policy.

7. Civic life is demanding, but deeply rewarding

Living local full tilt was hard. I often felt overwhelmed. Many times I actually didn’t know what to do. In those cases, managing uncertainty was nearly as taxing as the work itself. It was a messy, exhausting business. Civic life isn’t for the faint of heart or those with little patience or a love of convenience. However, it was deeply satisfying in ways that are central to human well-being. My life gained in purpose and meaning. Participation gave me a greater sense of security and control. I also benefited from increased social connectedness and access to resources. I just felt better about myself and the world. It definitely helped me cope with a year filled with disaster, stress, and loss. However, many of the benefits aren’t immediate. Civic engagement takes a lot of upfront effort but has a big, long-term payoff. Those seeking instant gratification will be greatly disappointed!

8. There’s a huge pent up demand for local action, but it needs to be tapped

If my experience is any guide, then there’s a huge pent up demand for local civic action. I was truly stunned by how active my neighbors became once we set up the Cool Block program and the related Slack channel. The activity literally gushed when the pandemic hit. While some of the activity was pandemic related, most of it wasn’t. I doubt this would’ve happened if there wasn’t a trusted program to catalyze and channel action. Cool Block met the measure. It was a proven program that was sponsored by the city and run by us.

9. Collective action builds hope

I took many small steps with neighbors in 2020. The small steps eventually added up to unexpectedly big changes in our neighborhood. This expanded my sense of possibility, built my confidence, and gave me hope. I went from having a stunted vision of what I could achieve with my neighbors to seeing many exciting possibilities. I had thought that hope was something that you decided to have, that you willed into existence. I now believe it’s something you can deliberately build through collective action. I learned that hope built on the foundation of shared success, no matter the size, is a powerful thing.

10. You protect what you know and love

I feel like a fool that there were so many wondrous things right under my nose that I paid little attention to, especially my neighbors. Thankfully, I got to know them like never before. I also learned more about the land I live on, the species of trees in our neighborhood, countless details about our irrigation system, how much water we use annually, the number of homes in our complex, and more. I also learned about the history, culture, and foodways of our region. It’s a rich and delicious legacy. Many of the things I learned are so basic I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know them before. This suggests to me how drastically I misallocated my attention before 2020. I knew more about global brands, internet memes, and celebrities than my immediate surroundings. This was simply a function of my choice to spend a lot of time online. No surprise, getting to know my hometown led me to become more fond of it. That’s not an unimportant detail as environmentalists have long known that people only protect what they know and love. I hadn’t thought of this as a local social change strategy, but now it’ll be top of mind as I continue working with neighbors to improve the place we share.

The post How I became hopeful again through a year of local, grassroots action appeared first on Shareable.

A few neighbors decided to improve our two acres of green space. Among us, we had visions ranging from modest upgrades to a food forest to a full-on xeriscape. However, we got focused on the irrigation system when we discovered it was in bad shape.

Initially, we found 16 broken sprinkler heads each leaking 13 gallons a minute when the system was on, which was about an hour a week. That’s a lot of waste. Despite knowing next to nothing about irrigation systems, we fixed these leaks. However, the repairs didn’t give us a sense of security. In fact, it was alarming. These were only the most obvious leaks. We knew there were likely many more problems.

Unfortunately, we were right. We soon discovered a collection of major problems — we were overwatering, we watered at night making it difficult to spot leaks, we had double the number of sprinklers we needed, and there were countless underground leaks. 

The Work Begins

Step-by-step we made changes to stop the massive waste of water and money happening right under our noses. The most dramatic change we made was adjusting the irrigation schedule. We simply watered less and did it in the morning when our neighbors could spot leaks. 

This had an immediate positive impact on both water use and resident participation in the community. After we sent an email to neighbors about the changes, a slow, but steady stream of reports about leaks began. That was much-needed help pinpointing problems.  

The second big step was eliminating redundant sprinklers and fixing underground leaks. This was my focus. By working a few hours a week for five months, we fixed another 30 leaks and reduce the number of sprinkler heads by about 20%. For a while, a few of us kept a standing work party every Saturday at 9 am. That helped us keep our momentum.

To make these fixes, we acquired the know-how and tools step-by-step starting from nearly scratch. At first, we had no idea how anything worked from the control system to sprinkler heads. By reading up about our system, consulting neighbors, trial and error, online research, and speaking to suppliers we gained enough knowledge to do around 75% of the maintenance ourselves. This was basic stuff like replacing sprinkler heads, but our vendor charges around $100 an hour for it.

Along the way, we noticed that all too often vendor work was shoddy. They used the wrong parts, simply added to already too complicated solutions, and buried debris from repairs in work areas. Plus, their quotes always included more work than we needed. We quickly got in the habit of reviewing vendor quotes line item by line item, which paid off in dramatically lower maintenance bills. 

After nine months of work, the results are in:

• We reduced year-over-year water consumption by 62% for the two month period after we made the bulk of the changes. We’re on track to use 500,000 gallons less water than in 2019. 
• Through lower water usage, a renegotiated grounds maintenance contract, and more DIY repairs, we saved our community around $25,000 this year. We’re going to invest this money in more climate-appropriate plantings and higher-efficiency irrigation to create even more benefit. 
• While these numbers are worth celebrating, the community building that we’ve done along the way is equally if not more important. My neighbors are more involved than ever. This is key to continued progress. There’s still a ton of work to do.

Lessons Learned

What did I learn from all of this? I learned many things, especially about irrigation systems. But the biggest and most surprising lesson I learned is about government.

Ronald Reagan famously said, “Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.” His solution was to shrink the government.  

I learned the opposite lesson — that if you’re not happy with your government, then the solution is to get more involved thereby making the government bigger. Or rather, it’s not the size of government that matters, it’s the size of our participation. 

I started this journey with the mindset of a consumer. I didn’t like that our community board raised dues every year. I grumbled. I wondered why. 

Now I know why. It’s because I didn’t get off my ass and help. My and others’ lack of participation is a key part of the problem.   

Co-managing a community’s resources demands a lot of commitment, time, attention, skill, and labor. Money is needed too, but that’s just the ante. If you don’t get personally involved and outsource the work to professionals, then you’ll probably end up paying too much for shitty results like we did. 

By experiencing this on the scale of our 57 household community, I got the strong sense that this is what’s happened in the United States. We’ve outsourced governing our resources to professionals, and now we don’t like that they’ve arranged things to benefit themselves. 

There’s plenty of blame to go around, but a lot lay with us. Americans only spend about 15 minutes a day on public life. Perhaps we’ve gotten what we deserve? In any case, I now strongly believe that’s far, far too little participation in public life to get good results.

Luckily the solution is simple — we must dramatically increase our participation in public life, from neighborhood associations to national politics and everything in between.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but we risk letting the world burn while watching Netflix if we don’t get deeply, seriously involved in management of our life-giving local resources. There’s no amount of money that can make up for lack of care. The world needs us. 

The post What I learned about government by fixing our community’s irrigation system appeared first on Shareable.

We decided on the following rules for our local food adventure: 

• We can only purchase food produced or processed locally
• We defined local anything within 120-miles of our home. If you look on a map, Sonoma, Sacramento, and Monterey would be near north, east, and south perimeters of that boundary, respectively
• We can only buy from local retailers and restaurants. No Safeways or Chilis. 

When I mentioned this to Shareable staff, my colleague Tom teased that I sure had picked a difficult month to go local food-wise. That would be true in much of the U.S., but the Bay Area’s mild weather enables year-round farming. We’ve had no problem so far getting a wide variety of food.

That’s a good thing because my family was initially resistant to the idea. They have their favorite foods, most of which come from way outside our new local foodshed. Plus, they’re not always as eager to experiment as I am. I’m a resource-conserving freak, which invites good-natured ribbing for doing things like consolidating ketchup packets. I consider responsible consumption good citizenship, but also a fun, creative challenge. Others in my house don’t always see it that way, but they’re coming around.

Our local food challenge is a case in point. We did our first full-fledged local shopping run last Sunday at Mountain View’s award-winning farmers’ market, which is walking distance from our home. It’s really a wonder. 

First of all, it’s huge. It has 80 stands offering fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, berries, nuts, fish, beef, pork, chicken, baked goods, and more catering to a diverse clientele that’s come from around the world to work in Silicon Valley. 

The prepared food on offer is equally impressive. You can get French-styled charcuterie, tamales, Chinese dumplings, dal, samosas, pasta, hummus, smoked salmon, jams, butters…the list goes on.

It’s not unusual for me to find a few things I’ve never seen before, like limes coming from trees cross-pollinated with lemon trees. The result: limes with the juiciness of lemons. 

My wife Andrea and I strolled through the market for an hour stocking up for a week’s worth of meals. It was a fun mini-adventure filled with discovery, food banter, and crucial decisions about our sustenance for the week. 

On the way back home with our haul in tow, we talked about prices. The food was more expensive, but we guessed that the indirect benefits more than made up for this. Things like better health, more enjoyment, a stronger, greener local economy are priceless, but probably have very tangible long-term benefits.

We also had to make some adjustments. The meat is high quality, but much more expensive. Consequently, we’re buying less of it. That’s good for us, our budget, and the environment. We also needed an alternative to parmesan cheese, which we love on pasta. That took some doing, but we found a local hard cheese to try. 

The real test came in the eating over the next week. Without fail, my wife and son found everything we bought tastier than big brands. Andrea said the raspberries were raspberry-ier. Jake raved about the samosas. I dug the dal. Everything was simply superior. We weren’t surprised local food was better, but committing to an encompassing experiment drove the point home in a powerful way. 

I was stoked. This turned an experiment that my family was skeptical about into a new, better reality. We had occasionally gone to our farmers’ market in the past, but this proof of concept might be the start of a new, regular habit for our family. 

The post This is my family on local food appeared first on Shareable.

A decade of massive fraud

My departure from Wells Fargo is long overdue. I began to doubt them back in 2010 when they were fined $200 million for a practice designed to generate excess overdraft fees, which also disproportionately impacted low-income customers. This was a low blow, taking money from working people struggling to make ends meet. It’s the financial equivalent of kicking a person when they’re down.

This had my resentment on a long simmer, but I didn’t leave. Because I traveled frequently, I wanted the full range of services and geographic coverage that a big, global bank offered. Plus, all of my personal finances revolved around Wells Fargo. I had direct deposit from my employer, automatic bill pay for key expenses, a debit and credit card, checking, and a retirement account. I thought it would be difficult to change banks.

However, my resentment came to a boil over the recent fake account scandal. From 2002 to 2016, Wells Fargo employees opened unnecessary accounts for customers due to impossible sales quotas imposed by top executives. As the NY Times reported, “they opened millions of accounts in customers’ names without their knowledge, signed unwitting account holders up for credit cards and bill payment programs, created fake personal identification numbers, forged signatures and even secretly transferred customers’ money.” Wells Fargo agreed to pay $3 billion in penalties for their crimes.   

And this isn’t even their largest fine. Wells Fargo was fined over $5 billion in 2012 for their illegal mortgage lending practices. They were one of a dozen or so banks primarily responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2010. Remember that these practices, widespread at major banks like Wells Fargo at the time, triggered the Great Recession and cost around 10 million Americans their homes. All told, these banks paid a staggering $243 billion in penalties related to the subprime crisis.

In a NY Times story about the more recent fake account scandal, Nick Hanna, U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, is quoted about the case, “Wells Fargo traded its hard-earned reputation for short-term profits, and harmed untold numbers of customers along the way.”

Big banks serve investors, not depositors

Hanna’s statement almost says it all. However, it leaves out an essential truth about big, publicly-traded banks — they’re perpetually prone to fraud because they face intense pressure from investors to grow profits quarter after quarter. 

It doesn’t help that executive pay is often tied to stock performance. In this latest case, former Wells Fargo’s CEO John Stumpf agreed to pay a $17.5 million fine as the result of a separate investigation into the individual roles of executives in the sales practices fraud. 

A CNBC article said he, “had certified in 2015 and 2016 investor disclosures that touted the firm’s supposedly robust ‘cross-sell’ metric, despite knowing it was misleading.” In other words, his policies pressured employees to create fake accounts, he allowed this practice to continue for nearly a decade, and then he knowingly used the fake performance data to pump Wells Fargo’s stock price to enrich himself — all at the expense of millions of working people.   

Because of this accumulation of crimes, I left Wells Fargo. Because big banks like Wells Fargo are prone to fraud, I will likely never use one again.

Three reasons why I chose a credit union as my next bank:

1. Credit unions are nonprofit financial cooperatives that exist to serve their member-depositors. Instead of being owned by distant investors, credit unions are owned and governed by depositors like you and me. Credit unions feel no pressure from stockholders to grow profits forever. In fact, profits are returned to members in the form of better rates and fees. Structurally speaking, this is a system I can trust. The interests of credit unions are aligned with my interests, all by design. They’re also better for the local economy.
2. Credit unions are safer. Banks get into trouble when too many of their loans go bad. For-profit banks are prone to more risky lending, as in the case of subprime mortgages, because of the pressure they feel to continually grow profits. As local nonprofit institutions, credit unions are prudent lenders. They generally know their customers better than big banks and don’t feel pressure to make risky loans. Their performance during the subprime crisis is a testament to their stability — they didn’t increase their subprime lending in the run-up to the crisis and therefore had far fewer failures than traditional banks.
3. They’re a better deal for ordinary depositors like me. They may not have all the bells and whistles of a big bank, but generally speaking, they offer higher savings rates and lower fees and loan rates. For instance, I was earning a typical big bank rate of .01% at Wells Fargo on money in my checking account versus my new rate of 2% at Meriwest. That’s 20 times better!

I also got nearly everything I had with Wells Fargo including federally insured deposits, free checking after meeting a reasonable minimum deposit, debit card, online and mobile banking, automatic bill pay, and more. While credit unions are often geographically limited, they make up for it by working together. A national network of credit unions gives customers surcharge-free access to 30,000 ATMs across the U.S. plus 10 other countries. The only thing Meriwest didn’t have is Zelle for sending money via mobile phones, but they have a similar service. 

Wells Fargo undoubtedly has other services that Meriwest doesn’t, but I don’t need them. For core banking services, Meriwest has me covered. My experience matches up pretty well with other articles analyzing the pros and cons of credit unions, but I encourage you to do your own research.  

Switching to a credit union was easy

My fear that switching banks would be difficult turned out to be totally overblown. I was able to do everything online in about an hour. These days there’s no need to even visit a branch office. 

How did I pick Meriwest from other credit unions in my area? Meriwest is the nearest credit union and it offers the best savings rate. That made my choice easy. I also met the eligibility requirements, which like most credit unions are fairly broad. You should have no problem finding a few credit unions in your area that will take you. While my search was easy, yours could be too if you use this credit union locator tool. 

So don’t drag your feet like I did. If you use a big bank, switch. It’s easy, you’ll sleep better at night, you’ll join nearly 300 million credit union members worldwide, and your wallet will be much happier too.

The post Why I switched to a credit union from a big bank and why you should too appeared first on Shareable.

Case in point, a recent hike our family went on in nearby Santa Clara. My wife Andrea picked out a perfect #LocalYear hike for us at Ulistac Natual Area (UNA). Perfect because I wanted to get to know the land and heritage of my area better during 2020.

According to Ulistac Natural Area Restoration and Educational Project, the local non-profit responsible for the land, UNA is the only dedicated natural open space in the City of Santa Clara. 

UNA’s 40 acres of undeveloped land along the Guadalupe River, not far from the largest nearby city, San Jose, is a tiny oasis of natural beauty in a giant suburban desert. It’s also a work in progress as UNA and its many volunteers attempt to return the tract to pre-colonial condition.

As we hiked the area, I started to grok how difficult that’s going to be. Just across the street from the entrance is a sprawling townhouse development. Tall levees straightjacket the river. There’s a large, concrete flood control pump house in the middle of the park. I also noticed several towering eucalyptus trees, an invasive species from a different continent over 7,000 miles away.

However, the most significant thing about the land isn’t what’s there today — it’s what’s missing, the Ohlone. That’s the name for the various indigenous peoples who tended the land in the area for up to 3,000 years before European colonization. The name of the preserve is derived from their language. It refers to one past use of the area — a place to weave baskets. Today, the Ohlone don’t have a reservation, a great injustice, although there are private efforts to repatriate land and provide a basis for the small number of remaining Ohlone to revive their culture.  

While on top of a levee, I got a sense of how beautiful the valley must have been under Ohlone care. With a little research, I learned it was a paradise made even more bountiful by the Ohlone’s land management practices. An unrestrained river fed fertile bottom land. Herds of tule elk, pronghorn, and mule deer roamed the grasslands and forests. Streams teemed with salmon, perch, and stickleback. Waterfowl were plentiful and a key Ohlone food source. As is the case today, man and beast enjoyed one of the most hospitable climates on the continent. The first European to set eyes on Santa Clara Valley, Jose Ortega, called it, “Llano de los Robles,” the valley of the oaks.

Much later, after the Ohlone were decimated by European settlers, it was called The Valley of Heart’s Delight due to the abundance of orchards, flowering trees, and plants. I’ve seen old postcards of the valley. The adjective idyllic would not be an exaggeration. It was a paradise too, though of a vastly different kind.   

Underneath all the subdivisions, office parks, and asphalt is some of the best soil in California. As a longtime gardener here, I can attest to the fertility of the soil. You can grow almost anything here.  

Now the area is famously known as Silicon Valley. It’s a real life example of a place where, as Joni Mitchell sang, “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” 

While Silicon Valley is celebrated globally as a regional economic powerhouse, it looks much different from a historical perspective. To me it looks like paradise destroyed twice. My appreciation for the beauty that remains is intensely bittersweet. The area’s incredible economic success seems a grossly insufficient consolation prize. The march of time can’t be stopped, but surely much more of what once was could have been carried forward to enrich us all. Instead, our shared heritage — both indigenous and colonial — has been almost completely wiped out. Tiny, broken fragments remain like this precious preserve. All for what? So few got rich in treasure, while we’re all left poorer in soul. 

On this Thanksgiving weekend, I’m keeping this complicated history in mind, meditating on what has been lost, and giving thanks for the beauty that has been saved. We can’t rewrite history, but we can write a future with more soul, wisdom, and reverence for our shared heritage.

The post Thankful for the land appeared first on Shareable.

I’ve largely met that commitment despite COVID-19 making it a mighty inconvenient time to stop shopping online. While I haven’t been able to completely avoid chain stores, which I explained in a prior post, I’ve made only two online purchases since I launched #LocalYear — a smart plug to save energy only available through a partner of our energy provider and a doctor recommended supplement I couldn’t get elsewhere. 

I also bought three things through a COVID-19 hybrid of online and offline shopping: a toolbox for my neighborhood association, some computer accessories for work, and freeze-dried food for our family’s go bag. This is where I ordered online, but did curbside pick up at a local store. You know the drill. 

Believe me, I spent hours exploring alternatives to buying these few things online. In the end, I decided to choose pragmatism over purity — a few exceptions wouldn’t invalidate my experiment. I’d still learn a lot by limiting 98% of my buying to offline sources.  

So other than these exceptions, I did almost no online shopping since I kicked off my #LocalYear. That’s a huge change for me. I’ve been a nearly rabid online shopper for years. My online spending was probably in the low four-digit range annually when you factor in all the buying I did for myself, work, and our household. I was hooked.

The biggest result of limiting online shopping is that I buy a lot less stuff overall. I haven’t replaced online with offline shopping. I just go without. Frankly, I don’t miss online shopping much. I adjusted. It’s that simple. It probably helps that I’ve lived in both worlds — one with and without online shopping. I did perfectly fine without it in the old days. 

This has saved me a ton of money. It’s also allowed me to give more money to friends and causes. I may have done that anyway because times are tough, but having more disposable income is likely part of the psychology. 

I’ve also done far more repairs this year than ever before, particularly with clothes, shoes, and gardening. As you know, online shopping is more convenient and gives you access to more options. When it’s taken out of the equation, repairing what you have becomes a more attractive option than going store shopping, at least for me. I find it’s more convenient to fix something than go shopping for a replacement. This is especially true when you keep all you need for repairs on hand, which I’ve begun to do. It also helps if you like what you have already and can’t find the exact thing anymore, which is all too common these days.

COVID-19 also undoubtedly played a role here. Offline shopping isn’t as attractive or available during a pandemic, naturally. So, I just didn’t go shopping as much. I also had more time at home and that led me to do more DIY projects around the house, neighborhood, and also with personal items. 

I’ve really enjoyed this aspect of 2020. I’ve become a more skilled and confident handyperson. My DIY imagination has expanded. I’m considering more ambitious DIY projects going forward. And for the first time in years, this Powerpoint jockey actually has callouses on his hands. And while it would be hard to prove, I feel like my nearly daily habit of repair has changed my physique. My hands, arms, and upper body feel stronger. I’m nowhere near six pack land, but there’s a noticeable change. It feels good. 

While I’ve reduced my overall spending, I spent a lot more on tools and parts. For instance, I’ve spent around $1,000 on tools and parts to fix our neighborhood association’s irrigation system. I also spent a bunch on emergency preparedness gear. This was the result of participating in Cool Block, which focuses participants on actions toward a safer, greener, and more social neighborhood.

One downside of this experiment from a DIY perspective is reduced access to specialty items. As a maker and repairer, I very much appreciate the unbeatable selection of parts, tools, and material you can find online. That’s one aspect I genuinely miss. Researching parts stokes my creativity and helps me come up with good solutions. 

I realize now that most of my 2020 personal spending was in local grocers, hardware stores, and restaurants. That in itself is a kind of grounding experience. As you’d expect with this kind of experiment, I’ve gotten much more familiar with my local retail landscape. 

Over time, I’ve changed my use of local stores too. I worry less about whether or not I get everything I need on a trip. I can always come back and the additional trip is positive since I mostly walk or bike to stores. More trips nets me a slightly more active lifestyle and more social interaction. I’m a less efficient shopper, and all for the better.

The above is especially true for food shopping. We’re lucky to have four grocers nearby including the bodega on the corner that offers a perhaps found-only-in-Mountain View mix of Latin and Russian items. You can get nopales and caviar in one stop. We’ve got Ava’s downtown, which is my go-to grocery fix. They’re like a micro-Whole Foods, but owned by a local family. There’s Rose’s International Market at the intersection of Castro and El Camino, a Persian market with a popular prepared food counter. Their gheimeh is to die for. Finally, there’s Nijiya, a Japanese market where I take my son Jake for after school snacks.     

All of this has me appreciating my local downtown even more than I already did. In fact, we chose our house over 10 years ago because it’s close to downtown. But now I see downtown as precious, worth supporting more consciously, and now even more fragile due to COVID-19.

I’d be devastated if our downtown went downhill.

I think many others would be too, but they probably take it for granted like I did. This is a big mistake. Unless we realize what’s precious about our towns and connect our behaviors to what hurts and helps them — like online and chain shopping — we risk losing them. They’re more fragile than we think and very hard to revive once gone.

My conclusion from my experience is that the convenience of online shopping isn’t worth losing the vibrancy of our downtown, not nearly. I love our downtown. I’m part of it and it’s part of me. I’d die a little bit if it died. I plan to resume online shopping in 2021, but with far less intensity. I like myself, my life, and the world more with less online shopping.

The post How my hyper-local COVID-19 year changed my consumption habits appeared first on Shareable.

Well, I got my chance to experiment this past month. I’ve been active on the neighborhood, city, national, and global levels.

On the neighborhood scale, I developed a plan with two neighbors for irrigation and landscape conversion for our 57 household community. It builds on the work we’ve done over the last six months repairing our aging irrigation system, but will take things to the next level. That means a much more efficient irrigation system watering a much less thirsty, much more attractive, and functional landscape.

On the city scale, I’ve gotten a lot more involved in local elections this year. I donated to a local candidate for the first time, communicated directly with three candidates, and put more time into researching local issues. As an example of my engagement, I joined a webinar with an environmentally-minded city council candidate to discuss the possibility of starting a library of things. Nothing came of it through the candidate, but I’ve been working with another attendee to explore the idea further. Admittedly, this doesn’t sound like a lot of activity, but it qualifies as a big increase as I’ve spent nearly zero time on such things in the past.

On the national scale, I’ve gotten more involved in national elections too. I donated to five local organizations in Florida that are helping get out the vote in low-income areas. I wrote 45 letters to voters in Florida and Texas encouraging them to vote. I did some phone banking last Saturday morning. I signed up to be a poll worker, but I probably won’t get to do that. There’s been a huge spike in volunteers this year, so they may be full up now. I’ve also been more vocal politically on social media, which is a new thing for me. I feel a bit uneasy about it. I’m far from alone in thinking it’s a terrible medium for debate and I don’t want to add to the already extreme polarization. I’d be much more comfortable with an in-person, moderated, public discussion that included people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, something that’s not possible at the moment due to COVID-19.

On the global scale, I’m helping to organize an online summit of activists, thought leaders, and city officials leading the Sharing Cities movement to be held in late November. Seoul Metropolitan Government is the summit host. I’ve been working with their representative to recruit participants from three continents. The goal of the summit is to forge pathways for greater collaboration between Sharing Cities.

So, what have I learned so far?:

• No big surprises. I thought I might have a eureka moment. That hasn’t happened, at least not yet. It’s probably too early in my cosmo-local experiment to glean deep insights. I need more time to reflect.

• This is like a second full-time job. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t see engagement as drudgery, but it does demand a lot of effort. While not always exactly fun, it has been meaningful and worthwhile. It’s just that it takes a lot of time and energy. Shifting my screen time to civic life has made this shift possible, but it’s also a more demanding lifestyle. The energy to live this way doesn’t automatically come with the additional time.

• Thus, I feel spread thin and tired. Being active on all these levels means I can’t go deep on any one. I need to practice the cosmo-local lifestyle more dynamically. I can’t be heavily engaged at all levels simultaneously for long periods. However, I can shift my focus dynamically as needed, but with a foundation of relatively high and persistent local engagement as that is where I can have the biggest impact.

• Action on the local level is much more satisfying. I have more control, I get feedback, there’s a big social component, and I can experience the fruits of my labor. So much of what I’ve done at the national scale feels like time and energy thrown into a void. I don’t get any feedback. I have no idea what impact I’ll have. I know it’s important, but it feels so disembodied and impersonal. This points to some ways our national political system needs to change.

While acting at these levels simultaneously didn’t produce a big a-ha moment, it did reinforce an important lesson from this year — that non-participation has a very high cost long term. For instance, non-participation in our neighborhood association has led to much higher costs and a situation where dramatic change in how we manage our land is required to avoid serious consequences. There’s no time left to delay and not enough money for professionals to fix it. The problem requires our involvement, right now.

This is our challenge at the national and global levels in microcosm. Thus, I’ve come to see non-participation as a form of passive corruption. Non-participation allows a governance system to degrade. It can reach a point of no return. Now I can see those points of no return on a neighborhood, national, and global scale. It’s sobering and hopeful. From my experiences this year, I believe we can turn things around if a critical mass of people get involved. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, but broad participation is a precondition for positive change.

The post Living hyper-locally, sharing globally appeared first on Shareable.

September 30th marked the eighth and final meeting of the formal program. We met roughly once a month to report on our completed activities, troubleshoot challenges, and plan our next actions following the eight themed meetings of the Cool Block program.

And the results are in! The Cool Block dashboard shows that our group of nine households took a total of 159 actions reducing our carbon emissions by 44,148 pounds or an average of 18.3% per household. 

While I’m really proud of my neighbors for achieving these numbers, they only tell a small fraction of the story. It’s a story of perseverance, kindness, and calm under pressure. 

Born in crisis

My Cool Block group crystallized in the crucible of the pandemic. Cool Block was designed to be an in-person organizing program. In fact, face-to-face meetings are foundational to the practice of community organizing. Meeting in person is the best way to build trust, community, and commitment. That’s why when the pandemic hit, face-to-face meetings were out and no one including me or the Cool Block organization was sure of how to proceed. 

I had just knocked on 57 doors, held a recruitment gathering for 16 households, and formed our group. We were ready to hold the first of eight organizing meetings. I didn’t want to stop, but I wondered if my neighbors were up to continuing given the added stress and demands of the pandemic. When I shared the dilemma with them, a consensus quickly emerged. We’d first attend to the immediate needs of our neighbors and then continue Cool Block virtually. When most other groups in our town paused, my neighbors calmly pressed on. 

It was during this transition that a neighbor started a Slack group for our Cool Block. This catalyzed a wave of mutual aid. Instead of Cool Block becoming an additional burden during a trying time, it became a source of comfort, aid, and community. This is when the group crystallized. I had worried that our Cool Block would collapse, but instead, it blossomed. My neighbors truly saved the day. I’m so grateful.   

Some of the highlights of that period include:

• Mutual aid. We organized three food drives for the local food bank, two drives for personal protective equipment for the local hospital, and one toiletry drive for vehicle dwellers in our town. I helped one Cool Block couple find homes for two almost new Public commuter bikes. With help from Reach Potential Movement, they made their way to two deserving folks. They were so grateful. One had been renting a bike every day to get to his restaurant job. 
• Eldercare. The group checked in with all our neighbors, especially the elders in our community. A variety of care was given, though it mostly took the form of grocery runs.
• Tons of sharing. More goods were shared in three months than our 10+ years in the neighborhood. The flow was prodigious. It included tools, electronics, books, food, lots of food, and more. We were gifted chocolate banana bread, several loaves of sourdough bread, muffins, green salsa made with fresh tomatillos, a wine bottle opener, tools, and more. We gifted a Chromebook, masks, homemade bread, homegrown corn, watermelons, and more. Goods flowed every which way. It was helped along by our Slack group’s #goods-exchange channel, a spreadsheet-based tool library set up by fellow Cool Blockers, and socially distanced goods swap held outside in our common area.

  

• Grounds care. A subset of our Cool Block group began landscape and irrigation system maintenance work on our community’s five-acre property. At first, we focused on planting some edibles in common areas. Along the way, we learned that our irrigation system was in bad shape. We shifted our focus to address this more urgent problem. After months of work patching up our decades-old system, we’re on track to save 500,000 gallons in the next twelve months. This was a major undertaking. I’ll share more about it in another post.
• Neighborhood communication. Our Slack group has become the neighborhood’s water cooler. It has twelve channels on practical topics like Cool Block and gardening to fun stuff like board games and adorable animal pics. We already had a neighborhood Google group, but Slack has proved a more convivial way for neighbors to interact. Since we started it in March, over 4,400 messages have been exchanged. That’s by far the most communication between neighbors I’ve experienced. 

Lesson learned

Here’s the best part of this. You’d think me, the sharing guy, would be behind all of this sharing. The truth is I only initiated Cool Block. Everything else was started by my neighbors. I thought about doing much of it, but time and time again my neighbors beat me to it. I just fell in behind them and participated as much as I could in what they started.  

If this experience taught me anything, it’s this — there’s a huge untapped demand for commoning. I knocked on a few doors to get people together for Cool Block, then the activity just gushed. Perhaps the pandemic helped, but this is an era of emergencies. People want to pull together even if they aren’t always quite sure how to.  

As a result of my experience, I can’t recommend Cool Block or similar programs enough. What counts is the right kind of invitation and process to participate. It needs to be trusted, inclusive, flexible, and well structured. Cool Block offers that. 

That said, I have to admit that at first I was scared to start Cool Block. However, after knocking on our neighborhood’s 57 doors, I wanted to knock on every door in town. I imagined millions of people like me knocking on doors all around the world — modern-day Paul Reveres not warning of danger, but inviting people to change their little corners of earth together. 

It’s probably going to take that and more to tackle the big challenges of our day like climate change. Like most if not all momentous social change, it demands we enter the arena and put our bodies on the line. Maybe I’m getting a little carried away, but my Cool Block experience showed me the potential of local organizing.

Next steps for our Cool Block

It turns out I’ll be knocking on doors again, this time to deliver certificates of appreciation to my teammates from the mayor of Mountain View for being the first group in town to finish the Cool Block program. I couldn’t be more proud of my neighbors. The credit goes to them.

And we’ll be carrying on! We decided to meet quarterly to continue improving our neighborhood. One idea is to host a series of community events mixing sustainability-themed activities like clothing swaps with pure fun like concerts. 

In addition, a small group of us are planning a big, complex landscape and irrigation conversion project that could save us another half-million gallons a year if we’re successful. It won’t be easy, but these last months were the perfect warm-up to take on such a challenging project.

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