Hawaii to Norway to Scotland: Divestment Movement Racks Up Wins: Leaders Cite Destructive Nature of Coal and Oil Industries in Decision to Divest from Fossil Fuels

Fossil Fuel Free Rally (Friends of the Earth Scotland/flickr/cc)

by Nadia Prupis, staff writer, Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/05/28/hawaii-norway-scotland-divestment-movement-racks-wins 

 

Rack up some more wins for divestment: the University of Hawaii System, the University of Edinburgh, and the Norwegian wealth fund have all within the last week answered the growing global call for institutions to cut ties with the fossil fuel industry.

Norway's parliamentary parties announced on Thursday that the government would divest its $900 billion sovereign wealth fund from coal, citing the industry's impact on climate change. According to the Associated Press, environmentalists estimate that about $11 billion of that fund - the largest endowment in the world and often referred to as the oil fund - is currently invested in coal.

Greenpeace Norway activist Truls Gulowsen told the AP, "We expect that billions of euros will be withdrawn from the coal industry, when this happens... This is a huge win for the divestment movement and a real sign of hope that investment patterns can be changed."

The rule is expected to be formally approved on June 5 with the full support of both the government and opposition parties. Norway's decision comes just days after the University of Edinburgh announced its plan to divest from three of the world's largest fossil fuel producers within six months.

Organizers with the Edinburgh People & Planet student group campaigned for three years to convince the university to divest its $455 million endowment fund from fossil fuels. Following a 10-day student occupation of its finance department, University of Edinburgh officials said on Tuesday that the school would pull funds from coal and tar sands, although they would grant the targeted companies four weeks to respond.

"Companies involved in coal and tar sands extraction are irrevocably damaging our climate and attempts to engage with them to mitigate their climate impacts have failed," Miriam Wilson, Fossil Free campaign coordinator at People & Planet, said at the time.

"Eighty-percent of coal reserves and all of the Canadian tar sands need to stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change. We urge the University of Edinburgh to go beyond today's announcement and commit to full divestment within 5 years - nothing short of this is enough."

If nothing short of full divestment is the goal, the University of Hawaii heard that message loud and clear. The school last week announced its plan to end all of its fossil fuel holdings by 2018, which make up 5 to 7 percent of the school's $66 million endowment.

UH officials said they chose to divest for both economic and environmental reasons, but also cited "a moral and leadership rationale" in their final report (pdf) detailing the decision.

"If we need to reduce our footprint to prevent humanity from significant damage, we shouldn't invest in companies that continue to benefit from [carbon dioxide]," UH chair Randolph Moore told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. "We shouldn't bet against ourselves."

The move makes UH the largest higher education institution in the U.S. to divest from fossil fuels. In a press release, Dr. Joe Mobley, a marine biology professor and a faculty representative representative on the task group for divestment and sustainability, said the decision was "the perfect model of climate activism."

"Regents, faculty and students alike came together, shared their concerns over the scope and speed of climate change, particularly as it affects the Hawaiian Islands, then did something about it," Mobley said.

Ten Demonstrations That Changed the World: As the 20 June Demo Approaches, it’s Worth Remembering That Mass Marches Have Been Crucial to All the Most Important Struggles

Hyde Park, February 15, 2003

by Chris Nineham, Counterfire: http://www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/17835-ten-demonstrations-that-changed-the-world

The role of street protest is often written out of history and sometimes even questioned by people on the left.

But, as the 20 June demo approaches, it’s worth remembering that mass marches have been crucial to all the most important struggles.

Demonstrations almost always help strengthen and focus a movement and keep an issue in the public eye. But they have also helped launch campaigns and revolutions, win the vote, overturn hated laws and bring down regimes.

Marches are always part of a wider process of organising and resisting, but as this (by no means definitive) list shows, they can be a catalyst for strikes, occupations and all sorts of civil disobedience. They are an indispensible method of bringing activists together with the much wider social base necessary for real change.

No doubt I have missed many of the best examples. Send us suggestions and we will publish a master list!

1 The right to vote | 6 May, 1867 | Clerkenwell to Hyde Park, London

Panicked by the growing influence of the Reform League's campaign to widen the vote to include at least some of the working class, the government banned this demonstration, claiming it would interfere with ‘the enjoyment of the Park by the people, and is calculated to endanger the public peace’. They summoned the Hussars, drafted thousands of special constables and had Woolwich Arsenal working overtime making staves and pikes.

On the day, according to author Paul Foot, the government had to back off:

‘There were so many demonstrators, so many gates to the park, so many separate meetings planned there. The troops, the police and the special constables kept their distance. Vast crowds flocked into the park through all the entrances … this was the first time that any political organisation representing the working class had openly and successfully defied the law of their masters, and the effect on the masters was catastrophic.’

Two weeks later the proposed electoral reform bill was amended and the number of people enfranchised was quadrupled.

2 ‘Women’s Sunday’ | 21 June 1908 | Embankment to Hyde Park, London

The conventional history of the Suffragette movement focuses on dramatic acts by prominent individuals. But the women’s suffrage movement also held monster demonstrations, the first and biggest of which was in 1908. The Times newspaper reported that 750,000 people attended.

As one historian of the period explains the demonstration was key to popularising the movement by ‘bringing new people in, inspiring them at a time when they could see how broad the support is for a cause they are beginning to identify with.’

Change came a few years later at the end of WW1 in 1918 when legislation gave about 8.4 million women the vote. Women were properly enfranchised in Britain in 1928.

3 Toppling the Tsar | 23 February 1917 | St Petersburg

On international Women’s Day 1917 in Russia, a strike wave started with a demonstration. The protest was organised by women, mainly at factory level. As one participant explained, 'the idea of going into the streets had long been ripening among the workers; only at that moment nobody imagined where it would lead.'

Leon Trotsky described how the demonstration became a catalyst:

‘A mass of women, not all of them workers, flocked to the municipal Duma demanding bread. It was like demanding milk from a he-goat. Red banners appeared in different parts of the city, and inscriptions on them showed that the workers wanted bread, but neither autocracy nor war. Woman’s Day passed successfully, with enthusiasm and without victims. But what it concealed in itself, no one had guessed even by nightfall.’

Next day, St Petersburg was paralyzed by a strike wave and continuous street demonstrations. Three days later the Tsar was forced to abdicate. The revolutionary cycle of 1917 had begun.

4 Breaking British rule | 17 March 1919 | Cairo

In response to the British arrest of Egyptian leaders, more than 10,000 teachers, students, workers, lawyers, and government employees set off for Al Azhar in Cairo in Egypt’s biggest demonstration. They wound their way to Abdin Palace and were joined by thousands more, who ignored British roadblocks and bans.

Cairo’s lead was taken up around the country. Demonstrations, strikes and occupations followed in a national movement against British rule which reverberated around the colonial world.

The British responded with violence. By the summer, more than 800 Egyptians had been killed.But the movement was too strong to be repressed and in 1922 the British had to grant Egypt nominal independence.

5 Freedom road | 24 March, 1964 | Selma to Montgomery, Alabama

After months of campaigning and a brutal response by state police, 8,000 black and white activists set out on the fifty miles from Selma Alabama to the state capital Montgomery, demanding black voter enfranchisement. The support the campaign had built up over the months had forced President Johnson to federalize the Alabama National Guard and allow the demonstration to go ahead.

By the last day the crowd had swelled to 30,000 including a raft of celebrities. The march electrified the country. A few months later, Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act which forced all states in the US to register black voters. Selma transformed Southern politics and was followed by a wave of black militancy.

6 ‘Demanding the impossible’ | 6 May, 1968 | Paris

After the hated CRS riot police occupied the University of the Sorbonne in Paris, the largest student union in France and the union of university teachers called a march to protest against the police action.

More than 20,000 students, teachers and supporters showed up. Buoyed by the turnout, they marched through Central Paris to gain support, chanting ‘Sorbonne for the students! CRS = SS! And Down with police repression.’ According to one account ‘The general public was rather sympathetic. There was occasional applause and no boos”.

The situation changed when the marchers approached the university. The police attacked with unexpected savagery, and their action sparked ‘a real battle, with charges and counter-charges, cobblestones versus grenades. The air was thick with teargas, yellowish with a sweet and acrid taste’.

Images of street fighting and police brutality flashed around the country and the world that night. The confrontation led to a month of insurgent protests and the longest general strike in history. The French ‘May events’ helped ignite years of radical struggle around the world.

7 The March against death | 15 November, 1969 | Washington and San Francisco

These demonstrations against the Vietnam war were the biggest up to that time in both cities. Organisers estimated there were a quarter of a million in San Francisco and three quarters of a million in Washington.

Historian of the movement Tom Wells wrote that in Washington ‘thousands of demonstrators tired of waiting to move up the Avenue and simply streamed across the Mall’s grassy acres towards the monument’.

Publicly the government was dismissive, privately it panicked. Senior officials admitted the administration felt threatened and isolated. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ‘repeatedly referred to the fate of Weimar Germany as the streets around the White House filled with marchers.’

The Vietnam war dragged on for four and a half more years and there were further huge mobilisations. But from this point on President Nixon knew the game was up and he began limiting conscription and withdrawing troops. 50,000 were pulled out in December 1969 alone.

8 Toppling Thatcher | 31 March, 1990 | Kennington Park to Trafalgar Sq

200,000 people marched from to Trafalgar Square against Thatcher’s flagship poll tax. The police attacked demonstrators as they paused outside Downing Street leading to a riot across the area.

The demonstration dominated the news agenda and took the already powerful movement to a higher level, giving a huge boost to the non payment campaign. In the weeks after the riot some council workers struck and refused to collect the tax.  By June a third of people in England and Wales hadn’t paid the tax.

Crowds of protesters besieged the hearings and people stopped bailiffs seizing the belongings of non-payers. The poll tax was a disaster for Thatcher. On 22 November she resigned. The tax was scrapped before the 1992 election.

9 Overturning a coup | April 13, 2002 | Caracas

Hundreds of thousands marched on the presidential Palace in the centre of Caracas when they heard that President Hugo Chavez had been removed by a coup led by big business and covertly supported by the US.

A journalist at the scene reported:

‘They were chanting slogans in favor of Chavez, and carrying portraits of the deposed president. This march was clearly headed towards the city centre, as were a stream of buses apparently commandeered by other chavistas. Neighborhood police were eyeing them carefully, but letting them pass’

The scale of the protest didn’t just paralyse the police, it broke the military support for the coup. The next day Chavez was returned to the Presidential Palace where he was ‘mobbed as soon as he left his helicopter by the thousands of supporters who were now in a state of near delirium.’ 13 April, 2002 gave the left a huge boost throughout Latin America.

10 ‘The second superpower’ | 15 Feb, 2003| Global

15 February, 2003 was the biggest mass protest in history with demonstrations in around 800 cities worldwide and the participation of around 30 million people.

The protests didn’t stop the war on Iraq, though they caused consternation in British government circles. Just eight days before the invasion, British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon phoned his US opposite number Donald Rumsfeld and told him Britain might not be able to participate in the invasion. Tony Blair himself admitted later that "I thought these really could be my last days in office".

But 15 February, 2003 and the subsequent marches and protests helped turn whole populations against the West’s foreign wars. British opposition reached over 50% in the days around the demonstration, and the day after the demo the New York Times called anti-war public opinion ‘the second superpower.’

After a series of further demonstrations, Tony Blair was eventually forced to resign over the war. Anti-war public opinion has since become a major inhibitor for more foreign interventions.


Chris Nineham

Chris Nineham is a founder member of Stop the War and Counterfire, speaking regularly around the country on behalf of both. He is author of The People Versus Tony Blair and Capitalism and Class Consciousness: the ideas of Georg Lukacs.

Portland, Oregon is the Alternative Commuter’s Paradise

Portland Oregon from the east (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by John McDuling, Quartz: http://qz.com/409967/portland-oregon-is-the-alternative-commuters-paradise/

Portland, Oregon is known for its coffee, its hipsters,  generally being a nice place, and, umm, the comedy series Portlandia.

But it’s also becoming known as an alternative commuter’s paradise (and not just because of events like the Next Big Ride, where thousands of people cycle around the city naked).

According to a new study by Michal Sivak, director of the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, of the 30 biggest cities in the US,  Portland and its hipster peer, Austin, Texas, have the highest proportion of workers who don’t commute at all.

Unsurprising to anyone who has ever visited, Portland also has a higher proportion of people that commute to work on a bicycle.

 














The Pacific Northwestern enclave is also in the top 10 cities for using public transport (the city is known for its excellent light rail and streetcar systems) and walking to work. Conversely, it’s in the bottom 10 cities for driving to work alone - which is still the way most Americans (76.4% of them, according to this study) get to work.

These Minnesotans Boosted Walking in Their Small Town by 70% - Here's How

ndy.com

by Jay Walljasper, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/these-minnesotans-boosted-walking-in-their-small-town-by-70-percent-heres-how

On a gray and chilly weekday afternoon in Albert Lea, Minnesota, the new five-mile trail around Fountain Lake draws more walkers and bikers than you’d expect in a town its size.

The small downtown is filled with people walking between the bank, library, shops, churches, schools, restaurants, and - in a perfect Prairie Home Companion touch - the Sportman’s Tavern, which advertises a “cabbage roll hotdish” as the daily special.

It’s often mistakenly assumed that no one walks in small towns, except maybe from their pickup truck to the Wal-Mart entrance. But walking is more common in smaller communities than people think.

In towns with populations between 10,000 and 50,000, more than 8% of all trips are made on foot. That’s second only to “urban core” communities, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Albert Lea, population 18,000, is working to prove that healthy lifestyle choices can be small town priorities. “We’re not a resort town or a college town,” explained former City Councilwoman Ellen Kehr. “We’re an ag-based rural city promoting healthy living because it’s the right thing to do and it’s how we want to live and want our children to live.”

In 2009, Albert Lea adopted a community-wide approach to wellness laid out in Dan Buettner’s best-selling book Blues Zones. In the book, he examines the places around the world where people live the longest and healthiest lives. “The idea is to make the healthy choice the easy choice,” Buettner said.

So how did Albert Lea get more people walking in a rural region where driving is deeply embedded in the fabric of everyday life? The program consisted of three main steps:

1. Creating a public education campaign

The program generated a community-wide campaign around the importance of physical activity. Local businesses, schools, public agencies, the media, and citizens were asked to continually reinforce the idea that people should get outside and walk. “It has reconnected our community in a way that I never thought possible,” notes Randy Kehr, the executive director of Albert Lea’s chamber of commerce. “Sociability is as important to health as exercise and eating.” 

2. Organizing social groups to walk or bike regularly

Residents were encouraged to create informal exercise groups. Planning activities with other people can add extra incentive and accountability, making it easier to get off the couch. Albert Lea’s residents formed about 30 different walking and biking groups that met three to seven times a week during the program. About half of those groups are still going strong five years later. 

3. Making public spaces more appealing for pedestrians

Albert Lea’s downtown area was made more walkable by eliminating unnecessary street lanes, widening sidewalks, restoring diagonal parking, replacing some stoplights with stop signs, and extending sidewalks at intersections to shorten the crossing distance on busy streets. Sidewalks were added to more than six miles of city streets in areas near schools, senior centers, and businesses. And the city built a new bikeway that connected a nearby state park to Albert Lea’s downtown and commercial district.

Around one-quarter of adults in Albert Lea were involved in the Blue Zones project, along with half of local workplaces, and nearly all kids in grades three through eight. According to the National Vitality Project, walking has increased in Albert Lea by 70% and bicycling by 74% in the past five years. Buettner reports that residents who participated in the program together lost nearly 8,000 pounds.

City Councilmen Al Brooks, who now walks two and a half miles every day, credits the campaign with big improvements to his own health. “When I started four years ago, I had high cholesterol and high blood pressure,” he said. “Now my cholesterol is lower, my blood pressure is 116/70, and I lost 15 pounds.”

"Small towns can reinvent themselves as places faster than big towns,” says Dan Burden, one of America’s foremost authorities on walkable communities. Burden helped map out Albert Lea’s original strategies in 2009. He’s also the former bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the state of Florida, and has brought innovative ideas on walkability to thousands of communities.

“When I first came into Albert Lea, I’ll be honest, it looked like the downtown was closed,” he said to a room of local officials in Albert Lea’s City Hall. “There were businesses but there was no life in the streets. That’s changed now.”

Jay Walljasper wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Jay writes, speaks and consults about how to create more healthy, happy, enjoyable communities. He is the author of the Great Neighborhood Book. His website: www.JayWalljasper.com

Marshall Ganz on the Power of Social Movements

by Corey Donahue, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/marshall-ganz-on-the-power-of-social-movements/

 

Marshall Ganz, senior lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, gave the closing keynote at the Carnegie Foundation’s second annual Summit on Improvement in Education. 

 

During his address, Ganz spoke about the history of organizing in the United States, his personal involvement in social movements, and he offered a framework for social action.

Ganz began by highlighting how the American government has historically been better at inhibiting change than enabling it: “Deep reform has rarely emerged from within government.”

As a result, movements of moral reform have often emerged from outside government, through social movements, which Ganz believes are “a uniquely critical and important mechanism of change and deep reform in our country.”

As examples, Ganz highlighted the movements for the abolition of slavery, temperance and agrarian reforms, women’s rights, gay rights, and others. These movements have come from people and leaders who are responding to unjust circumstances by asserting new values and mobilizing political power to translate those values into action.

Leadership for social movements requires learning how to translate our values into the emotional resources that enable us to respond to challenge with courage rather than fear.

Ganz’s personal introduction to organizing came in the summer of 1964, when he left Harvard to volunteer for the Mississippi Summer Project, an effort to register African-American voters during the Civil Rights Movement. There, Ganz saw that “people of the problem have to be authors of the solution. … What we learned is that there is a difference between resources and power.”

The movement showed that people who seemingly are without resources (such as money) have other resources (such as personal will and moral authority) that can be used to expose the fact that power is always dependent to some degree on those whom it exploits. Ganz later took these lessons to work with Cesar Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers union) in California.

Throughout his career in organizing and work at Harvard University, Ganz has developed a framework for social action based around the heart (narrative), the head (strategy), and the hands (action). Taken together, this framework can help leaders build a successful movement around some moral dilemma.

By heart, Ganz refers to capturing human will through the emotional power of narrative: “Leadership for social movements requires learning how to translate our values into the emotional resources that enable us to respond to challenge with courage rather than fear.”

Through this translation, done principally via narratives and storytelling, we can assert why we care about the outcomes of any given movement. Narratives, and especially their emotional components, allow us to confront challenges, find hope, and resist reacting with fear. Stories are a source for translating values into hope and self-efficacy, which allows leaders to engage others in purposeful collective action.

By head, Ganz means the strategy that allows one to “turn what we have into what we need in order to get what we want.” Leading change requires challenging the status quo, being resourceful with one’s assets, and understanding the interdependent or relational character of power.

As in the Civil Rights Movement, leaders of social movements generally must figure out how to leverage the resources that are more widely held, such as time and people, rather than narrowly held, such as money and property. In education, Ganz showed that while educators might believe they are powerless against  external forces, the challenge is to discover how the resources they do possess can permit them to assert power.

By hands, Ganz refers to the action that comes from a willing group of people with a coherent strategy: “Action must be clear, measureable, and specific if progress is to be evaluated.” It is not enough to have convinced a large group of supporters. Instead, the strategy must be paired with measurable goals in order to learn what works and track progress towards a well-defined aim.

Lastly, Ganz spoke of the leadership that is required in order to move hearts, heads, and hands. A single leader giving orders does not lead to change. Rather, collaborative leadership based on interdependent leadership teams can create stability, motivation, and adaptation and exercise of agency by all those involved.

Ganz said, “Structure based on team leadership rather than individual leadership, when combined with shared purpose, clear norms, well-defined roles, frees creative liberty rather than constraining it.”

Ganz’s framework for social action presented Summit attendees with a way in which they can help contribute to a much-needed movement around quality improvement in our nation’s schools.

The ‘What’ and the ‘Why’ of Social Enterprise

Photo: The Nation

by Khizr Imran Tajammul, The Nation: http://nation.com.pk/columns/15-May-2015/the-what-and-the-why-of-social-enterprise

Pakistan is in dire need of channeling talent towards social enterprise development.

Unfortunately, few people understand what the sector entails. This is not surprising since we do not even recognize the space between a ‘for-profit’ and a ‘not-for-profit’ organization.

It is in this space that a social enterprise exists; where societal gain provides a healthy and necessary counterweight to financial gain and where businesses spawn to accrue and prioritize public goodwill over wealth.

To illustrate further, a social enterprise will meet the need for potable water, or energy, through a sustainable revenue generation model that does not fixate on profit maximization. It is a concept that was born many years ago but has only managed to gain currency in recent years, especially after the 2007-2008 financial crisis that forced the world to rethink business.

One notable pioneer of social enterprise development is Nobel Laureate, Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank. Working in rural Bangladesh, Yunus understood that the only obstacle between an enterprising but poor talent and a bank loan was the absence of collateral.

So Yunus replaced that collateral with a ‘peer-group-pre-requisite’, which essentially meant that any single borrower would get clubbed with four other borrowers who would collectively act as a support network and enhance the sense of accountability amongst the borrowers.

Also, if any member of the peer group defaulted, Grameen Bank would not take the borrower to court nor would it hold the group liable for default. The loan would simply be written off.

You are probably wondering like many others before you: How can such a forgiving loan policy even work? What’s the catch? Did we miss something in the fine print? Sadly, the only thing we missed, or perhaps underestimated, was the power of human behavior and the role it can play in the success of a social enterprise.

The Grameen microfinance model thrives on the relationships borrowers develop in their peer groups. Nobody wants to be seen or known as a failure in his or her community.

Furthermore, when people assume collective responsibility of a certain debt, they have a stake in the performance of other peer members; and that is when competition turns to collaboration. Suddenly, the need for collateral evaporates into thin air. A leap of faith Yunus was able to take because of his ‘faith’ in human behavior.

To date, Grameen Bank has catered to more than 7 million borrowers and 97% of the borrowers are women. Since its inception, Grameen has disbursed loans worth USD$625 billion across 78,101 villages, out of which USD$5.58 billion have been recovered, with a loan recovery rate of 98.28%. The numbers say everything.

So where do social entrepreneurs like Muhammad Yunus come from? Do they fall from the sky when you and I are asleep at night? Or do they blossom only once in a blue moon? I like to think there is a social entrepreneur in each one of us.

A social entrepreneur is deeply affected by the inadequacies of the state and chooses to bridge the gap with the resources that are available to him or her. A social entrepreneur can identify and harness the potential of an untapped social asset, just like Muhammad Yunus harnessed the potential of human behavior.

Above all, a social entrepreneur invests profit back in to the enterprise, and is not motivated by the accumulation of personal wealth. Again, Grameen Bank, 94% of which is owned by its borrowers, works as a prime example of this.

Like Bangladesh, we face a plethora of unaddressed social needs and luckily an equally large number of social assets we can use to meet those needs. Indeed, we have not been able to produce a social entrepreneur like Muhammad Yunus but that does not mean we lack the potential to do so.

Half of Pakistan’s population is still under the age of 25, and the bulk of their opportunities lie in the days ahead of them. Our youth and its potential is probably our greatest social asset - if we choose to channel it in the right direction - and our greatest liability if we fail to do so.

The other reason why social entrepreneurship can flourish in Pakistan is because the next best alternative of joining the civil service is now a dead option.

There was a time when the civil service absorbed Pakistan’s brightest talent. Young men and women who wanted to help with the affairs of the state competed for a select few, highly coveted positions in government each year.

But over the years, the growing strength of the executive threatened the prowess of the legislature and thus the role of the executive gradually languished against the hostility of successive regimes.

Today, our bright talent is lining up outside the corporate sector, competing for a position to sell detergent, biscuits, chewing gum, fizzy drinks, mobile phones, LCD screens, cars, motorbikes, credit cards and water to a sea of hapless consumers.

Either that or they are carefully considering the possibility of expatriation - the life of a second-class citizen in another nation. Very few, if any, are seriously considering entrepreneurship, let alone social entrepreneurship.

A reality that shines a dim light on our collective mindset, which follows: one, we see more people as more liabilities and not more assets; two, we are averse to the uncertainty of entrepreneurial life and perhaps ill-equipped to balance its highs and lows with an unsupportive government, spouse, family and community at large; three, we feel abundant natural resources like wind, water and sunlight are best left to large businesses and the government to harness; four, we do not have enough faith in our own ability to help ourselves; and five, we lack the courage to fail, the courage to gather ourselves from the wreckage of our failure, and to start all over again.

Muhammad Yunus has shown us how one minor social innovation can influence millions of lives. He has convinced us that social entrepreneurs can solve problems where unwieldy bureaucracies fail.

Now it is our job to recognize and reward the right talent from amongst our own lot - no-one can do this better because no one understands us like we understand ourselves.

INTERVIEW: Nicole Peterman: Founder of "Help Me With It"

Social enterprise association (Wikipedia)

by Ideas Hoist: http://ideashoist.com.au/nicole-peterman-founder-of-help-me-with-it/

Nicole is a social entrepreneur who is focused on recapturing the essential element of traditional communities - people lending a hand whenever it is needed.

Nicole’s long-term involvement in education and community has motivated her to ensure that everyone who asks for help will find it.

With postgraduate studies in business management and entrepreneurship - she is motivated to create a new way to increase connections between people who need help with those who can help.

Nicole established Help Me With It - a national social enterprise and registered charity with headquarters in Brisbane. Nicole was one of three national winners of Macquarie Bank’s 2014 Kick Starter grant - an award for innovative enterprises addressing social and community needs. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your idea and what made you decide to take the plunge and make it happen?

The mission of Help Me With It is to connect individuals who need help to do one-off tasks, with people who can volunteer their time to fix, clean, care, shop, transport, garden, sort, teach and more.

The service will directly connect thousands of people who need help with people who can help. It also addresses issues associated with traditional volunteering including the fact volunteers want more choice in what they do, and more flexibility around when they volunteer and for how long.

Community organisations and volunteering centres recruit people to volunteer their time on a regular basis. This excludes the majority of would-be volunteers in this country. The issue for many volunteers is that they have specific skills and knowledge they want to use when volunteering, and they also want flexibility in when they volunteer (i.e. not always weekly). This model therefore doesn’t require funding to be allocated to extensive training for volunteers as they can use their own skills and experience.

This service is a digital disruption in the volunteering and social service sectors. There is no organisation like it in the not-for-profit sector, although numerous for-profit organisations have similarities to Help Me With It. However there is no other not-for-profit that offers the same service that Help Me With It will offer.

I have been thinking about this idea for a few years, so the recent “plunge” was overdue in one aspect, but also timely given the focus on digital disruptions and also the way social enterprises can provide solutions to major societal issues.

Please explain your business model.

Help Me With It is a national charity and a social enterprise. We are in start-up phase now, raising seed funding. Eventually though, our profits will be reinvested so more people can use the service.

People who need help with day-to-day tasks will use the Help Me With It platform to be connected to people willing to help them. These users join for free and can post tasks for free. They will pay a single-digit fee to be connected to a volunteer.

Volunteers will help by using their skills, knowledge and time to be connected to people who need help. We’ll ask our volunteers to pay a once a year single-digit membership fee. This small fee will allow us to provide the service and cover insurance.

Volunteering centres and community organisations will refer some of their clients who are seeking help, or those who want to volunteer to Help Me With It. More information about ‘How it works’ is on the Help Me With It website, including a pictorial Business Model Canvas.

What are you working on right now and what are you most excited about in the next year?

The Help Me With It Directors are focused on raising seed funding to pilot the service on a live platform for six months. We’re also forming national corporate partnerships.

Establishing a new national charity is a big project! There is significant interest and investment for commercial digital disruptions like Uber and Airbnb. I think it is harder to seek funding for a not-for-profit enterprise that is similarly disrupting traditional services without the offer of equity. There is however more opportunities to impact social change and support people in our community who need help the most with organisations like Help Me With It.

The demand for our service is clear from extensive research and consultation … we need to find suitable funders to support this new way for people to get help and to help out. It’s still early days for Help Me With It.

Could Help Me With It be a service people can use after a natural disaster?

Yes. Usage of this service will swell after a natural disaster. It will enable emergency relief and mean support for people who need help is sustained beyond the very short term. 

How do you make ideas happen?


I’ve committed to a year with no pay, as well as committing my own finances to this project to make it happen. I’m focused, thorough and optimistic, but a realist too! Ideas are easy. Making it happen and executing an idea is the hard part.

What does your typical day look like?


I’ve consulted widely in my home town (Brisbane) and interstate over the last six months, so there are many meetings, plus of course time spent applying for grants. I also spend time buried in forecast financial statements and technical specifications!



What challenges have you faced when starting or growing a business/organisation in Australia? 

A founder of a new organisation needs to be across everything … and think through everything, simultaneously! The task of identifying agencies to work with is challenging - sometimes it’s hard to determine what they specialise in and what elements of the project would ‘fit’ best with which agency. For example, design verses development, and traditional media verses social media.

What people/companies/organisations do you think are doing really cool stuff in your industry, in Australia at the moment?


Help Me With It doesn’t fit well into one ‘industry’. It’s a tech startup and a national charity in the not-for-profit sector. I’m continually inspired by entrepreneurs in many industries. I’m envious of their ability to seek equity investment which isn’t possible for a charity.

Corporates who are supporting innovation such as NRMA and Telstra are impressive - keeping an eye on what they are doing, along with other community minded organisations such as Australia Post, is worthwhile too. 

Speaking of affecting social change, we’ve teamed up with Shout for Good to encourage readers to ‘shout a coffee’ to charity by clicking the button below. Is there a particular charity you’d like to support?

Secondbite

Name 3 websites you would recommend to our readers.

TuShare
Shelter BOX Australia
Vinomofo

Are there opportunities for people to get involved with your idea (e.g. are you looking for funding, interns, marketing help)? 

The Help Me With It Directors would appreciate introductions to people - philanthropists or corporate executives who may be interested in talking about collaborating to support us.

We’re aiming to build a community of Australian idea makers helping each other. If you could have one question answered about startups, marketing, social media, accounting, monetization, product development etc. What would it be?

I’m intrigued - what is in the water in Victoria? I take my hat off to Victorian philanthropists and bureaucratic organisations. There is considerable support for social enterprise and innovative projects in Victoria. More so than other states and territories it seems.

What’s your favourite bar/café/restaurant?

Any restaurant on the water!

From the Sparks of Hope and Frustration: Towards a New Sustainable Economy

by Michael Townsend, Founder and CEO of Earthshine, business transformation leader, writer, speaker and lecturer

When I set out on a journey in search of Capitalism 2.0, a few years ago, I was surprised at what I found - not just in terms of the range of possibilities for a more sustainable system, nor the level of radical change that will be required to deliver a real shift in our economies and our lives. The real surprise was the extent to which many of the potential solutions are already available.

The more I looked, the more I found - and, viewing the scene through a wider lens of sustainable economics, it became possible to see the pieces of a very interesting jigsaw come together, bringing into focus an attractive picture of a new, vibrant, attractive, and sustainable economic operating system.

Another important insight came from reflecting on the scope of the changes needed. If we do what is truly required, if we no longer seek to exploit people and resources, in the name of accumulating and concentrating wealth - if we no longer focus on the primary interests of financial capital alone, can we still call it Capitalism?

If what we are left with is a new and sustainable system that no longer resembles Capitalism - what would we call it? Sustainable Economy just seemed like a more appropriate working title - although, I am sure the debate will rumble on.

I also found something important for the soul - genuine cause for hope, generated by the very real sense that a new system is already manifesting - an economy within which people and businesses are able to prosper, within planetary limits. A quiet revolution is already under way - if we could just allow it to flourish.

Hope often travels hand-in-hand with frustration. I could also see that, while a new system is desirable and possible, and that change is already under way, we are currently nowhere near a tipping point, whereby the new system takes over from the old, rendering it obsolete, and transforming into a new (sustainable) mainstream. There is still a very long way to go.

These sparks of hope and frustration led to further insights and a realization that it might be possible to help accelerate the transition, by promoting greater awareness of the issues and the very real possibilities - ultimately, to enable more conscious choices by people, businesses, and our civic leaders, to start the migration towards a better system.

And so, the Sustainable Economy Project was born, out of a desire to create a better economic system - coupled with a passion to encourage a progressive form of economic activism that will help achieve this aim (for further information on the Sustainable Economy Project please visit www.the-sustainable-economy.org).

Our initial agenda for change focuses on a number of key leverage points - from changing the goals and mechanics of our system of economy, to new models of business success and investing, new financial and banking systems, new institutions and greater systemic resilience, re-localized economies, to new education curricula and models for learning. There is much work to be done.

We have been quietly establishing the infrastructure to help amplify our efforts around the world in support of accelerating the tipping point in the transition towards a sustainable economy.

A key part of this picture is a growing network of progressive business schools and universities, from around the world; they can play a major role in forming the new economy. By expanding their remit, they can act as catalysts in each region, shifting the conversation and creating a shared agenda for change within their respective business and political communities.

The next step on this life-affirming journey is what we have published today - Reframing the Game, a Sustainable Economy Special Edition of the Building Sustainable Legacies Journal.

Reframing the Game has been devised to generate a real melting pot of progressive thinking, from some of the leading players in the often separate worlds of business and academia. Enabling collaboration across these boundaries will be so important in making real change happen in our world.

Each of the contributions in this Journal helps to challenge our views on what is possible and also provides us with concrete actions on how we can make genuine progress. Many of the themes also align with the Sustainable Economy Project's agenda for change.

Paul Polman - the pioneering CEO with Unilever - sets the pace, with inspirational views on the instrumental role of business in generating a radical shift in our economies. With 2015 seen as a pivotal year, Polman reminds us that businesses have a major impact - not just in terms of their sustainability footprint - but, also in their ability to influence change at scale. By harnessing their energy, expertise and resources they can drive transformational change at a systemic level. He urges businesses to be more radical.

That we need to be playing a different game is becoming increasingly recognized. Even mainstream commentators like the FT's Martin Woolf are calling for new and radical approaches in the running of our economies.

Isabel Sebastian picks up this challenge with great gusto, and makes a great case for promoting Wellbeing Economics as a means of re-framing the game of economy and commerce. She includes practical proposals for the business and policy agendas - and how we can look beyond CSR to create the dynamic space for genuine business and economic transformation.

Transformation necessarily requires us to rethink our institutions, including our legal frameworks - do they adequately support our aims, or do they hinder the changes we need to make?

Business law is not usually included in the discourse on how to achieve a sustainable future and, thankfully, Beate Sjafjell helps us to redress the balance. Sjafjell recognizes that neither the voluntary contribution of business, nor the current regulatory framework is sufficient in driving the level of change that is needed.

She puts forward an elegant argument for reforming company law - what she refers to as the regulatory ecology of companies - including duties for the board to draw up a long-term, life-cycle based business plan. Radical, yet good business sense, when you think about it.

Another key enabler for radical change is, of course, leadership - and transformational leadership requires the right mindset. Jeanrenaud and her colleagues offer us the 'One Planet' mindset, as a powerful lever for transforming self, business and society, in the contested transition towards a sustainable economy. They help us to understand what a 'one planet' mindset is and how this state of being provides an essential condition, if we are to frame business and economics in a way that will truly enable a sustainable future.

Leaders, of course, need roadmaps and models - to help them communicate the nature of their journeys, and how they will be made. Which models work best: should we create top-down mandates, or should we try to shape more organic and grassroots oriented movements for change, from the bottom-up?

Jill Bamburg helps us to see that we should waste little time on this sterile debate, and through her work on change models, facilitated by her 2x2 to change the world, she helps us to see that it is, indeed, all good work.

In developing all the new approaches required for change, we start to gain a deeper appreciation of the value and the instrumental role of education. If we don't research and teach the right things, how can we hope to gain the skills and insights that will enable us to change the world in a robust manner?

Notwithstanding the trailblazing efforts of a few leading lights, Suzanne Benn and her colleagues note that business schools are often lagging other sectors in recognizing the growing importance of sustainability concerns in business decision-making.

As a result, emergent themes such as cooperative capitalism or new business models are neglected in business school curricula. Through the lens of the boundary objects Benn and her colleagues propose that both educators and their students should transcend disciplinary boundaries, and engage with knowledge from different disciplinary areas, to facilitate a systematic and integrated approach to sustainability.

Going further into the mechanics of transformation, Katrin Muff introduces the Collaboratory - a methodology that provides an exciting template for radical re-imagination and redesign of business schools, in finding a mission that is relevant to the challenges of our time and which makes a meaningful contribution to society.

Her approach is engaging and deep - and can be deployed as an influential alternative vehicle for wider public debate and problem solving. This approach will surely become the new normal for transformation management.

A key theme, right through this edition concerns the fundamental question, what is the purpose of business? So, it is fitting that we round off this collection with a living example of a major global business that is reinventing itself - to put real purpose at the heart of its business strategy.

Gabi Zedlmayer, Chief Living Progress Officer with HP, shares how her business is integrating 'purpose' at the very heart of strategy - to reach beyond incremental improvements, to create innovative and transformative solutions that connect customer needs with human, economic and environmental impacts. As Zedlmayer describes, the results can be game-changing.

Change we must - if we are to make the necessary transition to a sustainable world. By collaborating across boundaries, and joining up the dots across the many great works that already taking shape, we can all help accelerate a much needed tipping point. I hope you find something of real interest in this collection, and perhaps something you can take with you into your own realm of influence, towards a sustainable economy.
_________ Reframing the Game: The Transition to a New Sustainable Economy is out now, published by Greenleaf. Follow Michael Townsend on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mike_earthshine

We're Citizens, Not Subjects. We Have the Right to Criticize Government without Fear

(Photo: Miguel Juarez Lugo/ZUMA Press/Corbis)

by Chelsea Manning, Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/06/were-citizens-not-subjects-we-have-right-criticize-government-without-fear

When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur - too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen?

Think about the recent debates on torture, assassination by unmanned aircraft, secret warrants and detentions, intelligence and surveillance courts, military commissions, immigration detention centers and the conduct of modern warfare.

These policies affect millions of people around the world every day and can affect anyone - wives, children, fathers, aunts, boyfriends, cousins, friends, employees, bosses, clergy and even career politicians - at any time. It is time that we bring a health dose of sunlight to them.

I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.

In the past decade or so there have been an increasing number of clashes - both in the public and behind the scenes - between the US government, the news media and those in the public who want fair access to records that pertain to the implementation of policies by their government.

After the establishment of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice in 2006, there have been more national security and criminal investigations into journalists and prosecutions of their sources than at any other time in the nation’s memory.

Eight people have been charged under provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917 for giving documents and information to the media by this administration alone - including me, former CIA officers Jeffrey Sterling and John Kiriakou, and the former Department of State analyst Stephen Jin-Woo Kim.

The roots of this crackdown seem to have begun before the administration took office: Steven Rose and Keith Weissman were prosecuted for sharing information about classified foreign policy issues to members of the media, analysts, and officials of a foreign nation, though neither man worked for the government or had a security clearance.

The lawyers who prosecuted Rose and Weissman successfully established their broad interpretation of the Espionage Act before Judge TS Ellis III; though he ruled in their favor, he also warned that “the time is ripe for Congress to engage in a thorough review and revision of [the Espionage Act of 1917] to ensure that they reflect ... contemporary views about the appropriate balance between our nation’s security and our citizens’ ability to engage in public debate about the United States’ conduct in the society of nations.

Read the full article at The Guardian.

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Whisteblower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley) is the US Army Private (Pfc) who leaked military and government documents to the online media outlet Wikileaks which became the basis for the Collateral Murder video, which showed the killing of unarmed civilians by a US Apache helicopter crew in Iraq.

Leaks made by Manning also resulted in the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and a series of embarrassing US diplomatic cables that became known as Cablegate. In 2013, was convicted by a military court or the disclosures and sentence to 35 years in prison.

The Social Enterprise: A Model for Shared Value

by David LePage, Network for Business Sustainability: http://nbs.net/the-social-enterprise-a-model-for-shared-value/

 

In competitive business, a “race to the bottom” can appear unavoidable. Oftentimes, businesses do not know how to get around the race to offer products or services at the lowest possible price. 

 

But this model can have negative effects. Prioritizing merely low prices as a supplier or purchaser has been known to contradict ethical and sustainable business practices.

So how can businesses be motivated to abandon a lowest cost model?

For some firms, understanding sustainability as integral to financial success has come about organically. Thirty years ago, the Brundtland Report helped trigger a shift in business thinking. It demonstrated that development decisions weren’t sufficiently considering environmental resources and limits.

Environmental issues became the foundation of the early sustainability movement across business sectors. An entire set of environmentally aware consumers and businesses came into being.

A variety of influences, or even a push from consumers, will lead some firms to add a social consideration to their sustainability efforts. The now famous consumer boycotts of NIKE, for example, pushed the company to review its social responsibility and transparency. Today, companies and researchers consider NIKE to be a prime case study and a sustainability leader.

Whatever the motivation, the harsh dichotomy between social or financial goals is disappearing. New models of shared value that create financial and social value are emerging. And, an often smaller, more humble type of business is proving to be particularly exemplary in applying this model: the social enterprise.

A Valuable Contribution

Michael Porter and Mark Kramer of Harvard Business School made a major contribution to this effort by introducing shared value about ten years ago. Shared value, as a management principle, “focuses on identifying and expanding the connections between societal and economic progress.”

Opportunities to contribute to social value through a business supply chain can include buying from local businesses, considering living wages of employees and incorporating Fair Trade products.

Sharing is Caring: Social Enterprises and Shared Value

Social enterprises put shared value into their core. These community-based businesses sell goods or services in the marketplace to achieve a social, cultural or environmental purpose; they reinvest their profits to maximize their “social mission.”

Social enterprises strive to achieve a shared value return on investment of both social impact and financial sustainability. The defining aspect of a social enterprise is not its specific corporate form, but rather the practice of prioritizing community benefits and social impact in favour of private profit or shareholder returns.

Models of incorporation for social enterprises can include non-profits (with or without charitable status), community service co-operatives, hybrid corporations with caps on dividend and asset distribution and for-profits owned by non-profits.

Specific ways that social enterprises prioritize community contributions can take many forms. For Mosaic, a non-profit that supports the integration and inclusion of new Canadians, that way is operating a translation and interpretation business service. In Vancouver, commercial janitorial services, The Cleaning Solution, provides employment for persons with mental health issues.

Whether the social enterprise is creating employment for youth and persons with barriers or championing cultural diversity, ultimately the business sees the shared value in responding to social needs.

Decisions made by social enterprises are creating positive ripples within the environment and communities. If enough firms begin to adopt the practices of social enterprises or include them in their value chain then it can move us from a marketplace merely about the economics of business transactions and into a marketplace that is pivotal in transforming and building healthy communities. 

About the Author

David LePage is a Founding Member & Chair of the Social Enterprise Council of Canada. He is also a Principal with Accelerating Social Impact (ASI), one of Canada’s first Community Contribution Corporations, a for-profit business with an entrenched social mission and a legal limit on dividend distribution. He is a partner in the recent launch of Buy Social Canada.

With more than 35 years of experience in non-profit and social enterprise sectors, David has led efforts to expand development and training for such enterprises across Canada.

For more information visit buysocialcanada.ca and socialenterprisecanada.ca.

10 Reasons Worker Cooperatives are Awesome

by ellis, The Academic Activist: http://theacademicactivist.org/10_Reasons_Worker_Cooperatives_Are_Awesome

A worker cooperative is a business owned and managed democratically by those who work for the business. 

 

This means janitors, designers, the sales team, etc. all have equal power when it comes to making decisions about how the business will operate. 

 

This model for businesses gives power to all the workers instead of few people who own the business. Imagine that tomorrow you and your boss were equals with equal amount of power. 

 

There are many worker cooperatives around the world and probably some in your city. One of the most famous worker cooperatives is the Mondragon Corporation is Spain which is a federation of worker cooperatives that consists of 257 businesses. 

 

There are many practical and philosophical benefits of worker cooperatives. The worker cooperative model is a subversive idea that challenges the status quo and doesn’t get much attention in the mainstream media. Here are ten reasons on why they’re awesome.

1. While we work towards a better future, worker co-ops can alleviate low wages that burden most workers. If a McDonald's store or gas station were owned by workers, their wages would be significantly higher. Cameron Keng argued in a Forbes article that if Apple were a worker cooperative, each employee would earn at least $403k a year. www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/12/18/if-apple-was-a-worker-cooper...

2. Through increasing worker’s wages worker co-ops can generate cash flow in poor neighborhoods which could be used to improve health and education.

3. By giving democratic control to marginalized groups we can begin to experience an alternative way of relating to others (workers, members of the community, family, friends) that is the foundation for a society free of exploitation and oppression.

4. A service worker wouldn't need to take shit from a customer in fear that they will be fired for standing up for themselves.

5. Worker co-ops give workers more flexibility and freedom to explore other skills, cleaning, marketing, management, design, technical work, that allows them to grow in various areas and explore their creative side.

6. Giving workers control over their work reduces daily repetition of monotony by allowing them to choose what they want to do everyday.

7. Tolerating sexual harassment in order to keep one's job or move up the company will be significantly reduced since no worker has more power than another.

8. Workers have the power to stop things that bosses would typically not put an end to. For example if everyone thought a project was a waste of time except the boss, a worker owned and worker managed cooperative would allow the workers to spend their energy on meaningful tasks.

9. Families can work less and spend more time together if their wages go up.

10. Less money going to capitalists perpetuating the normal top down control that people are used to.

How Complete Streets Help People and Economies

by Kaid Benfield, Better Cities and Towns: http://bettercities.net/news-opinion/blogs/kaid-benfield/21562/how-complete-streets-help-people-and-economies

The National Complete Streets Coalition, a program of Smart Growth America, released a new report analyzing street improvements in 37 neighborhoods across the country and finding that streets re-designed with all users in mind - pedestrians, transit users and bicyclists as well as drivers of motor vehicles - generally delivered positive results in the form of measurable increases in safety, non-polluting forms of transportation, and economic benefits.

The study examined projects that had before-and-after data from transportation and economic development agencies, spread across 31 cities in 18 states.

In a blog post, Smart Growth America staffer Stefanie Seskin highlighted five particular findings from the report:

• Streets were usually safer: Automobile collisions declined in 70% of projects, and injuries declined in 56% of projects. 
• This safety has financial value: Looking only within the sample, Complete Streets improvements collectively averted US$18.1 million in total collision costs in just one year.
• The projects encouraged multi-modal travel: Complete Streets projects nearly always resulted in more biking, walking, and transit trips.
• Complete Streets projects are cheap: The average cost of a Complete Streets project was just US$2.1 million - far less than the US$9 million average cost of projects in state transportation improvement plans. 
• They can be an important part of economic development: The findings suggest that Complete Streets projects were supportive of increased employment, net new businesses, higher property values, and new private investment.

(Full disclosure: I am a board member of Smart Growth America. I have had no connection with or advance notice of the study I am reporting today).

For example, the report highlights Dubuque, Iowa, where the city reconsidered four main avenues in its historic Millwork District, replacing sidewalks, easing pedestrian street crossings, adding new street lights, painting "sharrows" (designed to alert other users that bicyclists are sharing the road space), and creating a multi-use trail. Within a year, bicycling use increased by 273%.

Since the project's completion, the neighborhood has experienced more than $34 million in new private investment, with another $150 million in the pipeline.

While it is impossible to determine an accurate fraction of that investment due specifically to the street changes, community leaders believe that the fact that the neighborhood's streets work for everyone who uses them and visits the district is an integral part of its success.



In the Porter Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts, engineers simplified pedestrian and bicycle crossings, created a large pedestrian plaza, added bike lanes and a signalized bike crossing, coordinated motor vehicle signal timing, and widened the sidewalk in a historic retail center.

In Columbia, Missouri, the city improved turn lanes; installed pedestrian crossing signals, new sidewalks, and trail access; added new lighting and drainage enhancements; and added striping and markings for bicycle and pedestrian safety.

It is a basic tenet of the Complete Streets movement that it does not offer a fixed prescription to apply in all situations but rather a menu of approaches that can be adapted as circumstances warrant.

From the beginning it has been more a political movement than a design strategy: the objective of the Coalition has been the incorporation of a core principle - that streets should serve different kinds of users - into state and municipal policies for roadway design and safety. Localities can then interpret and implement that principle with flexibility.

I last wrote about Complete Streets in 2013, when I noted the very good news that many streets today look and feel different - more thoughtfully designed, with more than just cars in mind - than they did, say, twenty years ago.

As I noted then, I live in a community (Washington, DC) where, depending on circumstances, I am at times a driver, a pedestrian, a cyclist, and a transit user. And, where these kinds of changes have been made, I feel safer and better accommodated as a pedestrian and cyclist - and, remarkably, not at all inconvenienced as a driver.

Indeed, my experience has been that automobile traffic pretty much moves as well (or as poorly) as it always has and, in some cases, it moves better because everyone's spaces are better delineated. The new study (titled Safer Streets, Stronger Economies) found that, in about half the projects, automobile volume increased or remained unchanged after the redesigns.

One of the most impressive examples in the report is in Orlando. I can't improve on the authors' description, so here it is:

"Edgewater Drive acts as the main street for College Park, a neighborhood four miles north of downtown Orlando, FL. When the street was scheduled to be resurfaced in 2001, the community saw an opportunity - to reinvent Edgewater Drive into a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly commercial district with cafés and shops.'

"The City of Orlando proposed a 4-to-3 lane conversion for 1.6 miles between Par Street and Lakeview Street, adding bicycle lanes, a center turn lane, and wider on-street parking. With resident input, the City of Orlando devised an extensive series of performance measures to monitor the project's progress. These measures included travel times, traffic volumes for all modes, and safety-related crash and injury rates, and speeding data."



The findings speak for themselves:

"The newly improved street was clearly safer than before. Total collisions dropped 40%, from 146 to 87 annually. The crash rate was nearly cut in half, from 1 crash every 2.5 days to 1 crash every 4.2 days. Injuries fell by 71%, from 41 per year to 12 per year, and instead of 1 injury every 9 days, the reconfigured street saw 1 injury every 30 days. These safety findings are particularly impressive considering that automobile traffic only decreased 12% within a year following the redesign, while bicycle counts surged by 30% and pedestrian counts by 23%."

"As a result, more people want to be on Edgewater Drive. The corridor has seen 77 net new businesses open and 560 new jobs created since 2008. Average daily automobile traffic, which saw a slight dip following project completion, has returned to its original pre-project level and on-street parking use has gone up 41%.

"The most dramatic results, however, were in long-term real-estate and business investment. Since the project was first proposed, the value of property adjacent to Edgewater Drive has risen 80%, and the value of property within half a mile of the road has risen 70%.

"The street was resurfaced again in 2012. No one suggested it should go back to its original configuration" (emphasis in original).

The financial savings of Complete Streets due to accident reduction are particularly significant: while the analysis found that the safer conditions created by the 37 projects in the study avoided a total of US$18.1 million in collision and injury costs in a single year, those savings will continue to mount in subsequent years.

The financial impact of automobile collisions and injuries nationwide is in the billions of dollars annually. The report's authors conclude that "targeting the country's more dangerous roads and taken to any meaningful scale, a Complete Streets approach over time has the potential to avert hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in personal costs."



The data also showed that Complete Streets projects were remarkably affordable. The projects surveyed include a wide range of costs, from projects with limited scopes that cost just a few thousand dollars to extensive corridor redesigns that cost several million.

For the most part, however, Complete Streets projects cost significantly less than conventional transportation projects, yet can still deliver transportation benefits such as better safety performance and facility usage by more people.

With respect to economic effects other than savings due to accident avoidance, the authors concede that "before-and-after data in this area are scarce for all kinds of transportation investments and Complete Streets projects are no exception." Of the 37 projects included in the survey, the Coalition was able to examine changes in employment in 11 places, and changes in business impacts, property values, and/or total private investment in 14 places.

The authors found found that employment levels rose after Complete Streets projects - in some cases, significantly. Communities reported increased net new businesses after Complete Streets improvements, suggesting that Complete Streets projects helped make the street more desirable for businesses.

In eight of the ten communities with available property value data, the values increased after the Complete Streets improvements. And eight communities reported that their Complete Streets projects were at least partly responsible for increased investment from the private sector. These data support the economic outcomes reported anecdotally by many communities.

The authors correctly concede that more and better data would be needed to conclusively connect Complete Streets with economic success. But the proposition that such measures can support economic activity does make intuitive sense: comfortable foot traffic, in particular, is good for business, and one of the basic objectives of Complete Streets is to make walking feel safer and more comfortable.

In the end, Safer Streets, Stronger Economies is less a scientific study than a compilation of available (and, to a great extent, differing) data from a limited range of case studies. To my mind, it is far from conclusive. But the direction in which it points is very encouraging for those of us who want healthier travel and living environments for everyone in America's communities.

Kaid Benfield writes about community, development, and the environment on Huffington Post and in the national media. Kaid's latest book, People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think About Greener, Healthier Cities, is available from booksellers nationwide.