MARK: Before we talk about the research project you’re currently heading up for the County’s Office of Community & Economic Development, perhaps you could tell us a bit about yourself and your research interests.

JESSICA: My life has been a series of rabbit hole adventures into what’s broken in our economic system. My degrees are in economic anthropology, and I moved here after accepting a University of Michigan fellowship to study global corporate structure and practice. I was led to this by a series of events: I grew up in Costa Rica, but my family had to move back to the Midwest when I was seven, when all local currency stopped circulating on the heels of the Latin American Debt Crisis. (The U.S. financial system inflicted the same fate on Latin America in the late 1970s that it did on us in ‘08. You’d think we’d have seen it coming.) I was a mortgage broker at the peak of Colorado’s housing boom. I left that role because I became very uncomfortable with the subprime loan practices. My very next job was as a contract employee for an HP spin-off that manufactured PCA boards at the height of the tech bubble. And, when that bubble burst, I was one of the last ones in the building, helping outsource manufacturing to Malaysia. Not one of my proudest moments. More recently, I’ve spent the last 6 years (with a brief academic hiatus) as a corporate headhunter recruiting for renewable energy startups. I loved my work until the alternative energy space dried up, thanks to our finicky, and bizarre, addiction to fossil fuels. And, over the years (especially since 2008), I’ve watched corporations increasingly treat human beings like commodities – expendable, replaceable and abusable.

I woke up one day at U of M realizing that building a career studying what’s broken wasn’t going to make me a very happy person. I felt I had to start taking action building something more positive. It’s important to say at this point that I have no interest in tearing anything down. The current system has generated a lot of innovation. Plus, what is broken within it seems to be doing a pretty good job of falling apart without my help. I’m dedicated to fostering what I see as our best assets – locally owned small business, entrepreneurship, and our capacity for cooperation and democracy. I believe there are alternatives to the economic development approach of bringing in big business and launching venture capital-funded startups. These companies too often leave the communities that helped build them. I also see a huge opportunity for us to focus on creating jobs that make the most of the skills our community already has. Finally, there are new approaches out there that take the best lessons from successful mainstream business while remaining focused on creating value for our community over maximizing profit at the expense of it.

MARK: Let’s talk about these new approaches… What models are you most interested in exploring? Are we talking primarily about cooperatives?

JESSICA: I’m very interested in a European model called the BEC as a way of helping non-venture capital funded entrepreneurs own their own assets, share resources, and create meaningful employment doing what they love, and are most talented at. The County got excited about it and offered to fund a study of locally owned small business and non-venture capital funded entrepreneurship. We’re also looking at cooperatives as ways for businesses of any stage to raise capital, share resources, and compete more effectively with national chains and big business. Finally, we’re looking at worker-owned and multi-stakeholder cooperatives as a way to finance startups that would employ our under/unemployed workforce, and transform traditionally low-wage work into viable long-term careers. Basically, I believe we can create meaningful employment for a far greater proportion of our community so long as we stay creative and demand new approaches. I’m also interested in the democratic value of co-ops. The multi-stakeholder models we’re looking at would allow the broader community to participate directly in its own economic development decisions.

MARK: Tell me more about the study that you’re doing for the County. How are you rolling it out, and what to do you hope to learn from it?

JESSICA: We’ve completed interviews with local business owners and much of the background data gathering. We recently launched the surveys and are hoping everyone will exercise their voice in the County’s economic development policy in general, as well as the direction of The Shed. Thanks to the generosity of our local businesses, participants also qualify to win gifts from Maker Works, Clay Gallery, United Sonz Printing and Zingerman’s.

There is a ton we can learn from the study. We’ll learn more about the structure of our local business community, what it’s potential is, and how we can all help each other reach our goals. We’re looking for synergies in needs, where there are opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs to collaborate and share resources. We also ask about existing business support services to learn if people are aware of them, and if they’ve gotten what they needed from them. We’re looking for gaps in the local market, and opportunities to promote more local purchasing. This may help the County design a good local procurement policy, which is another study currently underway. Finally, we’ll learn more about businesses’ capital requirements, which will fit in nicely with another study that is underway, looking at innovative tools to facilitate local investment. There could be other things we’ll learn that we haven’t thought of, which is why we’ve included several optional open-ended questions and comment boxes for the business community to go ahead and just express themselves.

Anyone interested in participating should follow this link.

MARK: And this, ostensibly, will yield some kind of report showing where our local businesses lay on the People’s Food Co-op – Haliburton continuum… how many of them are amenable to sharing resources, distributing equity to employees, etc… and perhaps identifying a few areas where we might be able to invest and see some tangible outcomes, right?

JESSICA: Yes, it will certainly produce a report. But I’m not here to judge business owners in any way (in fact, I think most of them feel they have more than enough people telling them how they should run their businesses). If someone wants to rate our community on a Haliburton-PFC scale, they’ll have to do their own study… Surveys like this are somewhat self-selecting. Entrepreneurs and business owners that are most open to trying innovative approaches, or most interested in collaborating with other businesses, are the ones most likely to take the time to participate.

It’s important to clarify, though, that participating in a co-op doesn’t require a business to become a co-op. In theory, Halliburton and Monsanto could get together and form a lobbying co-op. They probably already have. A better example – the independent small farms that own Organic Valley aren’t themselves co-ops. They jointly own an entity that benefits them, most obviously by giving them access to processing and national markets, but the farms are still small and independently owned. Small, locally-owned businesses can own businesses or assets together, without changing their own ownership structure in any way.

The study’s report will be focused on identifying opportunities for investment and areas where resource sharing would yield the most tangible results and, once launched, be able to sustain themselves without ongoing subsidies. There are definitely triple bottom line advantages to co-op models. They have a great track record for employment stability and for taking care of the community, compared to other for-profit models. But the key reason I’m so interested in co-ops, collaboration and resource sharing is because we need ways to strengthen and support our business community’s sustainably – i.e. without depending on ongoing subsidies, that are drying up quickly. The study isn’t trying to produce a lot of claims like “X% of local businesses are such-and-such.” We’re looking for statements like, “if we can address X need sustainably, it will support at least $X dollars in local revenue, $X dollars in anticipated growth, and X number of jobs.” If the community is going to put energy into projects like these, we need to know where we can get the best return for that effort.

MARK: You reference something called The Shed. What exactly is that?

JESSICA: Right now, it’s a collaboration between myself, the County, and some local business leaders that are interested in promoting cooperative ownership and a generative, living economy. We’re aiming for a facilitation/incubation enterprise that will be cooperatively owned and run by several kinds of stakeholders:

1. Entrepreneurs (of non-venture capital funded enterprises, like food producers, artisans, etc.). They can start as worker-owners receiving a paycheck from the co-op. Once they’ve established their own revenue streams, they can spin off as their own company or stay members running their own product lines.

2. Businesses that want to collaborate. They might want to cooperatively own facilities, share administrative services for their businesses, share distribution, etc. We know that shared food processing facilities is a big need, for instance.

3. Consumers and institutional buyers that purchase goods from these businesses and want to support them.

Given that The Shed will need to establish robust training, facilitation and legal support services for co-op member-owners, we’re realizing that it will also be able to offer incubation and needed support for other local co-ops. I’ve been sad to learn how many organizations have tried to launch co-ops in Michigan and really struggled because of our state’s cumbersome legal code and relative lack of a coherent support infrastructure for cooperatives. Partly because its laws are easier to work with, Wisconsin is like the silicon valley of co-ops. A lot of people around here think cooperatives don’t work and I always tell them to take a look across the lake.

MARK: Where does the name “The Shed” come from? I suspect I’m wrong, but, given the nature of your work, I’m guessing that it has its roots in the idea of a community tool shed – a place where people can pool their resources… Am I close? Or it is just an acronym? Sustainable Human Endeavor Docents (S.H.E.D.), maybe?

JESSICA: You nailed it the first time. I’m not a big fan of acronyms, so I hadn’t thought of anything quite so obtuse. The name had two associations for me: One is a sort of abstract analogy between our economy and our watershed. “Watershed” can mean a turning point, which I think our economy is reaching. Mostly, though, our watershed is something that requires stewardship. Everyone has to have access to clean water and we must share it to survive as a community. Our economic resources need stewardship, too. We need to create broader access to capital. We need to waste less material and human resources to create a truly sustainable economy. That’s all a bit high-minded, though. The main association is the community tool shed. It’s meaningful to me because the shed in most people’s backyards are monuments to the waste created by not sharing things. A lot of “sharing economy” folks make this point, including Maker Works founder Tom Root, one of my heros. Tom’s favorite example is lawn mowers. When we buy a lawnmower, we mainly pay for the privilege of storing it. We only use it a couple of hours a week max. With the right culture and basic infrastructure (a schedule, maybe a local kid to do the mowing), a whole block could share a single lawnmower.

MARK: You mention that the legal code in Wisconsin is more amenable to co-ops than it is here. Can you give an example? What’s a law on the books in Wisconsin that you’d like to see here? Or, conversely, what’s a law here that you’d like to see stricken?

JESSICA: I’ve talked to a lot of lawyers about this issue, and I’m delighted to leave it to them to answer that sort of question. What I gather is that, in Wisconsin, cooperatives have their own broad statute not limited to specific business sectors. In Michigan, anyone not fitting neatly into certain types of co-ops, like agriculture or housing, has to establish as a regular for-profit or nonprofit, and build in the cooperative structure though the bylaws. I’m not a lawyer, though, so this is just my lay understanding.

MARK: Can you give us an example of something that you’ve found, looking at the data that has come in thus far, or something that you expect to find, given your conversations with folks since this project kicked off? Where, in other words, do you expect to find synergies and gaps? And what do you think we’re likely to see from this initiative?

JESSICA: I’ve already talked about the BEC model for entrepreneurs. Being able to bridge that income and health insurance gap before a new business gets off the ground is something a lot of people talk about even several years into starting their businesses.

People are also talking a lot about shared space – office, warehousing, production, etc. Helping businesses own instead of rent would have several advantages for the businesses and for economic stability. When you’re talking about businesses sharing space, especially when businesses are constantly growing and changing, facilitation would be helpful. Food processing and packaging are big issues. The Food Hub is trying to tackle that directly and they’ve explored (and I believe are still exploring) co-op models. My conversations with Richard Andres and other people involved in that definitely suggest that facilitation for groups like them trying to establish a co-op would be helpful. That’s exactly the kind of project The Shed could support. Aggregation and other assistance for selling to local institutions is needed. The County is doing a study aimed at a local procurement policy which will help us understand how we might tackle that.

Shared administrative and back-office support is also a possibility a lot of business owners get excited about. They’d love to stop getting bogged down in aspects of their business that aren’t their core competency and that would be very doable as a co-op. Finally, we have a lot of talented people that don’t necessarily want to run their own businesses – doing the sales and marketing, hiring and managing people, etc. Lots of our community members can sew, fix things, build things, make things, etc, and just need to be connected to the market and given some support. I’m thinking about a job board co-op where customers and skilled providers can both become members. It would take a very small staff to support that and it could easily be organized like a BEC.

MARK: Let’s talk about Ypsi specifically… Did you speak with many business owners and entrepreneurs here? And, assuming you did, was there anything specific that struck you about them, their needs, and their potential?

JESSICA: Ypsi and Ann Arbor are definitely different business communities. We have a lot of creative entrepreneurs in both towns, but the challenges in terms of markets and access to space are quite different. I don’t want to make any sweeping generalizations, though. I’m biased. I live in Ypsi and take a lot of pride in that. I will say that I’ve been working closely with Michigan Works to make sure we’re reaching home-based businesses on the east side of the county that might not be plugged into to the business networks. We’ve also been talking about how we could establish worker-owned co-ops to address un/underemployment. This is a big goal for The Shed, but one that will take a lot of partnership with county services and that’s going to take time – beyond the scope of this research. Still, everyone I’ve talked to at Michigan Works have been very excited about the idea and very helpful. I hope to at least provide some recommendations for next steps in the report.

MARK: Would Ypsilanti, in your opinion, support a coworking facility or a small business incubator?

JESSICA: Absolutely. Ypsi has a lots of great spaces for it. I think we have the culture for it. A lot of people in Ypsi aren’t satisfied with the status quo of our economic system and their actively working together to do something about it. We also have a lot of creative and skilled people that could benefit. I can do some analysis to help us make good decisions and I can help bring the pieces together to make things happen. The county has certainly shown its willingness to support our efforts. But the nuts and bolts of what we want, and need to do, has to come from the community. I’m counting on Ypsi to speak up.

[Those of you who find this kind of thing interesting might want to check out my recent articles on Small & Mighty, and the Business Alliance for Living Local Economies, as well as my notes on Michael Shuman’s last visit to the area, and my interview with author Amy Cortese... Oh, and then there's the debate between by friends Dug Song and Paul Saginaw on the role of business.]

The conservatives, of course, will argue that paying people $10 an hour will jeopardize our still fragile recovery, and drive even more individuals into poverty, as companies with undoubtedly stop hiring low-skilled workers and slow production. It’s not altogether clear, however, that that would actually happen. Take, for instance, the case of Washington State. (The following comes from at 2007 article in the New York Times.)

…Just eight miles separate this town on the Washington side of the state border from Post Falls on the Idaho side. But the towns are nearly $3 an hour apart in the required minimum wage. Washington pays the highest in the nation, just under $8 an hour, and Idaho has among the lowest, matching 21 states that have not raised the hourly wage beyond the federal minimum of $5.15.

Nearly a decade ago, when voters in Washington approved a measure that would give the state’s lowest-paid workers a raise nearly every year, many business leaders predicted that small towns on this side of the state line would suffer.

But instead of shriveling up, small-business owners in Washington say they have prospered far beyond their expectations. In fact, as a significant increase in the national minimum wage heads toward law, businesses here at the dividing line between two economies — a real-life laboratory for the debate — have found that raising prices to compensate for higher wages does not necessarily lead to losses in jobs and profits…

Furthermore, it’s not true, as Republicans love to tell us, that minimum wage jobs are just held by low-skilled teenagers, desperate for experience, and without families of their own to feed. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, 284,000 Americans with college degrees found themselves working for minimum wage last year. And, while it’s true that a majority of minimum wage employees aren’t heads of households, many are, and they’re desperately struggling to keep afloat. 51% of minimum-wage workers are over the age of 24, and roughly a third of them live below the poverty line, which is roughly $33,000 for a family of four. (note: 64% of minimum wage earners are women.)

People across the country, seeing the earnings of working class Americans steadily regressing, as the tax burden is increasingly being shifted onto their backs, are beginning to demand a change, though. In spite of the efforts of pro-corporate groups like ALEC, that are pushing wage suppression bills across the nation (since 2011, 105 wage suppression bills have been introduced in 31 states), a dozen states have seen their minimum wages rise already in 2013. And President Obama is not only publicly calling for the federal minimum wage to rise to $9 per hour, from $7.25, where it presently stands, but for it to be tied to the rate of inflation from this point forward. (As Elizabeth Warren has pointed out, the federal minimum wage would be $22 today if it had kept pace with inflation since its inception.)

I know that the owner of Subway has said that your $5 footlong would be in jeopardy if we allowed the minimum wage to rise, but, the truth is, corporate profits have never been higher, and there’s no reason to think that companies couldn’t absorb the costs associated with paying a non-poverty wage. While raising the minimum wage may not do much to slow the ever increasing income inequality we’re seeing in America, it might just be enough to keep a few thousand more working people from succumbing to the forces of poverty, and that alone, I suspect, would make it worthwhile. And, even if close to half of those earning minimum wage are young people who live with their parents, and not single mothers, would it really be that bad for society if they had a little more money in their pockets? We tried trickle down economics for several decades now, and it hasn’t worked. I say it’s time to try something new. Let’s try passing legislation that puts more money into the hands of people who actually spend it, and keep the economy moving, instead of those who hoard their cash in offshore banks.

And, one more thing… I get that people don’t want to pay $5.15 for a $5 footlong, or 25-cents more for their Wal-Mart spray cheese, but, the truth is, we’re already paying more than we think. We subsidize the “everyday low prices” we enjoy at places that rely on minimum wage workers by paying for the food stamps and health care that keep their employees healthy enough to keep coming to work each day. As much as people like to talk about the “free market”, the truth is that we don’t have one. Without the social programs that we all pay for, Walmart employees would by dying in the aisles.

I suspect that our readers on the far right will reject it offhand as the work of agitators looking to instigate “class warfare,” and our friends on the far left will find fault with the way in which Socialism is summarily written off as a non-viable alternative to our current system, but I think this is exactly the kind of straightforward, fact-driven, middle-of-the-road, non-partisan piece that we need more of. Now, if we could just find a way to incorporate an adorable squeaking frog doing the Harlem Shake, we’d be all set.

Here, for those of you who would like to dig deeper, are the references behind the video:

Mother Jones
Dan Ariely
Think Progress
CNN

And, if you’re interested, our previous conversations on wealth inequality can be found here.

[Tonight's post is brought to you by the Romney for Detroit campaign.]

…What I find more surprising, and disturbing, is the tendency of some folks on the left to embrace small business with some passion. This is particularly true in the unfortunately named anti-globalization movement—as if internationalization itself were the problem rather than the way it’s carried out. Their anti-globalism is connected to a desire to “relocalize” economies, and with them to reorient production on a much smaller scale. These aims seem more motivated by nostalgia—and, in many cases, by a nostalgia for something that never existed—than any serious analysis.

Larger firms are also far more productive than smaller ones. Small-is-beautiful advocates rarely tell us how tiny enterprises would produce locomotives, computers or telephones; maybe they’d prefer to do away with these things and revive a hunter–gatherer society. But if that’s what they intend to do they should tell us.

And people who presumably care about workers should also rethink their passion for tininess: the experience of actually existing small businesses show that they’re not great employers, with poor pay, cheesier benefits and more dangerous workplaces. Bigger firms are easier to regulate, more open to public scrutiny, friendlier to affirmative action programs and more vulnerable to union organizing.

A progressive case for bigness is rare and unpopular these days, but somebody has to make it.

First, let me start by saying that I agree that, just because a company is locally-owned, does not mean that it’s necessarily good. I haven’t said that in the past, as I thought that it was pretty obvious, but perhaps it’s something that I need to be more explicit about. I’m painfully aware that there are assholes who run local businesses, abuse employees and add little value to the communities in which they operate. (Like many of you, I’ve had the pleasure of working for some of these folks.) Second, if you scroll back through the archives, you’ll also find instances where, on several occasions, I’ve said positive things about large companies, like Costco – a company, which, by all accounts, treats its employees well, and strives to ensure that its suppliers do the same. (If I’m not mistaken, I’ve also expressed in the past that I’m torn on the subject of Starbucks, as I hate the homogeneity they bring to communities, but respect the fact that they provide insurance to part-time workers, champion gay rights, etc.)

So, let’s start by dropping the false notion, as KJC would suggest, that I believe that all big companies are evil, and all small ones are terrific. I may be idealistic, but I’m not naive. I can appreciate that we live in a complex world and that the issues that we’re facing are far from black and white. At the same time, though, I have no reason to think that Michael Shuman is lying when he says that he’s never seen an academic study that’s shown that a chain business, with out-of-state ownership, has contributed more wealth to a local community than a comparable business whose owners are rooted in the community. So, yes, I believe that, all things being equal, I’d rather do business with entrepreneurs who live in our community, and have to face us each and every day, than with their corporate counterparts, who just see Ypsilanti as a line on a spreadsheet, and don’t know the names of those people they employ in our community.

I know that some of the jobs that these small businesses create aren’t ideal. I know that, with regard to the food service industry in particular, it can be poorly-paying, grueling work, often without insurance. I can very well remember, for instance, busting my foot, and having to hop around the kitchen that I worked in for several weeks, in pain, as I was unable to see a doctor. Still, though, I think I was better off at the time working for Seva, than I would have been working for McDonalds… I could go on, but I think that Jean Henry, one of the founders of Small & Mighty, does a better job than I could. Here’s how she responded to KJC.

First I would say (as an employee of Zingerman’s) that, in comparison to WalMart and McDonald’s, at any level (other than maybe top) of the organization, staff at Zingerman’s are doing far better in terms of wage, benefits, engagement and employee satisfaction than the aternatives. There are national businesses (Costco for example) that do better than we do in terms of wage scale, but I can’t think of any totally situated in the food business like we are. And we are working on it very very actively. Industrial production in the food business has created a system in which consumers pay very little (relative to in the past and as a percentage of income) for food – and we waste an average of 30%+ of that – and no one in the supply chain is making a reasonable living (except the giants) and, yes, it’s all at risk. In food, the better the integrity of your product and service, the lower your profit margin — even at Zingerman’s prices.

Less established small businesses than Zingerman’s are in much the same economic position as their staff – they struggle to survive in an economic structure that is marshaled against their interests. (They can’t afford the rent, the bills or health insurance either in many cases.) There is plenty of evidence of this. There is also plenty of evidence, contrary to the posted article, that small businesses create more sustainable jobs than the big ‘C’ corporations. But, yes, they often do so at a lower wage base, and almost always with fewer benefits, because they are not as profitable.

The capital in this country does not flow towards its most efficient and productive engines – small businesses. Small businesses give back more generously to their local communities. Of $1 spent at a local independent business, 68 cents stays in the community vs. 43 cents at a national chain store. In independent retail and restaurants the differential is higher. (More info can be found at the BALLE website.) Small independent businesses should also offer better product, service and experience than a chain store. In the end, no one is asking anyone to support local business as a charity. They should provide value. But I would ask you to consider the fabric of your community without them.

The best small business owners risk everything and walk a financial tightrope daily in order to make their vision a reality, because they love what they do and where they do it. They struggle along with their staff in a shared boat in the rough seas of the current economic structure. It is no mistake that the Occupy movement identified with small business owners as part of the 99%… And as part of the solution. If you would like small businesses to be able to pay higher wages then you must be prepared to pay more for their services, or work to invert the current systemic bias toward big and bad.

I try to pay with cash at local businesses doing good work in order to give them more capital to invest in their business, staff and the local economy. Doing so saves them about 4% in credit/debit card fees on each transaction (likely doubling their profit margin) and doesn’t feed into the predatory national banking system. It also keeps me on budget. Do what you can. Think about the big picture. And ask staff at local businesses how they like working there and why they, in many cases, resist working elsewhere for more money. Their answers will often be very close to their bosses answer to “why were you so crazy as to go out on your own?” For many many happy, thriving but often broke people out there, it’s worth it.

So, where do you stand on all of this?

[note: The image at the top of the page is from You've Got Mail, the not-so-good 1998 remake of 1940's The Shop Around the Corner, in which Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fall in love, despite the fact that Hanks runs an enormous bookstore chain which threatens to put Ryan's lovely little book shop out of business... Sorry, but I couldn't think of better image to illustrate this post.]

Why is it that we allow the Republicans to refer to themselves as the anti-tax party, when they keep demonstrating that they clearly aren’t? Sure, they’re all for the cutting of business taxes, inheritance taxes, and other taxes that would threaten to decrease the wealth of their party’s high-net-worth donors, but, invariably, those shifts in tax policy lead to higher taxes for everyone else. Elsewhere around the United States, the shift may not be as plainly visible, but, here, in Michigan, it’s painfully obvious to all but the most delusional among us. As business taxes are being eliminated, and corporate taxes on capital assets are being phased out, the burden of maintaining public services is falling disproportionately on the shoulders of the non-wealthy, and we’re all feeling the increased financial pressure.

In Michigan, income taxes on the poor and middle class are rising, the pensions of our retirees are being taxed, tax credits for the working poor, like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), are being slashed, and, with state assistance for higher education drying up, families are going into unprecedented debt in the hopes of securing stable futures for their children. The Republicans may not see all of these as tax increases, but they are. The increased insurance payments that many of us are forced to pay, because our local fire departments are being downsized, is essentially a tax. The same goes for the private school tuition that several of us are paying, rather than suffer through the constrictions of a public school system which is being systematically dismantled. And these few examples are just the tip of the iceberg. The truth is, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for regular working people in Michigan to merely sustain life. Fortunately for those in power, houses aren’t selling. If they were, I suspect that most of us would be gone.

And, as those of us in Ypsilanti can attest, it’s the folks who are living in Michigan’s aging cities that are feeling the brunt of this radical redistribution of wealth. With state revenue sharing for cities dropping precipitously, one-by-one communities are being asked to make the choice — either institute a personal income tax, and pay for our own city services, or submit to the rule of an unelected Emergency Financial Manager, who will be empowered to sell off our community assets at fire sale prices, dismiss our democratically elected officials, privatize city services, and break contracts with city employee unions, essentially stripping our carcass of what little meat there is left, and sealing our fate. As long as we don’t ask the wealthy in Michigan’s upscale gated communities to contribute toward the greater good, it’s all the same to the folks in Lansing. They’re allowing us to make the choice…

And this is apparently the tax season when we’re really going to start to feel it. Here’s the news from the Free Press.

In the height of tax season, don’t be surprised if you owe more to the taxman in Lansing.

Some major income tax changes approved 21 months ago by Gov. Rick Snyder and lawmakers are just now starting to hit Michigan taxpayers filing their state tax returns.

One of the most significant adjustments: Homeowners and renters used to qualify for a credit if their household income was no more than $82,650 a year. Now they don’t get it unless their total household resources are $50,000 or less and their home’s taxable value (roughly half the market value) is no more than $135,000.

That will affect about 400,000 returns.

The child deduction is gone. So are special exemptions for seniors and those getting at least half their income from unemployment checks.

A refundable credit for low-income workers was reduced, impacting about 783,000 returns. Eliminated are state credits for city income taxes, college tuition, adoptions and donations to universities, public radio and TV stations, food banks and homeless shelters.

Add it up and about half of all Michigan filers are seeing a considerable tax increase ahead of the April 15 deadline, said Terry Conley, a tax partner at Grant Thornton in Southfield…

For those of you who still aren’t grasping what’s happening, you might want to take a few minutes and check out this animated short produced by the California Federation of Teachers, featuring narration by Ed Asner. It does a pretty good job of getting right to the heart of the matter in a way that even the most uninformed Tea Partier could comprehend.

[Tonight's post is brought to you by Amazon.com's Pitchfork and Torch division.]

Shot this morning at a Banking Committee hearing titled “Wall Street Reform: Oversight of Financial Stability and Consumer and Investor Protections,” this video demonstrates, better than any campaign ad ever could, just why it was so critically important that we get Professor Warren into office. Just listen to the way she goes after these folks… And these, remember, are the good guys… Not bad for her first day on the Committee.

If she’s this hard on regulators, just imagine how she’ll handle the bankers when they come before her.

In the above video, for those of you who didn’t watch it, Warren bluntly asks Mary Miller, Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, U.S. Department of the Treasury; Daniel Tarullo, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; Martin Gruenberg, Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; Tom Curry, Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; Richard Cordray, Director, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Elisse Walter, Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; and Gary Gensler, Chairman, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, why it is that they’ve allowed the big banks to repeatedly buy their way out of trouble with relatively small settlements, instead of taking them to court, and having them answer for their actions, on the record, in front of the American people.

Here’s a quote:

“I want to note that there are district attorneys and U.S. attorneys who are out there everyday squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds, and taking them to trial to ‘make an example,’ as they put it… I am really concerned that too-big-to-fail has become too-big-for-trial.”

It’s really no wonder the financial industry tried so desperately to keep her from office.

1. The economic development policy of Michigan, according to Shuman, has “gone off the rails.” This, he says, is not an indictment of any particular political party, as both the Democrats and the Republicans, according to him, promote a failed “attraction and retention” approach, which has little or nothing to do with nurturing the small, local companies that are the overwhelming creators of jobs and prosperity in this country. Instead, our various economic development organizations focus primarily on luring big businesses to leave the states where they currently reside, by offering tax abatements and other short-sighted incentives, and bribe those big businesses that are already in-state to stay. A more successful strategy, he argues, would be to implement policies that maximize local ownership, increase regional self-reliance, and reward adherence to the so-called triple bottom line (the understanding that environmental and societal costs should be factored in, along with profitability, when assessing a business’s value). In further exploring the triple bottom line concept, Shuman says that it’s already appreciated by most people that decisions aren’t just motivated by price. It’s about value, he says. If it were just about price, Starbucks wouldn’t exist. They, however, attract people for a reason. When thinking about local business, we need to keep that in mind. We need to reframe the value proposition, and demonstrate how other factors need to be taken into consideration. Until not so long ago, he says, people in many companies couldn’t purchase long-life, energy-efficient light bulbs, as they were more expensive. There was no way, according to Shuman, to factor in the life of the bulb when making a purchasing decision. That, however, has changed. And, as we move forward, other things will be factored in as well.

2. The evidence, according to Shuman, shows that “local busineses are more reliable and efficient users of public money.” Shuman, in making this case, references an assessment that was done of the tax abatements given to entities doing business in Lane County, Oregon. 95% of all abatement dollars, during the specific period of time that he studied, were given to six non-local businesses. Three of these companies, after receiving their abatements, promptly moved their facilities to Asia. And, of those remaining, two never delivered the jobs that they promised. (Speaking of which, does anyone remember how many jobs Google said they’d bring to Ann Arbor when they got their abatement half a dozen years ago?) But, while only one of the six investments in businesses headquartered out-of-state actually brought about significant job creation, the 5% of incentives that went to businesses rooted in the community were actually quite successful. And, those jobs which were created cost the tax-payers a great deal less. Whereas it had taken over $60,000 in abatements to create each job with an out-of-state business, a new job was created with every $2,000 invested in a local business. (I plan to ask Michael for a link to the study.)

3. Local businesses recirculate dollars in their communities. An analysis of bookstores in Austin showed that, of every $100 spent in a locally-owned store (Book People), $45 were circulated back into the community, whereas only $13 made its way back into the community when $100 was spent at the nearby corporate chain store (Borders). Local companies, as Shuman was quick to point out, hire local accountants, advertise in local papers, pay dividends to local owners, and give more to local charities, among other things. You would be hard pressed, said Shuman, to find an example of a non-local business making a more significant impact than its locally-owned competitor. And there are now dozens of academic papers that prove this to be the case. A recent study in the Harvard Business Review, according to Shuman, found that the highest per capita job groth rates in the United States are in those communities with the highest density of locally-owned businesses. And it’s not just job creation where these communities excel. Academic studies have also shown that, when you have well-established, healthy, local business ecosystems, you also tend to have smart growth, tourism, more entrepreneurial behavior, better public health, more civil society, and increased political participation. (Of course, it could be that these other factors lead to more robust local business ecosystems, or that all of these positive outcomes have more to do with the relative wealth of a community than the percentage of stores that are locally-owned, but we’ll leave the “correlation v. causation” discussion for another time. For the time being, I just think it’s interesting to note that these indicators of community health all seem to correspond with increased local business ownership.)

4. There’s more opportunity for local businesses with the costs of fuel going up. Our economy has, over the past several decades, been shifting from one that manufactured and sold goods, to one in which most people are working in the service sector. (It is, after all, harder to outsource service sector jobs to China and India.) Now, however, the pendulum is swinging back. With the price of oil rising, local companies are starting to be able to compete in the area of manufactured goods, ranging from paper products to building materials. We need to acknowledge this opportunity, and start looking for opportunities to substitute locally produced goods for ones that are currently being shipped across the world, and trucked across the country, at great expense to the environment.

5. If you were to ask anyone, “Would you rather have full employment with high environmental and labor standards, or full employment with low standards?” they would say that they would rather have full employment with higher standards, says Shuman. The problem is, people think that there has to be a trade-off. They don’t think full employment is possible in a world where the environment is respected and labor rights are protected. They’ve been convinced that we can’t have both simultaneously. We need to demonstrate that it’s possible, and that triple bottom line thinking doesn’t have to negatively impact the economy.

6. The big problem is that we don’t have a way to capitalize local businesses that have the potential to grow and create jobs. We know that small businesses (businesses with fewer than 500 employees) are the ones with the real potential to create jobs, and transform our communities, but, as of right now, there’s now way for us to help them grow, and participate in their success. America is an extremely rich country. Collectively, the people of the United States currently have $150 trillion in wealth. The problem is, almost all of it, that isn’t in real estate and other tangible assets, is invested in large companies. It’s incredibly easy to invest in public companies and mutual funds. We don’t, however, have a mechanism by which to invest in the companies in our communities, unless we’re extremely wealthy, in which case we’re considered “accredited investors” under securities law. (The SEC operates under the assumption that the rich, unlike the rest of us, are capable of making informed decisions. Shuman calls the current system “securities apartheid.”)

7. In 2009, Shuman proposed that a slight change be made to the existing system. He recommended a $100 exemption, arguing that unaccredited investors should be given some small degree of freedom to invest outside of the established securities system. His colleagues liked the idea, and a letter writing campaign was initiated. The Securities and Exchange Commission, however, did nothing. They sat on the idea until, one an a half years later, when the head of the SEC was called before Congress and asked, by Representative Darrell Issa, what innovative measures they could put in place to get the unemployment rate back below 9%. And, in the resulting conversation, Shuman’s proposal was brought up. Ultimately, the House committee unanimously voted to enact the legislation, but with a $10,000 exemption. This then went to the Senate, where it was whittled down to $2,000. (People that make less than $100,000 a year, can invest $2,000, or 5% of their income, annually. People making over $100,000, can invest in 10% of their incomes.) And, in April 2012, it was signed into law by President Obama. (If you’re interested, I discussed this legislation at some length not too long ago with author Amy Cortese.) The SEC is now working to get the rules, regulations and infrastructure in place, and the hope is that, in the next few months, we’ll have a system where unaccredited investors will be able to invest in specific companies through online middlemen. (Intermediaries are required by law, but the SEC is still debating what role they will play, what kind of licensing they will need, etc.)

8. Move Your Money campaigns, aimed a getting people to transfer their accounts from big banks to local ones, are great, says Shuman, as big banks neither care about, or invest in, our communities, but funds invested in banks are “just a drop in the bucket.” We need to get at the over $30 trillion currently invested in securities, says Shuman. We need to start the process of slowly chipping away at it, taking advantage of the few opportunities that currently exist, and pushing for more. “We are on the verge of a huge change in capital markets,” says Shuman. “What happens when the first trillion goes from Wall Street to Main Street? People will take notice.”

9. Shuman suggests that we immediately do two things as a community. Together, he says, these two things would likely only cost us about $20,000. And, if we did them, we’d be infinitely better off than every other community in the United States. First, he suggests that we create a passive web listing of every local business investment opportunity there is. Second, he says that we should strike a deal with a local accountant to help implement a self-directed IRA initiative. If we could gather 1,000 individuals, all willing to pay $100 a year to have someone manage a self-dircted IRA, he suspects that we could find an accountant willing to drop his/her rates to accommodate us. And, once we have this mechanism, we could begin moving our savings from investments in the S&P 500, into our own communities. (Self-directed IRAs are currently legal under SEC rules.) The accountant would just have to do the administrative work of facilitating the investments in these local companies. And, as he says, this could happen immediately. (He said that, if we wanted, we could also consider implementing a community portal, like those being rolled out by Mission Markets. As the new crowdfunding legislation still hasn’t been rolled out, Mission Markets can’t facilitate equity deals, but they can facilitate debt deals, connecting local businesses to those in the community who have money to lend. The equity piece will follow, when the terms of the legislation are announced.)

10. As local banks are the ones investing in our communities, we need to make sure that all of our local governmental entities are investing their cash reserves in local banks. (You’ll be happy to know that I’ve already started looking into this, and hope to have a report soon.)

11. Foundations, by law, have to give away 5% our more of their assets each year. The other 95% of their holdings, however, can be invested anywhere. What would happen, Shuman asks, if our local foundations began investing in local businesses, instead of in the big securities, which are systematically destroying our communities? And, he says, they can legally do this now. This would be a powerful mechanism for immediate change.

12. This isn’t about investing in start-ups, he says. No, he would focus on companies that are between three and five years old, that are poised for growth. They’re the ones that need the crowfunding, and they’re the ones that could really create jobs. And this grassroots funding could keep local companies local. Shuman offers the example of Tom’s of Maine, saying that, if they’d been able to capitalize their growth themselves, they wouldn’t have had to sell to Colgate-Palmolive, and they could have stayed in Maine, and grown.

13. Here’s how he thinks it will likely play out… This will all start with Direct Public Offerings (DPOs), with individuals buying equity in small companies though crowdfunding portals. Then, people will need a place to buy and sell stock, and local stock exchanges will emerge. Then, once there are exchanges to provide liquidity, we’ll see portfolios develop, and open-ended mutual funds. And, ultimately, we’ll see pension funds moving their money over. The path, he thinks, is relatively clear… It will likely take ten years, he says, and there will be setbacks along the way. There will be crowdfunding scams, and many portals will crash and burn, but, by 2015, a few good websites will have emerged, and we’ll be on our way.

14. This is politically doable. The fact that we need to end corporate welfare, and stop stacking the deck against our local companies, is one of those rare things that both libertarians an progressives can agree on.

15. Local businesses can outperform Wall Street. Regardless of what people may tell you, the S&P, over the past 140 years, according to Shuman, has an average rate of return of 2.6% annually. At that rate, you’d be better off putting your money in the bank, says Shuman. He then notes that it’s not unusual for local businesses to return 5% annually to their investors.

16. Something that we could do immediately, that would cost nothing… We could start identifying the businesses that are most in need of investment right now. Which companies have potential for growth? Which companies could, if they were capitalized, grow and add jobs? We could put the word out through our networks, and start aggregating the data. Second, we could start pulling together a list of people who are interested in local investing, even at relatively small levels. We could have people sign an “I’m a committed local investor” list, and capture their contact information so that, as opportunities arise in the near future, we know who we can turn to… The bottom line is that we need to start building the infrastructure now.

If you found this post at all interesting, I’d encourage you, after reading my last two Shuman posts, to check out the discussions I’ve had recently with Judy Wicks, the founder of the Business Alliance for Living Local Economies (BALLE), Zingerman’s co-founder Paul Saginaw, and author Amy Cortese. They’re all incredible.

[Michael Shuman is the author of Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity--A Community Resilience Guide.]

Last night, I had the occasion to speak with world-renowned hip-hop provocateur Boots Riley on a wide range of subjects spanning from his childhood in Detroit, spent in a household of Communist organizers, to his current work, organizing people in his neighborhood as a member Occupy Oakland. And, of course, we touched on his equally ground-breaking and ass-shaking music, and the 20-years that he’s now spent “using hip-hop to empower people” and “destroy Capitalism,” in bands like The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club.

Riley and The Coup, as I suspect that most of you know, will be performing in Ypsilanti on Sunday night, headlining a fundraiser for Ozone House, to support their work with at-risk, marginalized, and LGBTQ teens. The show, which will take place at Woodruff’s, starting at 8:00 PM, is being hosted by Washtenaw Eviction and Foreclosure Defense (WEFD), and, from what I understand, a few tickets are still available. (Also on the bill are Japanther and Kev Choice.)

As for the interview, as you’ll soon discover, it’s not perfect. As I was picking Clementine up from school during the call, and as Boots was in the middle of a soundcheck, the quality of the audio isn’t great, and, as a result, much of what was said was garbled. And, because of that, I’m sure that I made a few mistakes in my transcription. I’ve also slightly edited both my questions, and his answers, in hopes of making the transcript flow better. Those of you who would like to hear the interview live and unedited, though, with all of the awkward pauses, blasting organ music, screaming children, and inartful, half-developed thoughts (on my part) that lead nowhere, can find the recording embedded at the bottom of this post… Enjoy.

MARK: I’ m curious about your background, if we can start there. I’ve read that you come from a long line of organizers… of “radical” organizers… I guess, in particular, your father. And I’m curious to know what got him involved in the Progressive Labor Party, and what took your family to Oakland, after having started out in Chicago, and then lived in Detroit for a while.

BOOTS: So, the exact details would be something you’d have to get from him, but he started out in the civil rights movement, in the NAACP, in the 50′s. He worked on the organization of the first sit-down strikes, at the coffee shops in Greensboro, North Carolina. And, later on, he was in CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). And CORE moved him out to San Francisco. And he got involved in SDS and the Progressive Labor Party (PL) at that time, just before the San Francisco State strike, which led to the creation of the College of Ethnic Studies, and all of that happened. Then the Progressive Labor Party moved him and my mother out to Chicago to be involved there. And then they needed a full-time organizer for Detroit. So he moved, and took that spot, and was a full-time organizer for the Progressive Labor Party in Detroit.

MARK: Trying to organize inside the auto plants?

BOOTS: Yeah, that was some of it. I was very young, so I don’t know exactly, but there was some auto plant work, and some student work. All I remember is that there were a lot of parties at my house, which I found out later were meetings.

MARK: What do you remember of your time in Detroit? I know you were really young, but…

BOOTS: There’s a woman who’s still active around there named Barbara Ransby. She was a teenager who was always coming through. I remember my father coming hoome with his ribs bandaged up, because the Klan had tried to make a come-back in Detroit, or something like that. And they went out and fought the Klan. And he got billy clubbed by the police, or somebody got him in the back, while they were fighting. So I remember that picture of him having bandaged ribs. What I also remember is that there were a lot of big parties, with people talking a lot, with their legs crossed. I was six when I moved away from Detroit, but those are the things that I remember. I remember Ohio Players records being played a lot.

MARK: A lot of kids rebel against their parents, but it sounds as though you kind of followed in your father’s footsteps, at least with regard to your association with the Progressive Labor Party.

BOOTS: Well, to a certain extent, (joining the Progressive Labor Party) was something of a rebellion, in a sense… (My father, Walter Riley) left Detroit to become a lawyer, and he split with the Party. But some of the family friends were still folks in the Progressive Labor Party. There was a political split, but there were still friendships. And, so, by the time that that I was eight, he wasn’t in PL anymore. And I started getting involved with the Party when I was fourteen. And that’s like a lifetime, those six years between eight and fourteen. And he actually did not want for me to be involved, not because of the political differences… I think, later on, as I became more developed, it had to do with political differences… but, at the time, he was arguing with them, saying, “When I was leading the Party, we never would have let someone like him (me) in. He hasn’t read enough.” You know, he felt that they were being opportunist, for letting me in just because I wanted to be in. And, to be honest, it was in the 80′s when there wasn’t much going on. I think a lot of political organizations were happy with anything… so they were a little more liberal.

MARK: Yeah, you want young people with energy, so you bend the rules a bit, right?

BOOTS: Yeah… So I became involved in their summer projects, like helping to built an anti-racist farmworkers union (in California), an undertaking which was mainly being led by people who had been kicked out of the USW (United Steelworkers), for being Communists, and being militant… who then joined the Progressive Labor Party. So I learned a lot being there.

MARK: What’s your ongoing role with the Party now? Are you still involved?

BOOTS: I’m 41 and I haven’t been involved in about 21 years.

MARK: So you left at about the same age as your dad?

BOOTS: No, he was probably 30-somethng when he left.

MARK: You still identify as Communist, though, right?

BOOTS: Yeah… So, I had ended up being a part of (their) Central Committee meetings. And a lot of the people who I met through that were the folks who had created the Progressive Labor Party, who had split off from the Communist Party in the 50′s. And their take on how to organize, combined with some British folks who had been union organizers, who had moved to the U.S. and joined the Progressive Labor Party… They taught me a lot… My experience in the Party was… The way that they organized at the time – with the exception of the work with the farmers union – was more of a one-on-one thing. It was more like a religion. Our meetings would be about who we had talked to that day, and how close they were to the ideas of the Party. “This is not going to get anywhere,” (I thought). I was in there from the age of fourteen to the age of nineteen or twenty, and I was supposedly in the leadership, and I had ideas that were more about broadening things, and making us known to the people who lived around us. But my ideas were always sort of poo-pooed and argued against. What I realized was that a lot of those folks who were still around in the Party weren’t the folks that where great organizers, who had been involved before. You know, a lot of times, folks who are great organizers have an idea that tells them… they know that you have to shape the aesthetic of your message to best suit what works. That’s what great organizers do. That’s what good conversationalists do. They communicate the essence of the idea, and the details of the idea, but they don’t have to be stuck in one tactic, or one mode. So I feel like what was going on then, and it’s what’s been going on in a lot of organizations since then. People are tied to an aesthetic. They’re tied to a tactic. You know, I was told a lot of really strict rules for how organizing works. They weren’t really true. They were just basically what they did twenty years before.

MARK: Which I assume leads into why you adopted music. I mean, that was your new aesthetic, right?

BOOTS: Definitely. Yeah… I had been told in the organization that any art form that was created by Capitalism could not be used to make revolution, you know.

MARK: I read somewhere about you going around Oakland on a flatbed truck, doing guerilla hip-hop shows, on street corners… which, I guess, illustrates how you were getting away from the one-on-one approach that the Party had been pushing, and going into people’s neighborhoods and engaging them on their own terms, in their own language, right?

BOOTS: Exactly. There wasn’t a direct correlation between the two, though, because that happened in 2000. That was a development of a few circumstances… Prop 21 was being put forward.

MARK: That had to do with kids being prosecuted as adults, right?

BOOTS: Yeah. Exactly. And, I was teaching a workshop a the La Peña Cultural Center. So I decided to do something. The workshop was about art and organizing, so I decided to make it so that folks came and had to do something. We had a lot of young rappers involved, so that was the idea.

MARK: I’m curious as to how you balance stuff now. It sounds like, when you were coming up, a lot of the work that you did was really hands-on. You were in Oakland, working on really specific causes. You were drawing attention to specific cases of police brutality, and social justice issues, and making tangible contributions. And then you transitioned to a bigger stage, where the rewards are much different, and the pay off is a lot farther off. I’m curious as to how you juggle those two things. I know you’re still doing stuff on-the-ground in Oakland, but do you think you’ve got the mix right?

BOOTS: No, I don’t. I never have a good mix. It’s a struggle to figure out how to do both. Usually, I’m either doing one or the other. Like, when I was doing stuff with Occupy Oakland, I wasn’t doing music. Anything that you do right is going to take a lot of time. It’s hard to figure it out. I think the best way that I’ve figured out is just to have different time periods during the year where you work on different things. But it’s still not easy to work out. But, you know, I hear about people who can multitask and do those sorts of things, but, the way that I write, I’m not able to do that.

MARK: Do you think, over the last twenty years, you’ve kind of figured out how you’re of the most use to the cause?

BOOTS: It changes.

MARK: How’s it changing now?

BOOTS: Well, the world changes… What allows me to keep doing my music is the thought that, these folks (doing other forms of organizing) are only reaching a very limited number of people, and my music can reach way more folks, so I need to keep doing this music, to talk to more people… but we’re in a period where certain kinds of organizing actually can grab the attention of more people than it has in the past. It’s not the same kind of organizing… I think we went though a period in the 90′s where the idea of political organizing was anything but labor related. And, now, we have a certain amount of confluence in those two realms, that I think is lending itself to a new situation.

MARK: There are definitely positive signs with regard to labor organizing. What just happened a few days ago with the Walmart walk-out strike was encouraging. But, at the same time, I think union membership is at an all time low, isn’t it?

BOOTS: It definitely is, but that has nothing to do with where people are at, and what they want to do. The reason membership is an an all time low is that the unions aren’t militant. People don’t see unions as being able to win fights. Here’s an example. Occupy Oakland, a couple of different times, shut down the port. People, wether they agreed or disagreed with us, know that that we can shut stuff down… We broached the idea of a fast food workers union in Oakland, with it being connected to Occupy Oakland. We got a tremendous response, with people being in favor. Why? Because people thought that we could win. And the reason they thought this was because they knew, whatever the case, business owners knew that Occupy Oakland could shut shit down. So, therefore, it could win. I don’t think that a lot of people have faith that unions can win. They don’t think that unions will take militant routes that can win. Like, you have to be able to keep out scabs, which means a certain amount of breaking the law. In this day and age, if you play by the Taft-Heartly laws, you’re also going to have a hard time winning. You’re probably going to lose. So it’s going to take a different set of rules to win.

MARK: It’s kind of a difficult subject to broach, but I’m curious on your thoughts concerning militancy, and how far people should be willing to go. You’ve got songs like The Guillotine and Five Million Ways to Kill a CEO, which clearly allude to violence…

BOOTS: It’s symbolic…

MARK: Yeah, but it hints at a threat, right? It reminds people that, if they push folks too far, they’re going to pay a price.

BOOTS: Yeah, but militancy doesn’t only have that narrow definition. A militant movement is one that, at the drop of a hat, will shut things down… Let’s say this. The longshoremen are the most militant of the traditional unions that exist. The ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union). Any time there’s a dispute, they’re down to shut the place down. That’s militant. They’re not waiting for it to be OK’d through arbitration. They’re showing their force, right away, and exacting a cost. Many of these unions will be involved in a fight and not want to strike right away. They’re scared about a number of things. Because of that, many people feel betrayed by their unions. They feel that they’re not going to be strong enough… that they’re not down for the fight. “Militant” implies that there are going to be actions, that may be physical, that allow one to win. And that means physically keeping out scabs. If you have a strike where replacement folks get brought in, the strike is usually over. Unions have to physically, forcefully, keep scabs out.

MARK: You mentioned that you were making some headway in Oakland with the fast food workers. What happened with that?

BOOTS: The main problem was convincing other folks in Occupy Oakland that it was something worthwhile compared to the other things that were going on. There are so many things going on with Occupy Oakland. People are spread really thin. So, it just wasn’t the time to bring this out. People weren’t down to dedicate the time.

MARK: It’s tough. It seems, with the Occupy movement, that so much time and effort is spent providing social services… like just recently, with all of the Occupy Sandy stuff. There are just so many needs that have to be addressed, that it takes up a lot of the bandwidth.

BOOTS: I think Occupy Oakland is different. It does provide services, but in the midst of campaigns. We’ve got the foreclosure defense stuff going on. And we’ve got various folks working on police brutality stuff. There are all sorts of things happening. Some people don’t want to do the service stuff and all, and, other people, that’s their thing. They like feeding people.

MARK: So it wasn’t a question of capacity. It was more a result of an internal discussion within the organization concerning priorities.

BOOTS:Yeah, a fast food workers union seems like a good idea, but the question is whether fast food workers would be down with it, and you’re not going to know unless you’re part of that outreach. And, at the same time, we had the school occupation happening, and a lot of people were involved in that. There were foreclosure defense actions. There were neighborhood assemblies. We were declaring moratoriums on foreclosure in certian neighborhoods. So, a lot of people were doing many different things. So, that was part of the problem at the time. Then there’s people that had experience organizing unions, and many of them wanted to be sure that it was their union that got to do it, and it was just too early to declare that. Let’s put it like this… It wasn’t for lack of wanting by people that were in fast food work. We actually had people that were down to do it, and we had a few things in place, we just didn’t have enough people to really carry it through.

MARK: Speaking of the plight of low-paid workers, your new album, Sorry to Bother You, is about telemarkting, and, in a broader sense, I guess, it’s about shitty, low-paying jobs in general. In addition to just being a good record, in the tradition of The Coup, is there a bigger message behind it? Are you trying to rally support for anything specific? Does either the album, or the movie that you’re working on, which uses the album as a soundtrack, touch on, for instance, the importance of organizing low-wage workers?

BOOTS: Not specifically around organizing telemarketers. The movie has some stuff about a union that’s being attempted at a telemarketing spot. Which is what was happening at the place that I worked at (when I was doing telemarketing). But it’s not specifically around organizing telemarketers. It’s around organizing people in the workplace in general.

MARK: So that message is in the movie?

BOOTS: Yeah. Yeah… Well, I don’t know that the “message” is in the movie, but the situation is in the movie.

MARK: Are you in pre-production yet for the movie?

BOOTS: I guess, technically, yeah.

MARK: Your producer, I’ve read, is Ted Hope, who produced movies like The Ice Storm, Happiness, American Splendor…

BOOTS: And 21 Grams. And the director is this guy, Alex Rivera, who did this movie called Sleep Dealer.

MARK: How’d it all come together?

BOOTS: I just kind of put a blast out to people I know, and Danny Goldberg, who was managing Street Sweeper Social Club, and also used to manage Nirvana and work with Led Zeppelin, read it and loved it. And he got it to Ted Hope. And Ted Hope was like, “I want to make this movie.” It probalby also helped that I had a soundtrack.

MARK: How did you sell them on the idea that you would be the right person for the lead? Or was that just part of the deal going in?

BOOTS: That was just part of the deal. I was like, “I’ve written this script. I have the soundtrack. And I will play the lead.” So, if somebody did’t like that, they just didn’t respond… It’s also a good marketing thing for them too. You know, if it’s going to be an independent film, there’s probably going to be more interest in it if the creator of it is part of it as well. I’m acting all the time anyway.

MARK: What do you mean… on stage?

BOOTS: Yeah, as a performer – it’s theatrical.

MARK: Had you attepted to do someting like this before? Didn’t I hear about a book that was being written from one of your songs, and the possiblity that it may turn into a film as well?

BOOTS: So a woman heard a song (Me and Jesus the Pimp in a ’79 Granada Last Night) and wrote a book based on it… I didn’t want the movie made. It had the potential to be a very terrible movie, if not done by the right person… I didn’t like the themes. She took the story and read things into that I…

MARK: With this new record, when you started writing it, did you know that you wanted to see it evolve into a dark comedy…

BOOTS: Well, I wrote the script first. I took like a year and wrote the script, while my manager, agent and record label said, “What are you doing?”

MARK: Because they wanted to keep you recording, and playing on the road…

BOOTS: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, “You’re not going to get a movie made.” They wouldn’t say it in exactly that way, but that was the thought.

MARK: So, you think that it will do well in the marketplace… that people will buy tickets and like it?

BOOTS: Oh, yeah. There are people that have read it that I trust, that think that it’s a great, new, and interesting thing.

MARK: I’m happy for you… You put something out on Twitter a few days ago. “I realized five years ago,” you said, “we’re never going to go platinum, we’re never going to get radio play, we’re never going to make money at this.” Is part of this movie thing because you want to reach a wider audience, or is it more about paying the bills?

BOOTS: I don’t think people are able to pay bills on independent movies.

MARK: I imagine that you’d get a cut on video sales, right?

BOOTS: Yeah, but think about the time that you spent on it.

MARK: I guess what I was getting at is that it’s probably a little more lucrative than the record business.

BOOTS: Maybe for somebody. But independent movies? No. It’s not like that. It’s a labor of love. But people want to make some money at it. And that’s one thing about Ted Hope. He’s an independent movie guru. He’s someone who’s able to make independent film turn a profit. But, again, like I said, the amount of profit, compared to the amount of time put into it… It’s not like some cash cow. But it’s possible, you know. Maybe it could be some breakout hit. But it’s not real likely to happen. And that’s the name of the game in every industry. “More work for less pay.”

MARK: I’m curious as to where you draw the line. You mentioned earlier that folks in the Progressive Labor Party had told you that no artistic endeavor could come out of the Capitalist system and have any meaning, or something along those lines. And you pursue this line as a career. But you draw a line at advertising…

BOOTS: I didn’t believe them (that nothing good could come from works produced within the system)… In reality, that’s where music comes in. It’s advertising. Music is licensed to TV shows. It’s advertising. TV shows are there to keep people watching, so they’ll watch commercials. So, the music that’s licensed to them helps that to happen. And we do that.

MARK: Yeah. You’ve done that. You’ve written music for the Simpsons, and done other stuff. But yet, when it comes to selling a song to Levi’s, you’ve said something like, “That’s a line that I won’t cross.” And I’m curious about that line, and where you draw it. Like you say, the TV show is there to sell ads, and you work with them. So, that line is kind of fuzzy… I’m just wondering what your thought process is. Do you consider, for instance, the good stuff you could do with the money that you’d receive from selling a song to a company, or the fact that it would get your music out to a broader audience? I guess what I’m asking is, how firm is that line?

BOOTS: Well… For instance, K-Mart offered us a bunch of money for the Magic Clap. They wanted to make it a part of their main commercial ad campaign for the fall. So, you’d turn on the TV, and you’d hear, “K-Mart, Magic Clap,” forever. And you’d think of K-Mart when you hear that song. And do I want to spend my life with that? Like, the job market is hard out there, but… That would erase a lot of shit, you know? If I were going to try to make money, I could probably think of some other things to do, that weren’t music-related. If I did that, though, I’d reach more of an audience, but people would be thinking of that song, or whatever it is, as connected to that group. So, you know, when they offer The Coup money, they’re not only offering The Coup that. They’re buying a group. They’re buying an idea, you know? The idea that, “Even these dudes, are behind this product.”

MARK: So they’re buying your credibility…

BOOTS: It’s the idea that people think that we represent (the company or product). They’re buying philosophy. If I was just an artist known for making… Let’s say that I had my same revolutionary ideas, but that my art, that I was know for, was acting, or making love songs, or whatever. Then, when I did something like that, it would just be about me. But for me to attribute those songs to a product, means to attribute those ideas… So, for instance, when I was in Portland, we did an eviction defense rally, people were marching down the street changing, “we got the guillotine.” So, lets’s say I turned around, and sold that song to Nike… It wouldn’t just be about me. It would be about a movement.

MARK: When I first heard about your band, it was right after 9/11, and the cover for your record Party Music became a news item. I’m just wondering if you were at all scared when that happened, when you saw what happened on 9/11, and then thought about the album cover that you’d just created, which showed you blowing up the World Trade Center using a guitar tuner… Were you afraid of a backlash?

BOOTS: You know, I got into the music to talk about ideas. So I really didn’t worry about it. It gave me a platform to talk about other ideas.

MARK: I know that Bill Maher gave you a hard time about it on his show, and he also, as I recall, said something about you being a Communist, like “people who sell records aren’t Communists.” Are you getting better at answering those kinds of challenges now, after having heard them for a couple of decades?

BOOTS: The idea of wanting to make a revolution… You have to be in the system to do it. You can’t say, “You can’t be a Communist and work retail.” If you work in an automotive factory, you’re participating in Capitalism, but how else do you organize anyone, if you’re not part of it? Folks that say stuff like that either don’t understand, or they’re looking for a quick retort. The reality is that what people are saying is not that they don’t want to participate, but that they don’t want other people to be affected. I don’t want other people to be affected by Capitalism. I feel that, in reality… and I may be deluding myself… I’m a pretty crafty dude. I can figure out how to survive. I could figure out how to be the crab that climbs up the barrel, or whatever. But I don’t want for there to be a barrel. I don’t want everybody else to get cooked. And that’s the point.

MARK: Do you think we’re making any progress? Things have gotten a lot worse in a lot of ways since you started in 1991. Wealth inequality, for instance…

BOOTS: Really? In 1991, we were having demonstrations with ten people. So, things have gotten a lot better. Now we’ve got thousands of people, all with the idea that we need a systematic change, with class analysis being a part of it. Things have gotten better.

MARK: I wasn’t thinking about the numbers of people in the street. I was thinking about wealthy inequality, the fact that our public schools are being systematically dismantled…

BOOTS: The numbers are the only thing that matters, though. What matters is not how the state is working, or how the system is working, but the point at which the movement is that could change the system.

MARK: I can see you point, and there’s potential there. A movement is starting to build. But, at the same time, you see the public school system being systematically taken apart, our wealth being siphoned off by for-profit charter schools, the growing, racist “patriot” movement in America…

BOOTS: Yeah, and all of those things are going to happen as long as we don’t have a movement. So none of that surprises me. As long as you don’t have a movement, any of the gains that you make are going to be dismantled. And that’s why a revolutionary movement that fights for reform, on the way to making revolution, and sustains the movement… That’s why you chart your progress relative to how the movement is growing, not on how strong the system is that is attacking you.

MARK: One last question… Were do we have the most leverage? Where should we be focusing right now, if we really want to make long term, systematic, sustainable change?

BOOTS: Well, it’s like we were talking about earlier. I think right now what people want are material gains. They need to see victories. And they need to see it done in a certain way. We need a radical, militant labor movement that uses direct action and work stoppages to gain some of these things. We need for it to be connected to the community, and not just built around wages. But using labor and work stoppages to effect change in other areas, that would normally be considered community things – community organizing. An example is how the ILWU shut down the port of Oakland in protest of the Oscar Grant verdict. They might have done it in a safe way, but that’s an example. And there need to be sympathy strikes. That’s got to become a tool. And union leaders are going to have to be down with going to jail, just like anyone else on the line is down for it…

Now here’s the recording, for those of you who either can’t read, or just refuse to.

A big thank you to my friend Jeff Clark for reaching out to Boots, and making all of this happen. And thank you to all of you who contributed via Kickstarter to bring the vision to reality.

See you Sunday night.

…As the largest private employer in the United States and the world, Walmart is setting the standard for jobs. That standard is so low that hundreds of thousands of its employees are living in poverty—even many that work full time. The problems extend to workers who toil in unsafe working conditions in subcontracted warehouses. And also to workers in developing countries such as China and Bangladesh who make incredibly low wages while manufacturing the goods on Walmart’s shelves. That pulls down standards for workers in the United States and around the globe.

Because of its size and political influence, Walmart is affecting much more than just working conditions. Although it has gained much fanfare for its efforts in environmentalism, sustainability has mostly been a public relations campaign for Walmart. The company has written hundreds of press releases and thousands of blog posts, but made little actual progress in reducing the environmental impacts of its products and business.

And Walmart has an outsized impact on our food system. It is the largest and seller of food in this country. That gives Walmart influence over which foods are available to the public, the methods in which food is produced, and the prices paid to producers.

Across this country, in rural and suburban communities, there are too many small businesses to count who have closed their doors due to competition from Walmart. Now, Walmart has aggressively set its sights on the final frontier—large urban communities like New York City and Los Angeles.

The company is also a major contributor to widening gap between the very rich and everyone else. The average full time Walmart “associate” makes about $15,500 a year. And worse, Walmart is pushing more and more workers toward a permanent part-time status. Meanwhile, the six members of the Walton family—heirs to the Walmart fortune and near majority owners of the company—have a combined wealth of $93 billion. That’s more than the bottom 30% of Americans combined…

According to the Corporate Action Network website, while there could be protests at several local Walmarts tomorrow, it looks as though the main ones in our area will be at the Walmart Supercenters in Bellville (10562 Belleville Road at 11:00 AM) and Dearborn (5851 Mercury Drive at 10:30 AM). If you know of others, please leave a comment.

For those of you who can’t make it out to support the strike in person, and take up a few parking parking spaces that could otherwise be used by Walmart shoppers, there are a few things that you can do to help. If you’re so inclined, you could, for instance, write a letter to Rob Walton and let him know that you won’t return to Walmart stores until they begin paying a living wage. (You might also want to ask him not to fire the Walmart employees who walk out this holiday season.) If you have the financial wherewithal, you can also make a cash contribution to the Stand Up, Live Better Fund, which will be supplying striking workers with food cards for their families. And, if you have a moment, you can help spread word of the strike online, asking your friends to join you in avoiding Walmart on Friday.

One last thing… I know that quite a few of you probably shop at Walmart because it’s cheap, and may not care that the company’s employees have been treated poorly, bullied, kept from organizing, etc. While I understand, given the state of the economy, that value is important, I’d ask you to consider the following… The price that you pay at the cash register, when you shop at Walmart, likely doesn’t reflect the true price that you’re paying… We, the tax payers of America, you see, essentially subsidize Walmart, by funding the public assistance programs that keep its poorly-paid employees alive. Walmart employees, more than those of any other company in America, are likely to be on food stamps and we pay the price for that… Following, with more on that subject, are a few facts pulled together by the Winning Words Project.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages force employees to need approximately $420,000 per year, per store, totaling $2.66 BILLION annually in food stamps and other taxpayer assistance… to survive.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages cost our communities the ability to hire and retain important public service workers like firefighters, police officers, maintenance workers, and teachers.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages and lack of covered benefits cost taxpayers over $1.02 BILLION a year in healthcare costs.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages cost taxpayers as much as $225 MILLION in free and reduced price lunches for school-age children.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages cost taxpayers over $780 MILLION in tax deductions for low-income families.

And, here, if you still need convincing, are Walmart workers explaining, in their own words, why they think action is necessary.

Here’s hoping them the best of luck. The Walton family, in the past, has responded harshly to such attempts. One hopes that this time it’s different, and that those who walk out won’t immediately lose their jobs.

[note: If you're interested in following the movement, you can do so on both Facebook and Twitter.]

[note: And, as long as you're not shopping at Walmart tomorrow, why not just not shop anywhere at all, and join those of us who will be celebrating Facebook and Buy Nothing Day?]