In 2022, in the small town of Alpine, California, Raquel Nuñez founded Cuatro Vientos, a community composting project that brings environmental and cultural solutions to the community. In this episode of Building Local Power, Raquel, and her partners Iriani Lopez and Aedan Lagillardaie, share how it has been a dream come true to reconnect with their heritage and the land through composting. However, over the last year, they have quickly learned that their biggest barrier to sustaining this dream is funding.

Jessica Toth, Executive Director of the Solana Center, an organization driving environmental innovation, joins the second half of the episode to outline how food waste is both an environmental and a social issue and why the very people implementing solutions to lessen our carbon footprint — while providing jobs and education in a circular food system — are underfunded. Despite misaligned interests on the part of investors, environmental stewards, and policymakers, Jessica makes the case for economic incentives that can help the United States address the 40 million tons of food waste created every year in this country alone.

For additional resources see: https://ilsr.org/building-local-power/

Twenty-five years ago, there were over 2,000 commercial shrimp boats in Mississippi. Today, that number has fallen to around 200. This trend is not unique to Mississippi: Across U.S. coastlines, commercial fisherfolk are seeing their way of life disappear.

On this episode of Building Local Power, Tim Barrett, a local fisherman in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and Ryan Bradley, of the Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United, guide us through how catch share policies — a set of regulations promoted as beneficial for the environment and for fisheries — have turned the sea into a tradeable and buyable commodity, opening the doors for investment, private equity, and corporations to hoard the right to harvest fish. The ensuing consolidation of the industry is driving up prices for both small-scale fisherfolk and the consumer, and putting countless fisherfolk out of work.

Tim and Ryan explain how we need to reform the nation’s catch policy to build a more equitable and thriving fishing sector where small-scale fisherfolk aren’t the ones being hooked.

For additional resources see: https://ilsr.org/building-local-power/

“A country with no farmers is no country at all,” says Shad Dasher, owner of The Onion Man Company, an onion farm in Glennville, Ga., on this episode of Building Local Power. In the 1930s, the United States boasted some 6.8 million farms. Today, we’re down to roughly two million — a more than 70% decline. 

The rapid consolidation of agriculture across the U.S. has obliterated many small and mid-size farms and has posed monumental challenges for small farmers and consumers alike. In the second half of this episode, Sarah Carden, Senior Policy Advocate at Farm Action, explains how increased consolidation drives up land prices, reduces agricultural diversity, increases prices for consumers, and diminishes the economic viability of communities. 

What we’re seeing is a hollowing out of U.S. agriculture — “farmers are going extinct,” as Sarah says solemnly. All of this points to a clear need to shift our American ideology away from misguided notions of “efficiency” and, as Sarah suggests, to implement policies that support a decentralized farming system. 

For additional resources see: https://ilsr.org/building-local-power/

Imagine sitting in a remote region of the Sahara desert. The sun is scorching hot, the dry air is stifling, and there are no trees, no water, and no living creatures as far as the eye can see. What would you wish you had? 

One night in 2020, Aaron Johnson, founder and owner of Oasis Fresh Market, was up late working on a marketing plan for his new grocery store when he imagined himself in this very scenario. Then, it hit him. “In my mind, I [thought of an] oasis,” he recalled. “I remember opening my laptop and Googling the definition … it means refuge, safe place, and shelter.” 

For years, Aaron had lived in a different kind of desert, one common to many urban and rural areas across the U.S.: a food desert. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an urban area becomes a food desert when residents live further than a mile from a full-service grocery store; in rural areas, the range stretches to 10 miles. North Tulsa, Oklahoma had been a food desert for fourteen years. It was also, Aaron adds, a food swamp, inundated with dollar stores and fast food restaurants. Aaron knew that there was a need in his community – not only for fresh and nutritious food, but for a business that valued people over profits. 

With the support and aid of his family and community, Aaron officially opened Oasis Fresh Market in May of 2021. In the years since, it’s grown into a thriving independent business and nonprofit organization. Aaron thinks that Oasis can be a blueprint for other cities, mayors, and governors looking to support truly community-centric businesses. Oasis – and its associated nonprofit organization, The Oasis Projects – combines a grocery store with wraparound services, including employment, public health, and education. Together, they nurture a safe place and a refuge that only small, independent, locally-owned businesses are nimble enough to foster. 

In the second half of this episode, Stacy Mitchell, Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, expands on the policy decisions that have wiped out independent grocery stores and led to an increasingly consolidated grocery sector. She also points to smart policy decisions that some communities have implemented to preserve independent grocery stores. Pennsylvania, for example, created the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, which allocated capital for grants and loans for people interested in starting and expanding grocery stores in low-income and underserved areas. This program ultimately financed nearly 100 grocery stores in urban and rural areas. But policymakers and elected officials must create the pathway to make opportunities like this available to all communities, including by enforcing antitrust laws and returning power to the people. 

For additional resources see: https://ilsr.org/building-local-power/

The Rev. Dr. Donald Perryman was born and raised into the Black church in Toledo, Ohio. Since 1997, he has served as the Senior Pastor at The Center of Hope Community Baptist Church, in the central city, where he has led a religious, social, and political movement to empower his community. 

Toledo’s Dorr Street was once home to a thriving Black community rich in art, music, culture, and small businesses. But after decades of disinvestment, mass incarceration, and industrialization, neighborhoods in Toledo, like Dorr Street, were stripped of their wealth. In 2015, Dollar General saw this as an opportunity to move in. But Dr. Perryman knew that chain dollar stores preyed on struggling communities. As he says, “they’re a cancer on vulnerable urban neighborhoods,” and he was unwilling to let Toledo be their next victim. He banded together with neighborhood groups, government officials, and allies to implement a moratorium to prevent dollar store construction. The moratorium expired without the city notifying Dr. Perryman, and now the fight has started all over again. 

Dr. Perryman is not deterred. His work in the church has grounded him in the long-term nature of the fight for justice. “I don’t know how long it’ll take,” he says, “but we plan to win.” 

In the second half of the episode, Kennedy Smith, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, weaves Dr. Perryman’s story into the broader fight against dollar stores raging across the country. Kennedy talks about the disconnect between what communities say they want and what planning commissions and city councils are actually doing. She details how dollar stores create food deserts, attract crime, extract wealth from local communities, and endanger workers. Dollar chain stores are threatening the very fabric that makes a community. 

Finally, Kennedy explains that Dr. Perryman’s work and movement-building at the local level is critical to ending dollar store proliferation, but these local leaders need help. Not only do state and federal officials need to reinvigorate our antitrust laws to prohibit dollar stores from using predatory tactics to crush independent retailers, she explains, but they “need to have the political courage to enforce them.” 

For additional resources see: https://ilsr.org/building-local-power/

For our final Building Local Power episode of 2022, we invited Co-Founder, David Morris, to offer a history lesson on the self-reliance framework that underpins ILSR’s work. He discusses how that framework has evolved over four-plus decades, the organization’s inherent aversion to bigness, and the successes and hardships of ILSR’s early years. … Read More

On this episode of Building Local Power, Christopher Mitchell and Sean Gonsalves talk about the work that immediately lies ahead for the broad array of communities seeking to free themselves from the unbridled power of monopolistic Internet providers.… Read More

On this episode of Building Local Power, three members of ILSR’s Independent Business team, Lauren Gellatly, Katy Milani, and Kennedy Smith, answer: What challenges are small, independent businesses facing? And what legislative solutions are on the way? … Read More

The three members from ILSR's energy team engage in a riveting conversation on the biggest energy stories from 2022, including the Inflation Reduction Act’s big funding for solar, the antimonopoly focus in the Biden administration, how utility companies are continuing to use their financial power to lobby against energy, and a new tool designed to bring distributed solar to more communities.… Read More

On this episode of Building Local Power, members of the Composting for Community team, Brenda Platt and Clarissa Libertelli, explain how their accomplishments in 2022 have impacted communities across the U.S. and forged a more sustainable future. … Read More