Will Without Oil

Even though Bloomington is a Green Zone, it's not easy. A lot of people have lost their jobs or been forced to drop back to part-time. Most people have taken up the slack by helping their neighbors or trying to replace things they'd usually buy with their own labor (like Fraternity Row growing food). That's worked well enough so far, but nobody's totally self-sufficient.

For a while, there was a lot of trading going on. In our neighborhood, there was a retired engineer who had been an amateur carpenter for years. He wandered around the neighborhood fixing things up in return for veggies. To be honest, I think he mostly did it to be doing something, since he couldn't be getting much food that way. There was also an unofficial trading area at a corner house with a big porch. People would head over every evening and bring whatever food they'd been able to grow or procure and swap for what they wanted.

It worked pretty well for a while, since there was enough food coming in that people were mostly trading for incidental items: strawberries for dessert, some fresh vegetables, even the occasional local beef or pork.

In the past couple of weeks, that hasn't been enough. As the Red and Yellow Zones spread, it's been harder to get necessities. There's a lot of emergency relief being sent to those areas, which means that we can't depend on external resources and help. Barter works okay, but it gets more and more tedious the more things you need. At one point, we were spending more time trading for what we wanted than we were growing the food in the first place!

Luckily, Maggie remembered BloomingHOURS. They were never all that popular, but back in '99, a group of folks started up a currency for Bloomington, the HOUR. HOURS were set to be worth $10 (the average cost of an hour of work in our county), with HALF HOUR and QUARTER HOUR bills available as well. My favorite part is the "In Each Other We Trust" imprint on them.



For some reason, people have been hesitant to pay (or in some cases, accept payment!) for things they don't think of as their jobs. In addition, many of the wealthiest people in the area have fled to other countries, taking a lot of currency out of the economy. With the high unemployment, it seemed like a perfect time to try and reintroduce the local currency.

Of course, we couldn't do it alone. Maggie talked to the members of the Local Growers Guild (famers and businesses) and convinced them to accept BloomingHOURS. Then, we talked to the organizers of the farmers market and convinced them to make acceptance of BloomingHOURS a requirement to get a space at the market. I feel a little bad about that, since it doesn't really give most farmers a choice. The market is the only place most of them are able to sell what they have.

On the other hand, a local currency can really kickstart a community, so hopefully they'll see benefits from it soon enough. We also got some people to agree to work for an hour per BloomingHOUR at any local farm willing to pay them (as long as Maggie and I provide transportation; once again, thanks to the grease car!), which should ease any bad feelings. Lots of farmers are having to work harder since they can't use all the chemicals they're used to, so the additional labor should be useful.

It's too early to know if it'll make a real difference, but I'm optimistic (as usual). Local currencies can not only provide a needed boost to our economy, they can really foster a sense of community.

I think you'll find that a local currency will help everyone realize that we're in this together on a local scale as well as a global one. If there's a local currency in your area (or a country near you), see if you can get involved. Encourage businesses to accept it, use it to pay for chores, or maybe even help expand it into a nearby city!