BobWaldrop.net

Today is election day, and thus a day of hope for Oklahoma City.  The most important thing I can say about Steve Hunt is that he is not a creature of the downtown special interests that have captured control of Oklahoma City government.  He is independent, he was one of the major opponents of the MAPS 3 proposal, and if elected, he will work to represent the needs and hopes of all citizens of Oklahoma City, not just those with big bank accounts.

This post is an email I sent today to the membership of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

+++

As the 2010 Annual Meeting gets closer, let’s take a look at some of the principles that have contributed significantly to our success. It never hurts to revisit “first principles” on a somewhat regular basis, especially as our local food systems grow more resilient and complex.

1. We operate in accordance with our Core Values.

At the very first meeting of the “Committee to Organize an Oklahoma Food Cooperative,” we decided that whatever our business ended up with in terms of structure, we would operate it in accordance with three Core Values: Social Justice, Environmental Sustainability, and Economic Viability. Further, these core values would not be just a “pious statement” that we would make early on, they would be a constant lived reality in our work. All three are necessary to what we do. Otherwise, we might as well just go to the supermarket.

>From Plato to Buckminster Fuller, geometry has observed that the equilateral triangle is a “most stable form”. Our three Core Values provide a triangle foundation of support for our operations. If we change any of them, then we cease to be who we are. So as we make decisions going forward, we do well to ask ourselves how what we do, or propose to do, relates to those Core Values. When we make mistakes in this regard, we need to learn from those mistakes and not repeat them.

2. We set and serve an open table of fellowship.

This is one of the most important aspects of our success, yet it was not a matter of deliberate design — it’s just the way things happened. Early in our history, I looked around at the members of the organizing committee and thought to myself, “This is a diverse group of people.” And that hasn’t changed, lo these seven years later. We have rich and poor and all points between, left and right and center, hippies and preppies, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists, Anarchists, many different religions and denominations, atheists and agnostics. All races and creeds have found a place at our local food table of fellowship.

This isn’t some kind of faux diversity, no one is saying that our personal beliefs are not important. It’s that we realize why we are here, and what is relevant here, and the fundamental fact is that all people have a right to produce and eat good, healthy, nutritious food, and participate in an economic structure designed to facilitate access to such food.

Happy accident it may have been, but our “open table of fellowship” has certainly been a critical factor in our success. If we had started out by requiring some sort of ideological litmus test on membership, well, we never would have opened for business.

3. We offer open access to our marketplace within our published standards.

The Oklahoma Food Cooperative is not a “closed” cooperative with a limited number of producers. Any coop member, who can verifiably meet our standards, can become a producer in the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. We do not limit the number of producers that can sell in a given product category. We have our published standards, and within those parameters, we have a free market with low entry barriers.

This principle derives from all three of our Core Values:

+ By remaining open to new producers, and operating a standards-based market with low cost of entry, the Coop promotes social justice, since members who can produce in accordance with the Coop’s standards can gain entry and offer their products to the coop’s membership. It’s not a matter of “who you know”, or “who you are”, or “how much capital you have”. The Coop’s leadership does not pick winners and losers in the Cooperative’s marketplace. Instead, the question is simply whether your products meet our standards.

+ By not limiting the number of producers who can access our market, we directly encourage new local production, and that contributes to environmental sustainability and the resiliency of our local food marketplace. Limiting producer access to the Coop’s marketplace would slow the growth of a resilient local food system and increase the risk of shortages of important food and non-food items..

+ Our open cooperative status protects and enhances the economic viability of the Coop. Availability of many important food items remains uncertain or limited. When it comes to food, agriculture has long lead times. From calf to steer to pot roast is at least 18 months, and there just isn’t any way to hurry that along (at least, not any way that complies with our standards.) New producers coming into the coop bring increased production, and thus more availability, for critical food items needed by Oklahoma households. The economic viability of the Coop is directly related to the amount of food and non-food items bought by our membership. Limiting the number of producers who can sell in our marketplace violates the rights of our membership to buy locally produced food and non-food items. Such reduced access will inevitably limit the sales of food and non-food items in our marketplace, and that will directly harm our Cooperative’s economic viability.

4. We use the cooperative’s transparent marketplace to achieve goals.

Early on, we decided that within our standards, we would not dictate customer or producer choices but instead, we would require full transparency of production methods and ingredients by our producers. Producers have freedom, within our standards, to choose a variety of production methods and materials — as long as they are completely transparent about what they are doing. People don’t join the cooperative because they want to buy mystery food. They want to know everything about the food that they buy. Producers therefore have an economic incentive to do a good job of transparency, because their sales will suffer if they don’t. Full producer transparency regarding production methods, ingredients, and etc., is critical to our continued growth and success.

5. We invest sweat equity.

Everyone who joins the cooperative invests capital — in the form of their membership share purchase — and every member who then uses our system to buy food and non-food items also invests some sweat equity in the “final assembly” of the refrigerated and frozen items of their order at the various pick-up sites. Many members go further — they volunteer for delivery day work, in our unheated, un-air conditioned “fixer upper” operations center, they serve on committees, as officers and board members, they run our pick-up sites, deliver orders, and answer the phones and emails. It’s an amazing example in the modern era of the pioneer can-do spirit so evident at the house and barn raisings of our ancestors days. It is a reminder that something is going on here that is more than just another food business.

6. We follow the principles of the cooperative movement

“One member, one share, one vote,” that’s the way the cooperative movement works, and that’s the way that we work too. The Oklahoma Food Cooperative is part of the worldwide cooperative movement, which offers the world many examples of sustainable, socially just, and economically viable enterprises. The principles that animate that movement — first set out in the mid 19th century by the “Rochdale Equitable Pioneers”, a group of impoverished mill workers who pooled their meager assets to set up a cooperative grocery store — remain living realities for us today, all these years later. Just as the Rochdale pioneers had no idea what would result from their efforts — they certainly weren’t afraid to start small, or they would never have started at all — we do not completely see what will grow over the coming decades from the seeds we plant today. It is said that the best time to plant a forest was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. And so it is coming to pass, right here, right now, one food decision at a time, we plant a “food forest”, that will feed generations to come with the good food of this land where we live.

So, as we come together in our 2010 Annual Meeting, let us celebrate what we have accomplished, learn from our mistakes, and do even better in the coming year, to grow a resilient local food system rooted in social justice, environmental sustainability, and economic viability.

Bob Waldrop, president

Oklahoma Food Cooperative

I have just posted some pictures of the destruction of the Robinson street underpass and the rail yard of Union Station at my Energy Conservation Info website, entitled A Crime Against Nature. I am also compiling a list of the politicians responsible for this travesty, at Roll Call of Dishonor.

I’ve been ranting about the I-40 Crosstown Freeway since my godson Josh and I preached a “The rich who oppress the poor are going to hell” sermon to Governor Frank Keating and other assorted luminaries/plutocrats at the press conference announcing the beginning of the Crosstown Freeway relocation project.  Well, we lost this battle, but the war continues.

One of these days in the future, as the price of gasoline surges past $5/gallon on its way to $10/gallon, and Oklahoma City still doesn’t have a working public transportation system, I suppose we can gaze at the $500 MILLION pyramid called the I-40 Crosstown Freeway and marvel at how blind people were “back in the day.”  The utter waste of such enormous amounts of tax money on such an ill-conceived project — which includes the wanton destruction of heritage transportation infrastructure that could have been the seed of a cost-effective commuter rail transportation system for Central Oklahoma — is mind-boggling even in this age of plutocratic elite excess.

Oh well, this is what civilizations always do in their twilight hours.  They waste grandiose amounts of money on pyramids and circuses.  That’s why instead of building effective public transportation, Oklahoma City has chosen freeways, NBA teams, river sporting events, and a fancy new convention center.  We are like the inhabitants of Easter Island, who even as they chopped down the last palm trees, continued to build great statutes.  We are kin to the Romans, who built giant circuses and threw month long parties as the barbarians closed in on them. 

Got food storage?  Got a local food system?  Got an alternative energy system? Got a plan for massive currency collapse and financial dislocation? If not, better get busy, ’cause with these guys in charge, you will certainly need them.

I’m becoming a fan of Charles Hughes Smith and his Of Two Minds blog.  It may be because he agrees with me on a lot of things, or perhaps I should say, I agree with him.

He is, fundamentally, an optimist.  There isn’t anything good coming out of the welfare/imperial/debt feudalism of the present system.  Just as when the Roman empire passed, the serfs got a much better deal, so it will be when the American empire finishes its devolution.  The signs are all around us – millions of people are learning the brutal lesson that the system is rigged against us and are deciding to work less, buy less, consume less, and live better, happier, and more fulfilling and generative lives.  It is not an easy lesson, but that’s true of all the really good lessons we need to learn.

Charles finds hope, as I do, in the rapid surge of development at the grassroots of our society, as new organizations and networks emerge to meet needs that are falling through the cracks of the old system.  As things get worse, these new institutions will become more and more important to our successful adaption to life without the American empire.

Alternet, btw, has  a great article diserning the deeper meaning behind the various bailout schemes for Wall Street — The Economic Elite have engineered an extraordinary coup, threatening the very existence of the middle class. A lot of people continue to think, “Well, that was that” about the recent economic collapse, but the reality is, “We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”  Over the coming years, as the trillions of dollars in interest charges bloat the trillions of dollars in original capital expense, taxes will rise and government activities will be slashed. I think it is possible that our creditor nations may move to seize major national assets, like the interstate highway and national parks systems, entire fleets of the Navy, and major weapons systems, in order to pay our debts.

In any event, in response to a question from a college student, Mr. Smith has written an excellent essay, which at times reads a bit like my own infamous 20 resilient responses to troubled times.  Read The Wider Context for 20-Somethings and send it to all the young people you know.

I received a reply on the 19th from Dennis Clowers of the Oklahoma City Public Works department, to my email (and blog post) of February 18th.  He informed me that SE 15th would be open by Monday, and indeed it was open Saturday AM when I was at the coop’s operations site.  He also said that the Western bridge would be open “in a few weeks” but that ODOT says that the Penn bridge will not be open until late 2011, due to complications with relocating a railroad bridge. He also says they will try to do a better job in the future of notifying people about road closings.  I suggested a page at the City’s website. 

Dear Ms. Salyer,

Bob Waldrop
1524 NW 21
OKC, OK 73106

This is a guest editorial, our first.;), from one of my eclectic suite of acquaintances. . . I had to edit it a bit as old Iosip is sometimes too plain spoken.

Today marks another victory in the long struggle to destroy the property rights of citizens of Oklahoma City who do not make significant campaign donations to appropriate public servants of the City. 

The City Soviet, Council, voted overwhelmingly to abolish private property rights in a 692 acre area between downtown and the North Canadian River.  The City will now be able to take the properties at gun point, use due process in a rigged courtroom in a courtroom presided over by a truly patriotic judge, and give them on favorable terms to crooks and thieves those who have shown their public responsibility and patriotism by making significant campaign donations to the Mayor and other favored City Soviet Council members.

The Oklahoma City Soviet Council has a long history of making war on the right to own property.  It wasn’t so long ago that the City Soviet Council, destroyed the Deep Deuce area and drove the African American community further awy from downtown, paying them cheap prices for their properties which are now quite valuable. Today, patriotic and well-connected developers are able to reap major financial gains from that particular due process pogrom urban renewal scheme  program.

The Oklahoma City Soviet Council, has always been clever about such schemes central planning urban renewal programs. Thanks to their hard work, no one who does not contribute significantly to the work of the commissars can rest secure in the knowledge that they own their property.  Such people can only “own” property as long as someone who does show public responsibility and patriotism by supporting said commissars council members, does not want their property.

As an added bonus, this pogrom program, will likely put several long-established businesses out of business, creating even more unemployment in the City and making people even more dependent.

This is very nice work, and I urge all patriotic and publicly responsible citizens to hail this latest victory against those antiquated Constitutional principles that protect private property rights.  All pigs may be equal, but some are certainly more equal than others in Oklahoma City, and that’s why so many crooks and thieves public spirited developers and contractors, are attracted to this City.

/sig/

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. 

Long Live the People’s Soviet of Oklahoma City! 

This is a personal note (as opposed to a hair on fire rant about something stoopid that the government has done) about life in Oklahoma City these days. 

We had the worst winter weather I recall in my 57 years of life starting on Christmas Eve. 

 It took me two hours to get to work that afternoon, I left about 1230 PM and arrived at the church, 11 miles from my house, at 230.  I then promptly got stuck in the church parking lot, and didn’t get unstuck for 4 days.  We had only 35 people at the 5 PM mass, 20 at the 830 PM mass, and 10 at the midnight mass. (This is in a parish of 1600 families!) I spent the night at the rectory, we had about 125 people at the 10 AM Christmas Day mass, and I caught a ride home from a friend with a 4-wheel drive jeep.

Even though the other musicians didn’t make it (well, about 10 choir members showed up on Christmas day(, I just did the music as the program specified.  I drafted cantors for the 5 PM and 830 PM masses from the congregation, such as it was, they were both young women who had cantored for me while in high school, who were home for the holiday.

Driving home was something like driving through an apocalyptic movie.  Abandoned cars were strewn everywhere on the urban landscape, many facing contrary to traffic, indicating that they spun around 180 degrees before coming to a stop.

My house, however, was fine without me.  I was gone 25 hours. When I left it was 65 degrees F inside, and when I got back it was 52 degrees F inside, indicating a decline of only one-half degree/hour, even though the temperature was about 17 degrees F that night, no sun.  My extra insulation, and the indoor insulated window shutters I made this year, really helped.

The snow stopped, but it was followed soon-after by very frigid temperatures (for Oklahoma, anyway), with lows temperatures down to 6 degrees at night, and windchills in the -15 degrees F.

This week we are having a heat wave.  Highs have been in the low 50 degree F.  I’m practically breaking out the shorts and sun-tan lotion and Hawaiian shirts. Well, not seriously, but while this might not be much for our brothers and sisters further north, it has strained our infrastructure to the limits.  There have been water main breaks all over town, power failures, and even natural gas outages, that last were virtually un-heard of in the past, but not now in the “new normal” we live in these days.  Oklahoma City has only 15 snow plows and 14,000 miles of streets, so you can see our problem.  Plus, most people are not used to driving on snow, and their cars are not equipped with snow tires or chains, and we have very minimal public transportation.

All’s well that ends well this time around.  We were lucky the blizzard (14 inches in one day, a record for us), only lasted one day and that our usual moderate winter weather hurried back so quickly.  Next time we may not be so lucky.

I just posted the comment below at the Ice News website, which provides news about Iceland in English, commenting about the coming referendum on the unjust demands of the British and Netherlands governments regarding the responsibility of the people of Iceland to make good on the deposits of British and Netherlands citizens in Icelandic banks.

Begin comment. . .

I say “Three cheers for the brave Icelandic people who refuse to be impoverished by the demands of the crooks and fools running the British and Netherlands governments.” It is at best disingenuous to lay all of this on the nation of Iceland. If the British and Netherlands governments allowed these banks to operate in their territories, then their regulators are at fault for not noticing how thinly the guarantee fund was financed.

In the comment thread above, several statements have been made about the credit-worthiness of the United States government. Anyone who believe this is delusional. Anyone who thinks that US taxpayers will actually be able to pay the many trillions of dollars our own crooks and fools have obligated us for is also delusional (cf all the guarantees we’ve been handing out like candy to the crooks on Wall Street and in the big transnational banks).

Beware of anything you hear the US government saying about its finances. Tax receipts for governments — local, state, national — are plummeting. The feds are fiddling with their statitics just like they did in the old Soviet Union. Unemployment is at least twice what the government is reporting.

So if we ever actually pay our bloated debt and bank/finance system guarantees, it will only be thanks to a hyper-inflation where the price of a cup of coffee at my favorite local cafe has risen from US$1.00 to US$100 or even more. A lot of good your US dollars will do you then. I have thought that maybe they could be shredded and used for insulation, and I suppose they could be composted and used to grow vegetables.

Keep banging those pans, Icelanders. Make a noise loud enough to sound across the world.

About twice as many people as usual voted in the MAPS 3 election yesterday, and that is a heartening sign of civic engagement.  Alas, the end result is a blank check to the current and future city leaders amounting to $777 billion.  Nice work if you can get it.

Another optimistic bit of news is that the Mayor says that the new convention center won’t be built first, but “later”.  On the unknown side is his statement that they want the park to open by 2014, when the “new boulevard” that will replace the I-40 Crosstown Freeway is scheduled to open.

Did I miss something about the funding of said boulevard?  No, I don’t think so, it’s presently unfunded, as is the new jail that we are going to have to build or have our local jail taken over by the federal court system.

I hope I am wrong about the MAPS issue.  I hope that the City Council (and the future City Councils to come) can be trusted with this amount of money.  I hope we aren’t presently experiencing permanently changed economic conditions.  I hope Oklahoma City doesn’t suddenly have an emergency need for a true public transit system due to a renewed and even more vicious energy crisis.

I also hope I win the lottery.