Why diss Buy Local?
Many pixels have been spilt on the Buy Local issue and many others have a firmer grasp on the facts than I, so I won’t belabor or dispute the points laid out by Mr. Barowitz (et al.) and Ms. Mitchell.
I ask this: How does attacking Buy Local make Portland better?
The Buy Local campaign is not perfect. Could Buy Local be improved? Yes, and it seeks to be improved through new volunteers and members. Has it done some good? Absolutely.
It seems that the debate around the campaign has been misdirected and turned into an academic fight over the different economic models that Buy Local either supports or erodes. Unfortunately, Buy Local’s assailants are treating the campaign as an intellectual exercise in a vacuum; nothing could be farther from the truth. This is not a classroom debate — this is a real community, and real livelihoods are at stake.
All members of Buy Local believe that Portland is a great place to live, and they believe that the campaign is a movement that they can contribute to in order to make Portland even better.
It is a shame that some Bollard readers cannot bridge their ideological differences to recognize that, for all its shortcomings, Buy Local has had a positive effect upon the business community.
I hope that all Portlanders, native and adoptive, want the Forest City to be the best place that it can be for all its denizens.
Lambasting Buy Local does not make Portland a stronger, better, or friendlier community.
— Phuc Tran, Portland
April 30, 2009
Local By Design
In response to Zachary Barowitz’s op-ed, I feel it is important that we be open to examining the reasons why we support organizations as well as businesses and why we choose not to. At the same time, I think it is vitally important that what is presented as fact is, in fact, accurate. This was not the case in Barowitz’s piece. I won’t dwell on why I believe “buying local” is an economic sustainability strategy for communities, as others have already eloquently done so.* I would, however, like to correct inaccurate information published about Coffee By Design and share a bit about our “vision” as a small, Maine-owned business and how we feel we contribute to our community.
I think it is important to share our philosophy as a specialty coffee company. We have a passion for what we do — both in the product we produce as well as the way in which we do business. When we talk about building the Coffee By Design brand, we say it’s all about a better bean, which has many meanings. From our cause-related coffees to the recycling of our coffee grounds for compost, we demonstrate on a daily basis that our business practices are more than just a marketing position. We believe that giving is an integral and rewarding part of being a “good corporate citizen” and feel we have lived up to our commitment in “giving back” for 15 years.
Are we hypocrites for selling to Whole Foods and to other coffeehouses, restaurants and specialty stores around the country? Part of our goal is to raise awareness of the quality Maine products and the outstanding service we provide. By selling our product to companies like Whole Foods, customers have the opportunity to learn about and support small Maine companies like CBD. We then, in turn, are able to create jobs, buy products from other locally owned businesses and give back to our local community through the numerous events we are proud to sponsor and donations — both monetary and product — we give.
Are we selective as to whom we sell to? You bet we are. Our “vision” as an artisan coffee micro roastery is to search for coffees that meet our standards for environmental and economic sustainability, superior quality and flavor. Then, we partner with specialty businesses that share our desire to offer an excellent cup. Our goal is to ensure that the coffee the farmers we work with produce is represented well. It is not only our name on the line; it is the future of a fifth-generation family farm in Nicaragua or a co-op which has been formed to support an entire community.
As for the facts about our “labor practices,” the hourly wage which Mr. Barowitz cites for Coffee By Design is not only incorrect but is below Maine’s minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. The average hourly wage for our retail staff is $8.25 per hour (not including managers or owners). Retail staff receive tips in addition to their hourly wage which adds anywhere from $2.50 (on the low end) to $5 (on the high end) extra per hour. Our roastery team receive $11.68 per hour on average, plus are eligible for annual year-end bonuses.
We offer a comprehensive health insurance plan in addition to dental, short-term disability and accident insurance to all staff members. A SIMPLE IRA plan is offered, to which Coffee By Design contributes. Paid vacation time, as well as a number of other perks — including free coffee — are part of the package. Yes, of course, we want to offer our outstanding team even more, something we work towards each and every day.
Last but not least, I’d like to share how great we think Portland is. We think and talk a great deal about the very things that make our downtown different from every other downtown in America. The choices we make now will determine what choices future generations may or may not have. We need to look long and hard at how we as a community grow, and ensure that we have all of the facts so that we make educated decisions about where we spend our money in order to support a Portland we are proud of now and in the future. My personal goal for Portland Buy Local is not to keep anyone “out,” per se, but to create a level playing field for small business and acknowledge what can and has been accomplished in Portland by numerous small, locally owned businesses. Portland Buy Local is an opportunity for us all to honor a small city that is truly unique. I invite everyone to join in the celebration.
*For those who want to find out more, I encourage you to attend Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility’s annual conference, “People, Profit and Planet in the New Economy,” on May 7th, where a workshop on “Think Local: Surviving the Downturn and Reviving Maine’s Economy for the Long-Term” will be offered.
— Mary Allen Lindemann, Portland
The writer is a co-founder and owner of Coffee By Design.
April 29, 2009
Reader backs Bollard
I would like to congratulate The Bollard on a couple of fronts. First, for having the balls to give a negative review to an album while your competitor seemingly basks in the magnificence of every album that hits their desk. While I was suspicious of the quality of a band named after a six-year-old movie (All the Real Girls) and one paying tribute to confusing driving directions (This Way), your reviews actually led me to their MySpace pages, where I deemed them both not my cup of tea (though both bands had quite a following).
Second, thanks for publishing the anti-Buy Local rant. It was quite brave to allow your name to be used as a vehicle that attacks a program that is held in such a high regard in such a knee-jerk manner. I say knee-jerk because I count myself among those who think it is an absolutely wonderful initiative, though I have taken everything it claims as the truth, without critical inquiry. The back and forth that the op-ed created, highlighted by Stacy Mitchell’s powerful rebuttal, has been great to read. Local weeklies would be wise to take note.
Thanks for all of this and more!
— Mathew MacMillan, Portland
April 28, 2009
Another reader backs Barowitz, bashes Buy Local
Well, I really have to hand it to you. Kudos and a hearty bravo for your op-ed piece by Zack Barowitz. I guess most people who wrote you were kind of mad, much the same way that a sullen child gets mad when you tell them something they don’t want to hear — namely truth, dissent and that, like the Emperor, they have no clothes. I would like to mention just a couple of things in Mr. Barowitz’s defense and perhaps allow the angry folks to put some pants on.
First off, I am appalled at the lack of rigorous thought expressed by proponents of Buy Local. For goodness sake, they come off like the rabid right-wing blowhards on Fox with a slightly bohemian, bad ’70s youthploitation movie script instead. I mean, really, when workers are buying into a marketing ploy (pure and simple) manufactured by their capitalist overlords (nee owners) then Joe Hill must be in heaven with Henry Ford chugging brewskis and laughing at the common man.
Also, is it just me, or is there an element of racism in this Buy Local thingie? Out of the many immigrant-owned businesses in town, how many were asked to join or have that hokey Buy Local sticker in their window?
Does anyone really wish we were back in the old, pre-global days? I remember when finding a tangello at the supermarket was considered a big deal. Yeah, there is bad stuff about it, but nothing real and good happens overnight.
Anyway, I could go on but it would be pointless. Most folks espousing a “leftie” ideology are just like Catholics now and insist that you eat their whole wafer or, by golly, you just don’t get to go to heaven.
— Michael Whittaker, Portland
April 27, 2009
Portland Phoenix cartoonist cheers Barowitz
Hats off to Zachary Barowitz for welcoming debate on the topic of buying locally. Too often, complicated issues are boiled down to us vs. them, right vs. wrong, when really they’re nowhere near that simple. Facing the roots of problems helps us grow; sloganeering doesn’t. So, bravo for pushing this sticky matter into higher planes of contemplation.
— David Kish, Tucson, Arizona
April 23, 2009
Barista berates Barowitz
Here are my thoughts about Zachary Barowitz’s op-ed, “The Top 10 Reasons NOT to Buy Local“:
1) “Examples of double-standards abound. For instance, Coffee by Design … ”
This Whole Foods comment is short-sighted because Whole Foods has name recognition that attracts audiences to Maine products that may not discover them otherwise. Although Whole Foods has endured some criticism in the past for not carrying Maine lobster, WF has offered many Maine companies a platform to promote their products. Maine companies can even do food demonstrations in an enclosed space with a captive audience. WF helps local companies increase sales and visibility.
2) “Globalization is Good”
Asinine. See Graeme Kennedy’s rebuttle letter below.
3) “It’s smug and elitist”
Many of my friends do not own cars. They are just beginning their careers out of school, and some cannot afford a car because of their hefty student loan burden. Our public transportation is a mess, and so without a vibrant local economy on the peninsula, many of them would not be able to purchase the things that they need to live. Therefore, “Buy Local” is an essential movement for the “working poor” of the city.
4) “Reason #3, ‘Foster Local Job Creation,’ contains the weasel word some: “Studies show that locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than national chains.” [Emphasis added.] According to the citations, this is basically a reference to Walmart, which sets the bar pretty low. But the lack of specificity makes the statement meaningless.”
The local economy creates flexible, seasonal, or part-time jobs that many artists and blossoming entrepreneurs need while they are working on other projects. Many local artists and musicians work in the shops by day and play out at night. Without a steady income, they would be struggling, and they would have to chose between their art and the constraints of a 9 -5 office job.
I could go on and on, but I feel like there is already a lot of outrage in the city about this op-ed.
As for myself, I am an employee of Coffee By Design. I have health insurance, dental insurance, and I buy local products with the money that I earn from this local company. I have been employed by locally owned companies for the 6 years that I have lived in Portland.
The greatest thing about buying local cannot be quantified. Yesterday I had the day off and my errands took me 2 hours longer than they should have — because I ran into people that I know at every single stop that I made: laundry, coffee, lunch, bike shop and bakery. Every stop was a locally owned business. Buy Local is not just an economic movement that can be dissected and analyzed. To me, it is a concept that emotionally ties me to my neighbors on the peninsula.
— Kate Brown (if not known by name, than recognized by most as “that coffee girl”), Portland
April 22, 2009
Rebutting Barowitz
I’ll let others take up some of the rebuttal to Zachary Barowitz’s op-ed “The Top 10 Reasons NOT to Buy Local,” but if I use my local business as an example: wages are pretty close to twice those mentioned in the piece;* health insurance is available and contributed to; we use local suppliers for office supplies, accounting, graphics, printing, and all maintenance and repairs.
Further, since we make everything that we sell, a much higher percentage of the actual sales is created and retained in the local economy.
So many of our customers are involved with the many good causes and non-profits in the community that raise funds with auctions. We contribute to as many as we possibly can — some days in winter the contributions outnumber the sales.
No one expects that any one of us can do all of our buying at indie businesses, but the more all of us do, the healthier our local economy will be and the more we will retain the character of what keeps Portland from being just another small “could be anywhere” town.
* When Walmart publishes average wage info, the top earners’ multi-million-dollar compensation is factored into the overall wage amount.
— Nancy Lawrence, Portland
The writer owns Portmanteau, an artisan shop on Free Street that sells clothing and accessories, and is a board member of the Portland Independent Business and Community Alliance, the non-profit behind the Portland Buy Local campaign.
April 21, 2009
Barowitz bitter over a barista?
In an effort to broaden its appeal, or perhaps just to poke a finger in the eye of its primary readership base, The Bollard has published an op-ed by Zachary Barowitz on “The Top 10 Reasons NOT to Buy Local.” Boil them down and you’re left with “Portland Buy Local is another fuzzy headed liberal conceit that looks down on the little people who go to Walmart due to the price advantage.” Seemingly taking aim at Coffee by Design in particular, Barowitz offers little of substance other than roundabout support for the advantages global corporatism has bestowed on us — like goods from China, sold by giant chains, being less expensive than local products.
The only real criticism of Buy Local that deserves some scrutiny are the figures for exactly how much of a given dollar spent at a local business, versus how much of the same dollar spent at a corporate franchise, remains in the local economy. Now, perhaps the figures used by Portland Buy Local are overly optimistic. I don’t know. Intuitively it stands to reason that more of the cash flow for a local business will remain in the local area, for obvious reasons. For example, if the owner is local, their profits remain with them locally and are not accumulated by out-of-state corporate headquarters to be distributed to shareholders scattered across the country.
Just to take one of Barowitz’s points for examination, let’s look at Reason 3, “Tourists and the Regional Economy.” The Casco Bay Weekly, precursor to The Bollard, once did a piece where reporters trolled the streets of Portland to find and interview tourists, asking them why they chose to visit Portland. The not-surprising answer was that Portland is not “touristy;” it was, and remains, distinctively itself. Unique local businesses and the fact that locals support them is, in short, exactly why tourists are attracted to Portland. And to flip this around, when I leave the area and go somewhere else, as a tourist or on business, I seek out and support local businesses as much as practically possible. I look for the local diner, not the McDonald’s, the equivalent of Arabica or CBD, not Starbucks or DD.
Like Barowitz, I may find that a computer or appliance will cost so much more from a local store that I may chose to purchase it at a chain. No one supportive of the Portland Buy Local campaign that I’ve ever encountered is such a purist that they refuse to buy anything anywhere except at a locally owned business. In fact, most of the rhetoric out there simply suggests that if everyone moved ten cents of every dollar spent at chains to local businesses, the impact would be huge.
All in all, Barowitz has offered us a steaming heap of global corporatist sour grapes. Perhaps some CBD barista recently insulted him and this is his revenge.
— Chris White, Windham
Globalization, my ass!
Regarding Zachary Barowitz’s op-ed, “The Top 10 Reasons NOT to Buy Local” … um … globalization is NOT good. My stance on this has nothing to do with a liberal elitist world view or something of that nature. Rather, it stems from years of reading books — books by, you know, people who understand how globalization works.
Mr. Barowitz’s second best reason to not buy local (“Globalization is Good”) is juvenile at best, and dangerous at worst. It demonstrates a complete and utter lack of knowledge about how “free” trade is practiced in the world.
To begin with, free trade is hardly free. The organizations that dictate (literally) the terms of trade agreements (IMF, WTO, our country) work to benefit their own people and interests and barely anything else. For example, does Mr. Barowitz know that to get aid from one of these organizations, the borrowing country is seriously screwed? The terms of the borrowing are harrowing — the interest rates of these loans are upwards of 20% in many cases, and the time frames to repay these debts are incredibly short.
These loans are usually in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. And who needs this kind of money? Developing nations that are, yes, developing. Developing from decades of colonial rule. Developing from hundreds of years of Western control and brutality. Developing their broken social, political, and economic systems. This is not France borrowing $90 million to start a new high-speed-rail system. This is Jamaica or Haiti trying to get their farmers back in business.
But oh, wait! They can’t do that either, because the loans have stipulations on how the money is spent. Want to invest in your agriculture? Too bad. One of the principle conditions of receiving aid is that the borrowing country HAS to open its borders up to imports (from the U.S., for example) while it CANNOT use that money to invest in its own agriculture. Apparently, this would create an unfair advantage (and you know that the West and the U.S. are all about being fair). Meanwhile, our wealthy country (I’m going to stick with ours for now in order to make this as clear as possible) that does not need aid, and also determines the terms of these loans, is SUBSIDIZING its own agriculture more than any other nation in the world!!!
What does this mean for Haiti? Well, it means that the U.S. is able to ship oranges from Florida, wheat from Nebraska, and watermelons from Georgia to Haiti and STILL price them significantly lower than Haiti’s local produce. That puts Haitian farmers out of business. That means more people and families in need. More joblessness. More civil unrest. More violence…. And finally, more people getting fucked by capitalism, globalization, and hating the motherfucking United States and its people.
Need more proof? Fly Mr. Barowitz to Port-au-Prince and have him tell us how stable and safe it is there. Have him talk with recent immigrants from Somalia or Sudan. Have him travel to Jamaica and realize that the country is a giant service industry for wealthy white folk. Have him study the economics of Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. Read about the conditions that led to Chavez’s victory. What could Chavez have argued that resonated so well with Venezuelans? Study up on the New Deal and Neo-liberalism. Have him simply PAY ATTENTION to what is going on around him and cut the snarky shit out!
Globalization is THE problem of our day. It has not worked. It has alienated the majority of people in this world and angered a wide swath, as well. Let me put it this way: If it were truly “good,” as Mr. Barowitz puts it, wouldn’t the global economic makeup be different, especially after the last two decades which were, for the sake of argument, the golden age of globalization?
I could really go on and on debunking this asinine, naïve, and uneducated stance The Bollard unfortunately published, but why waste my time? These arguments are already out there, easily available and widely known.
A good place for Mr. Barowitz to start? The motherfucking library, fool!
(p.s. Suggested basic reading and viewing on this subject: Globalization and Its Discontents, by Joseph E. Stiglitz — literally one of the first books one reads if you are at all informed about globalization; and Life and Debt, the film that does the best job at explaining this complicated issue and how it works in real terms. And hey, it’s a movie! At Videoport!!!
— Graeme Kennedy, Portland
