How Willits Went Local: Brian Weller presents a way to turn local economies into self-sustaining communities

On July 12th, FoCuS sponsored a talk and conversation with visionary Brian Weller. This event incorporated a Garden Tour of sustainable Taylor Mountain Garden farm and fabulous potluck at adjacent Milfiori Historic Grounds, a graceful former store/Wells Fargo stop and gardens in Douglas Flat on Hwy 4. The presentation by Mr. Weller traced the four year history of the ongoing transformation of the small town of Willits, California as citizens and businesses join a growing network focused on greater local self-sufficiency.

One trigger that sparked the change occurred when local resident, Dr. Jason Bradford, started showing the movie "The End of Suburbia". Moved to action based on the need to adapt to a new era of dwindling cheap oil supplies, the citizens of Willits formed the organization Willits Economy for LocaLization (WELL). They began frequent showings of the movie in their town, every two weeks for nine months. Each week, the audience grew to include new people who had heard about the movie and were curious enough to see it. In fact, the movie was shown across the hall from the City Council chambers on the same night as the City Council meetings and eventually the City Council became quite intrigued as to what it was that was drawing so many people across the hall each week instead of Council meetings!

In the same time frame, local government service agencies decided to run a drill to determine how all of the emergency systems would operate and coordinate in the event of a disaster. The result itself was a disaster. The police declared that as far as citizens were concerned, they should plan for "YO-YO" (You're On Your Own).

One step for WELL was to get government and other local agencies to agree to take part in the localization effort by drafting a very innocuous plan called the "Joint Statement for a Healthy Sustainable Willits". They took copies around to all the government agencies, Chamber of Commerce, local businesses and more. Everyone was happy to sign the document. Later when the details of the plan were realized and developed, people recognized they had made a significant commitment to their own local economic development.

One of the key concepts presented by Mr. Weller was that of "Home Economics", in other words, the economic boundaries and relationships within a local community or "home". The drawing below illustrates the basic concepts of an economy nested and aligned with the physical environments that provide the ongoing resources upon which the economy depends.

ECOLOGICAL
ECONOMY

The outside boundary is the earth, or on a smaller scale, a community. In the center is the human economy consisting of people which create demand for goods and services, and industry which supplies the goods and services. Input to this human economy is source material to create the goods. Output of the cycle is called "sinks" or waste. Some of the waste can be reused or recycled by people or industry. The waste that cannot be reused or recycled is pollution.

From this diagram it can be seen that if the human economy doesn't fit within the ecology, be it as large as the Planet Earth or as small your own community, the environment can't sustain the kind of economy which produces pollution, toxins and general destruction of it own economic base.

To create successful change toward an economy that fits its ecology there are four aspects that need to be present.

• Watchdog - a group or individual who makes sure that things are happening according to plan. The Watchdog group acts as a liaison for all government agencies with which the mother group has direct relations. They present official statements, track issues and hearings, prepares proposals for Ordinances, acts as a liaison with other groups in the geographic area, coordinates any projects with other groups, etc.
• Incubator - a group or individual responsible for developing new ideas and plans.
• Facilitator - a group or individual responsible for making things happen.
• Educator - a group or individual responsible for educating people and making people aware of the plans.

According to the WELL website (www.willitseconomiclocalization.org) the organization now gives seed grants twice each year to projects and programs that are working to fill these roles and achieve objectives that help the community move toward the economic localization vision.

This model of development draws from the best of many cultural perspectives, including those cultures that learned to live successfully for thousands of years where many of our communities are now established.

In developing plans, Native American cultures took into account four points of view in order to ensure the most balanced and comprehensive plans that would meet family and group needs.

• Masculine - Represents goals and planning
• Feminine - Represents how the plans will affect families.
• Elder - Represents how the plans will affect our traditions.
• Child - Represents how the plans will affect the future of the earth and future generations.

There are several basic needs for a community and each of these should be a central focus for localization:

• Water
• Food
• Energy
• Transportation
• Security
• Business
• Culture/Education
• Health
• Shelter

Willits and WELL hosted grant-funded workshops to delve into each of these areas In addition, grants were obtained for workshops on youth training and green collar jobs. In order to more fully involve the community; information went out via the press, local TV, and radio. In working to gain the broadest base of support it was important to understand and respect that people think differently.

Some people, called "early adopters", are the ones to be the first to try new things and seek novelty. Getting them on board is generally easy. Some people are "late adopters" and are not comfortable making changes until ideas are tested and demonstrate success. Most people lay somewhere in the middle. It was important not to push people to adopt ideas before they were ready or they would resist and then it becomes harder to convince them. Late adopters are skeptical and are not very trusting of people who try to make change. At the same time, these people are often the ones who are most supportive of local business.

Ideas need to be presented to various people in different ways so that they are more comfortable with them on their own terms. There is no such thing as "them" and "us". In a sustainable community, it's all "us"!

Brian and WELL suggest employing imagination and compassion to introduce the concept of localization to all people in the community. One way Willits gained the support of older people was through a show called the Elder Show. It was a local cable show that reminisced about how things were in the good old days. In fact, the way things were 100 years ago is probably a good starting point for planning for the future and gaining support for such ideas makes many people more comfortable than trying to present the concepts of sustainability as something new. It's actually the way people used to live!

The following are suggested basic steps in the social transformation model so useful for fulfilling a vision.

• Collect information and data. How are we doing now? What is the current reality? What do we have available locally?
• Organize teams: governance, membership, and strategy.
• Gain political support.

Final words from Brian Weller were, "Perfection is the death of good ideas." Do not try to take time to get everything perfect or it will take too long to move forward and get changes in place. There is always time for fine-tuning later. Willits is still a work in progress, but the concept of localization has been adopted in every aspect of the community from the police to the government and the schools. In just four years, the whole community has undergone a complete transformation. Currently, Willits is in the process of printing its own currency called "Mendodollars" that is legal and can be used to purchase local goods and services, and is honored by many of the local banks. Use of a local currency ensures that the wealth of the community stays local by keeping those dollars in local circulation over and over again.

It is highly recommended that everyone watch the movie "The End of Suburbia" as a starting point for discussion and action. The important lessons are primarily centered around the concept that we have reached the point of "peak oil" in the world. This is generally accepted as true by everyone in the oil industry. Politicians have catered to the American way of life that is centered on consumption, especially on consumption of energy because that is what people want to hear and they elect politicians who paint a rosy, comfortable future based on the premises of the past. The problem is that the idea of abundance and endless consumption was based on the finite and limited supply of one resource, oil.

What became business as usual as recently as the 20th century, has come to be held as a basic right of all Americans. Many now realize that the oil party is basically over. The sooner people can face this and move through denial, anger and grief over the end of an era, the more likely we'll be able to build a new economy. That economy must be based on clean renewables as oil is becoming too expensive and destructive to our ecologies, locally and planet-wide to be a future option for mass transportation of goods and people. The age of affluence (read "oil-fluence) is over. In the movie, End of Suburbia, the point is made that we cannot wait for our economies and ecologies to degrade further as time is running out to replace them easily with more viable alternatives. The movie maintains that "suburbia" as currently planned and constructed is not sustainable because people cannot walk to jobs and to stores that supply the necessary goods for survival. In fact, it goes so far as to claim that some of the more palatial homes in the suburbs with big carbon and eco-footprints will become the slums of tomorrow as people may be forced to abandon them and move closer to town centers. The same might apply to those living in more rurally isolated places dependent on large energy distribution systems and gasoline powered cars.

The sequel, "Escape from Suburbia" is also worth watching, but may tend not to hit home for people in the Sierra foothills because it focuses more on big city life. The sequel does have a small segment on the transformation of Willits, with some comments by Brian Weller himself. Much has changed since the original movie was made and distributed including both the price at the pumps and the very recent declaration by Al Gore that we must develop a national economy fueled by alternative sources of energy within the next ten years. Many leaders and much of our population agree.

FoCuS will be showing "The End of Suburbia" and other movies in various locations in Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties. Look in this newsletter and on our website for regular updates on those venues. Whether FoCuS members and the communities of the Central Sierra can use this as a catalyst for change the way Willits did remains to be seen. It will mean taking advantage of opportunities and assets we have already as well as talking to and working with others interested in making the necessary shift to a local and sustainable economy within our ecology, not "running on empty" outside of it.