Crisis stirs community spirit

Originally published Sunday, February 8, 2009, The Seattle Times

Crisis stirs community spirit
Barack Obama's call to organize prompted about 40 household meetups in the Seattle area this weekend. And while people leading the meetings support Obama's agenda in D.C., many are looking for solutions closer to home.

You can find a list of local economic-recovery meetings at the Organizing for America Web site, my.barackobama.com/recoveryplan . Then type in your ZIP code. It was around the time the U.S. Senate decided to grant tax credits for buying $49,500 cars that Claire Anderson took the plunge.

She is blind, 68, and, as she likes to joke, "between husbands." Yet she took a deep breath last week and invited 15 total strangers to come to her Ballard apartment for a meeting, at 4 p.m. today.

The topic: The crashing economy. Specifically: What can we do?

"I think we're headed back to the days of the victory gardens," Claire said. "We have to figure out how to help ourselves. We can't be isolated. We can't sit around and wait for the government."

Hers is only one gathering, in one apartment. Still, it has the feel of a movement. Call it urban survivalist. Most of the ideas are not new, but the collapse of supposedly rock-solid institutions such as banks is taking it up a notch.

It's the do-it-yourself spirit. Only doing it together.

Claire's is one of about 40 household meetups in the Seattle area this weekend, prompted by Barack Obama's new "Organizing for America" project. Obama suggested the meetings last week, tapping his 13 million-deep e-mail network for the first time since becoming president.

He's trying to community organize the nation. He's got his own agenda: rallying support for his economic-stimulus bill.

But what struck me in talking to people leading these meetings is how little they are looking to Washington, D.C., for any help.

They support Obama, sure. But many feel the ways out of this crisis are local.

"If this was just about politics, or lobbying Congress, I wouldn't do it," said Rosetta Sanz, 60, a "grandma for change" who is holding a meeting in Puyallup. "To me, this is about what we can do for each other. Not what the government can do for us."

Jose Carino in North Seattle is using his meeting to try to form "volunteer groups for mutual aid." The idea is to help one another with routine tasks and services, such as child care. Only to do it off the usual grid.

In my one-hour talk with Claire Anderson, she mentioned barter networks. Local food cooperatives. Neighbor-to-neighbor financial loans. Clothing swaps. Even sewing circles to recycle clothes.

It's like the formation of credit unions back in the Depression, when banks had failed, so people made their own banking clubs.

Claire realizes most of her ideas for economic survival might have the perverse effect of pinching the economy.

"If you're ironing your clothes instead of going to the dry cleaner, you're hurting the dry cleaner," she said.

But there has to be a change in our easy-credit consumer culture, she said. Even if it's painful.

"I think we're in terrible trouble," she said. "I like how Obama throws it back on us. He says — what can you do? The point here is to get ready by going back to the one institution you know you can count on, which is community."

Despite all the hope about Obama, there is ample skepticism about the stimulus bill. Sanz called sending out tax-rebate checks "ridiculous." People seem to approve of the direct infrastructure and energy spending, because it builds something. Said Anderson: "A lot of it seems to be just doling out money."

Take the car-tax credit, added last week by the U.S. Senate. It would make interest payments on new-car loans tax deductible, for cars costing up to $49,500. The premise is to spur car sales.

Because the government doesn't have the money for this program, though, it would have to borrow it. So the government is borrowing more money in order to entice you to borrow more money. All to get us out of a crisis caused by ... too much borrowing!

Senators should go to some of these house meetings. They'd see that when people said they wanted change, they meant it.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.

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