Dreams*(?) and Development

​A three part dream that happened this morning before I woke up to take out the trash and recycling with post-slumber commentary:
1. I'm in a new [or maybe rather more appropriately capitalized, New] Detroit neighborhood restaurant/cafe watching a s​kit​/presentation akin to Goldilocks and the three bears between the owners and employees during its preliminary grand opening.

Goldilocks, a young ​caucasian girl, pours and presents a big bowl of hot chocolate as she narrates the origins of the cafe and what it values ​in balancing its business aspirations ​as part of the community. She sweetly closes her story punctuating it with a casual "that'll be $40 bucks, hun." For the bowl of hot chocolate as the punchline to the community and up-and coming city entrepreneurship story.

The customer (not identifiable to the audience/nor heard) implicitly complies and requests for something additional to which the matron of the cafe quickly gathers the other local employees, gets on the phone and discusses in Zulu or some other language heard in South Africa with all the staff huddled around, before she confidently hangs up the phone to declare to the imaginary customer: "I have good news, you're eligible for an additional $0.30 per hour sitting fee too!"

We (the audience) laugh and ​as I turn away ​I ​​start figuring out how to make a sliding scale menu cost structure for non-locals and locals that can accommodate more people with less outrageous prices while still accounting for the higher I come demographic who wouldn't hesitate to buy a $40 bowl of hot cocoa (or in real life, pay more than $40 for a hair cut).

2. My dream transitions to sitting at the counter of another cafe/diner that bears a less monied air to it: imagine a classic 1950s hamburger joint  converted into a general diner/cafe that hadn't been updated since the 50's that's in a Downriver (low-income labor town) community like River Rouge or Wyandotte. It's now under the ownership and operation of an immigrant Indian woman and she's working to serve us friends as her guests before it officially opens.

I ask if there's any local favorite juice available as she opens and closes a basic household refrigerator that's nestled on the wall facing the counter and register. "All I have for drinks is in that fridge." And I note that A box of wine was the only fruit beverage available. A classmate from second grade, Vijay [Vijay!? What are you doung here in my subconscious bro? Still got that cool San Jose Sharks winter coat too], smiles and sarcastically proclaims "Ecorse' s finest!" And gestures with a culinary kiss to the air. I laugh [his sense of himor is still on point].

I'm now outside the restaurant with my friend Onyx, pouring two glasses from that boxed wine as we "celebrate" "Ecorse's finest" -- and the fact that we both witnessed French hosts serve us boxed wine [yes, in real waking life during our time as guests in southern France while performing on tour]. Onyx smiles agreeing with that tone of voice you get at the end of sharing a memory in the way a fire burns down to smoldering coals, and mentions that "having some music from the 90s playing would be great right now." I mention if WiFi is available we might be able to pull something up and quietly ponder what kind of music could constitute the best of the 90s.

3. My dream transitions again and I'm inside a neighborhood salon+barbershop where one of my former employers, Mrs. Michele Loveberry --who in real life owned a salon while briefly leading a non-profit-- is working with a customer already after promptly arriving at 6:00am on one side while a barber works with someone else toward the front on the other side of the room. My friend Jemeer and another guy tells me how important barbershops are for the community (true, and we've had a conversation like this in waking life before) as well.

Post-Slumber Commentary

So here's what I think we can learn (or at least be reminded of) from the dream above among other things: 

1) there's a point when a well-grounded and intentional price policy becomes outrageous to the average person and yet entirely acceptable for a new target audience--I.e. the $40 haircut yuppie or in the case of my dream, the gentrified who pays $40 for a ridiculously large bowl of hot chocolate.

Speaking with my friend Ulysses, this is exactly how countries like Finland operate--

2) The $0.30 per hour sitting fee sounds like something (a terrible something) that a crowded New York or San Francisco kind of city actually would do, except they'd charge you even more for just being there. For [dystopic neoliberal urbanization/gentrification​/colonialism​] comedic purposes, $0.30 is ​"​reasonable​"​--just small enough to be petty, but the real offense comes from its mere existence​ ​​and audacity to charge people for their mere existence​.

3) I still work even in my dreams to figure out things like equitable cost strategies and price points.

4) Zulu (though I don't know the language well) and South Africa are a very interesting parallel--in waking life I met a journalist who focused on apartheid and how similar patterns manifest in Detroit last year. For those unfamiliar with the city, Detroit is approximately 83% black, ~89% "minority", and highly segregated as a city still. The economic development patterns also tend to reflect this too with most investment underway in majority white downtown core financial and cultural districts. Meanwhile, most of the neighborhoods remain overlooked unless they're ripe for ["market"] exploitation [or straight-up exploitation in itself] according to the downtown administration and deep pocket developers.

5) There's an interesting contradiction to connecting boxed wine with the expression "Ecorse's finest" --the river that makes "downriver" communities was called the Rouge River by the French settlers (and still called that today by residents) because of all the grapes that would grow in the region. It's hard to say what the soil and air quality would be for growing grapes for wine there today as it's somewhat an industrial labor town now, but if we of the region were to begin making wine there again, I wouldn't be surprised if boxed wine would the way to start as the expertise, "market audience", and taste palate for most people in southeast Michigan would probably take time to develop before we skip ahead to fine wines. Alcoholism in Michigan is a major problem, and it happens to be, at least during some point within the past 5 years, among one of the most common Google searches in our state.

6) The Salon/Barber Shop dream builds directly from a conversation I had last night realizing how continuity for employing and owning a business in Detroit remains by the person, and often ends at the entrepreneur rather than continuing with the team/a community to support the training and workers beyond the founder. I also think the gender roles (one side salon, another side barber) is something to note though I haven't got much insight for it beyond observation. Mrs. Loveberry's mother opened and owned a historic salon business, one of the first in Detroit, and the legacy of her entrepreneurship remains under celebrated except for those who may have known her directly or through the family stories like my friend Jemeer and Mrs. Loveberry. Mrs. Loveberry recently retired and left the state. 

I now realize she was part of the 93% businesses in Detroit that are black, and of them, 90% are/were run with 1-4 employees. The continuity between owner to new generations differs from places in Japan or even Vietnam where businesses survived for centuries--even surviving colonialism and world wars--with artisans and other people who continue the line and legacy.

In my waking life, I know/know of an interesting cross section of the cosmetic industry. I also connected [albeit briefly] with someone from outside Detroit focused on using barber shops as places to address mental health in the black community. They all have important elements, and the opportunity to convene and discuss how workforce development + business ownership advances in the city's neighborhoods is important and feasible to implement with someone like Chase Cantrell of Building Community Value and the folks who put on Hair Wars.


References

Toward the end of this sketch, Trevor Noah speaks in Zulu--deep in the comment section of the original clip on youtube someone gave a translation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwT-2KdK894

Poverty & Politics

An essay spurred by this article: "Poverty Doesn't Need Technology, it Needs Politics"
http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/poverty-doesnt-need-technology-it-needs-politics-1789520902

Something to agree with, something to disagree with, plenty to consider for whatever walk of work and life you're in right now.

The raw implied assumption with Silicon Valley superstar-studded tech entrepreneurship conferences and hackathons designed to "disrupt poverty" is that any economic mobility that emerges from a business can be a transformative step in uplifting individuals out of cycles of poverty.

That’s a broad but valid starting point. For anyone who wants an explanation for what makes the tech industry so special in the economic development/poverty halting debate: it lends itself well to attracting everyday people, investors, and policy makers alike because it lends itself to scaleability and visible success stories—you can almost instantly reach millions of people on youtube or facebook, without spending much money, if you know how to make and access the right advertising. It’s fast, lucrative, and easy to see results with larger-than-life personalities who are praised by the media for their daring and subsequent wealth.

For anyone who wants an explanation for what makes the tech industry so special in the economic development/poverty halting debate: it lends itself well to attracting everyday people, investors, and policy makers alike because it lends itself to scaleability and visible success stories—you can almost instantly reach millions of people on youtube or facebook, without spending much money, if you know how to make and access the right advertising. It’s fast, lucrative, and easy to see.

The same line of reasoning applies to why countries might welcome foreign businesses looking to "exploit" emerging markets in the name of economic development--consider China 20-30 years ago welcoming U.S. commerce, people considering countries like Vietnam today. Similarly, this is how some might see plus sides to speculation in the gentrification debate in major cities like Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Pittsburgh, or Detroit. There's a degree of truth to being the first to provide desired goods or services in a place that does not yet have access to them yet. Sometimes, it also does a lot to give people economic & social mobility. Being able to have a well-paying labor job and moving up into different areas of education and business sometimes happens, but it's becoming rare and there are also plenty of places in the world where opportunity for wealth (or even basic employment) will not readily connect employees to higher echelons.

Another Kind of Entrepreneurship [Still] HappeningIn most cases, when someone can associate widespread need with a business opportunity it's easy to associate the potential for wealth with potential for economic impact, but they're not the same thing.

At the same time, there are lots of businesses that aren’t powered by smart phones or big data which still need attention. Whole chunks of the U.S. remain about 30 years behind metropolitan centers in technology use, and many of the needed businesses in those communities will never be visited by a Silicon Valley company. It’s easy to forget that a significant sum of businesses still make the backbone of most communities in the U.S. are small to medium sized businesses that we probably take for granted or forget about:
An immigrant Korean-American family opening a dry cleaner.
A Black family opening a small produce market in a neighborhood of Detroit far from downtown.
My friend creating a powerwashing/yard cleaning business.
All of them count as entrepreneurs and have businesses that meet some kind of need without relying on apps at this time.

I think the article's premise for critique is in the right place (in case you haven’t read it yet, see “Poverty Doesn’t Need Technology, it Needs Politics”)--especially considering context and dominant themes we're in and able to witness: we know some people get very wealthy for unfair reasons (monopolistic businesses, speculative investors, land grabs through closed-door deals, etc.) while most others struggle even with honest hard work and doing what they can to work intelligently--it's wealth stratification--and the ties between systemic injustice and perpetuated cycles of poverty.

In Detroit, several long-time community residents & property owners who took care of their own properties and are looking to expand by purchasing land for sale by the city are still unable to do so while major business barons like Dan Gilbert and John Hantz are often able to negotiate inepensive purchases (land bought by cents per acre). Technology won't solve the fact that some people have unfair advantages or narrow interests in their business.

A moment's tangent to address exceptions for "fair wealth creation"
I personally think there are ways to creating and attaining extreme wealth that exist independent of systemic exploitation. For example, knowing how to scale through online commerce might be a way that people can legitimately earn something. That said, even I've yet to make it work and I believe for most people it rarely happens because the tools for creating a viable high-growth business must be met with:
1) decent preparation
This includes learning, focused hard work, and the ability to maintain your focus on the work without getting distracted by competing priorities like basic needs, family, etc.
2) earned relationships
It takes time, learning, and effort to cultivate good relationships and the integrity to establish and maintain a solid reputation
and
3) lucky and/or carefully facilitated opportunities that work in your favor
For example, you might need to be able to recognize a big problem that affects others (potential clients/customers) exists in advance, or happen to have a working solution ready in time for disasters or the latest breakthrough (i.e. imagine the folks who first recognized the potential for smart phones).

Ujima: Politics, in a Philosophical Sense, and Business with Bigger Purpose
Politics is the articulation of desired action--it sometimes involves explicit and tangible actions, but more often than not it's about people talking about things that they want or believe. I'm not a fan of this, but we know politics are important: articulating a desired action creates the possibility for design--creativity with intention as Cornelius Harris (one of the first creators of techno music from Detroit) would say. This means we can then design potential solutions to meet fundamental needs.

As long as it's operating, a business will (hopefully) always be creating something. What matters is that in the broader scope, the business and people working in do so with a sense of responsibility that makes relationships clear to other organizations and actions that are intended to meet the needs of people in a specific place--a community. For those who unfamiliar with the holiday Kwanzaa, this is approximately what the principle Ujima highlights: collective work and responsibility. While Ujima is often focused on a very close community and family, the idea applies well to organizations too.

In this sense, recognizing that a business can exist as part of a broader intention is essential to the idea that we need to create businesses that are part of real communities--whether directly connected to physical neighborhoods or abstractly connected to other entities that can influence a cause.

So even if the business has a very narrow focus, it's possible for its employees, leadership, customers and stakeholders (people affected by the organization even if they're not customers) to recognize how it serves a role in the bigger picture. Maybe it specifically creates bearings for an automotive supplier, they have a role in transportation and the broader arc of transit accessibility in its multitude (aka transit justice). Or it creates fight gear for women, it can focus its existential responsibility as an enterprise on fitness and/or women's empowerment as we see with Society Nine. That's not necessarily their number one priority as a business--a company like Society Nine wasn't built to give every woman a solution for fitness or to teach them how to participate in professional/recreational fights, but it does exist as part of the broader ethical fabric of the company's existence.

Acknowledging all of the above, I don't believe wealth exempts a business or individual from responsibility and their relationship to the rest of the economy and society. Being able to acknowledge privileges--whether earned or endowed--might be a way to beginning to leverage them toward positive contribution and impact as well.

The gap between enthusiasm for Corporate Social Responsibility and genuine change tends to exist in part because most businesses look at it from a short-term perspective shaded solely by public perceptions of charity (e.g. send your employees for a day to clean up a neighborhood, build houses, plant trees, with a local non-profit), or at worst as a shallow marketing & PR initiative. They don't integrate the broader political context--potential environmental & social impact--into priorities for their core culture and operations.

Changing Paradigms About Charity
As a general public, most of us have a naive or divisive interpretation of charity: we might look at charity as a good compassionate activity for helping the needy on generous terms.
A less pleasant but also valid perspective might criticize charity as something that perpetuates dependence--either with judgmental narratives about needy people who might rely on external aid, or in more nuanced views dependency on philanthropy and Non-Profit organizations to make up for the gaps that employers which underpay their employees and communities create.

Both are valid perspectives, and I imagine returning to the idea that understanding a business with deeply political curiosity can help answer or facilitate evidence for solving the fundamental issues we face with charity.

Aligning Politics for Purpose in a Company
Most companies altogether don't choose to prioritize these charitable efforts in a way that aligns with their existing area of potential impact. Again, we can concede that it's very challenging to operate a functional business in the first place especially in a small or medium sized enterprise where attention, staff, and other resources might be thin.

In larger enterprises, there's a hope that the company can delegate responsibility to an isolated department and hope all problems will be solved by a department made of corporate environmentalists and social justice advocates. But think about what this means: do people delegate their every day social responsibilities to an ethicist to take care of their own personal responsibilities on their behalf? Responsibility for taking care of things that really matter to us are still belong to and require us to engage in fulfilling of our duties, even if we can hire assistants, coaches, consultants, therapists, or counselors.

How many major companies have a department for Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility, of Community Relations, or Environment Health and Safety, etc.?
Ask people working in those departments at any level, from Chief Executives/Officers to interns, and you'll likely find frustrated employees who believe the rest of the company's leadership must to take ownership of their strategy for broader environmental and social responsibilities (even profitable ones like efficiency initiatives) to match what they say they need with what to do.

Keeping aware of your socio-political relationship to systemic problems as an individual and/or enterprise matters--you're inevitably connected to something, an integral part of something that can become more inclusive or create value for the community(ies) your work affects.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/poverty-doesnt-need-technology-it-needs-politics-1789520902

Value in a story

About a year ago, I contemplated a lot about existentialism in marketing: if a product engages an audience (especially the consumer) with an actual experience, the product--and in turn, the brand--becomes priceless, the added value becomes invaluable.  I also made an ethical distinction between outreach and marketing.  You can read that post here.  Now, I'm finding a continuum between community-based ethical enterprises and stories: stories humanize our relationship with whatever good or service we engage.

Ironically, my revelations are heightened by the fact that I'm starting to work closely with an Australian company to examine the "story of stuff" for sustainability in global supply chains--while many people whom I know are focused on very exciting sustainability and community building on a local level.

Hansen and Lydersen: "Exquisite Smoked Salmon"
Playing music as Ole smokes the salmon gives a story that differentiates his product from others, and adds value to the smoked salmon altogether.  It's clever marketing that makes consumerism a bit more humane thanks to the touch of a story and a product procured with passion.  But how integral is the music to enriching a customer's experience?

Interface: Net-Works
Interface is a carpet company.  For those who might not be familiar with building materials and sustainability in industry, carpet companies pack a surprising punch when it comes to re-imagining how our economy can function [1].

Interface's net-works program might be considered a "social enterprise", but they're throwing in a fine new phrase that's worth noting in the lexicon of commerce: "restorative enterprise", which asks:  How can a company improve a place or process for the human and ecosystemic community?




While they might not explicitly say so in their marketing, it's focused on using their supply chain to cultivating a coherent thread of sustainability that removes discarded fishing net from coastlines and benefits island communities.

I recently got back from a summit (check out the highlights from ReRoute) in New York which poses the same kind of question for business and economics in general: "How can we make business and economics more enriching and non-degrading to the people, and other co-habitants we live with?"

There's a movement/field of study called solidarity economics, which looks at this, and from discussing with conference luminaries, it's clear that the "new economics" movement is well underway.

Telling the story of our stuff looks like an excellent start in a global economy.  Yet at the end of the day, I think we beam the most when people we know, see, and embrace directly do well.

I'm really excited at the prospect of consulting Interface's Australian company to show the global story of their sustainability initiative, and will look forward to the time when I do the same here in the Great Lakes bioregion as well.

[1] The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's "Circular Economy" video gives a good big-picture overview of how the carpet industry's business of "cradle to cradle" material reuse happens.

#11 VIII 2013