Homeland security
The 3/50 Project makes our communities vital by keeping our neighbors in business
By Ellen Snortland 01/07/2010
If it’s not too late, I’d like to encourage you to add a resolution to your list: The 3/50 Project, on the Web at the350project.net. A community-oriented brainchild of Cinda Baxter, the 3/50 Project is something we can all participate in for our own benefit.
I first encountered the 3/50 project when I was picking up my mail at Webster’s Fine Stationers in Altadena, one of the row of Webster’s businesses on North Lake Avenue that include a pharmacy, post office and liquor store. Owned and operated by Scott and Lori Webster, Webster’s Fine Stationers is the quintessential “brick and mortar” business: an enterprise I would sorely miss if it weren’t there.
The 3/50 Project encourages people to pick three of their favorite independent stores and spend at total of $50 with them each month. That kind of shopper attention could save our warm and fuzzy little stores from being swallowed up by the cold and indifferent Superstore Behemoths that I consider a big problem in our communities and worldwide.
I am a proud member of the Rev. Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping (revbilly.com), which is in some ways a misnomer. The Church of Stop Shopping is not against shopping per se. It is against the mind-numbing recreational shopping that veers into an addiction or compulsion. The Church of Stop Shopping also campaigns for local shopping and resists the destruction of neighborhoods through the building of malls and big-box stores.
Please get a copy of “What Would Jesus Buy?” a documentary that delves into Rev. Billy and his mission. Produced by Morgan Spurlock and directed by Rob VanAlkemade, “What Would Jesus Buy?” is a searing indictment of the consumer-driven culture we’ve become. There’s one particular scene where Rev. Billy (a.k.a. Bill Talen) and his wife Savitri go into a small clothing store in Iowa to buy a sweater. The proprietor talks about having the store for generations but being unable to compete with the local Wal-Mart. It’s truly heartbreaking.
Also, if you happened to miss Robert Greenwald’s documentary “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices,” check it out. We can make a human rights difference by shopping more conscientiously. Many of us have known this for years, but it’s time to get more people on the conscious-shopping bandwagon. By buying American labels, by asking under what environmental and working conditions the coffee beans in your cup of java were produced and processed, by purchasing items that use union labor, all of our hard-earned money can be funneled toward making the world better for everyone, globally and locally.
The 3/50 Web site states: “For every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures. If you spend that $100 in a national chain, only $43 stays here. Spend it online and nothing comes home.”
I grew up in South Dakota and have personally witnessed the devastation that malls and giant chain stores bring to small downtowns and the families that own them. If you follow the money, the big franchises are cheap because they exploit slave labor in China and developing countries. The “Think Globally, Act Locally” adage applies. When you buy that cheap item at Wal-Mart, you join in the commerce that lives off the backs of poor women, men and children. Buying locally, you’re more apt to get locally produced as well as marketed items. I know Lori and Scott Webster proudly offer Fair Trade products, and emphasize ecologically sound, as well as community-produced, items in their selection of stationery and gift items.
I am especially grateful to have a local hardware store, Altadena Hardware. How many times have you been in the middle of a project where you need to run out and be back quickly? If we don’t patronize — or in my case, matronize — these stores, they’ll be gone and we’ll be the poorer (and more stressed) for it.
Some people complain that local stores are more expensive. I doubt that, especially if we factor in time and gas. The convenience I experience in being able to run over to my local stores far outweighs any saving I may have with the giants.
Altadena is a special place, in large part because of the relative absence of franchise stores. I love my local stores! The Coffee Gallery, O Happy Days, Amy’s Patio Café, Susann Edmonds’ beauty salon “A Chair in the Garden.” How lucky we are to have them. And a little further afield, I patronize Green Street Restaurant and Ellen’s Silkscreening, both socially responsible and A+ businesses in Pasadena. Gale’s Italian restaurant on Fair Oaks is extremely well-known and loved for their generosity and community spirit.
I started this with a request that you join me with the 3/50 Project. Really. Pasadena, South Pasadena, Altadena, La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta and the communities in the San Gabriel Valley in general, are blessed with stores and businesses that know their customers by name. We can keep our communities vital by keeping them in business.
Joni Mitchell’s lyrics, “Big Yellow Taxi,” are apt: “Don’t it always seem to go/That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone/They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot.”
Ellen has an independent writer’s coaching business in Altadena: www.snortland.com.
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