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Beautiful Businesses Transforming Communities

Judy Wick’s Twenty-Fourth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lecture “Good Morning, Beautiful Business” is now in print.  Edited by Hildegarde Hannum, the lecture may be read online or ordered in pamphlet form.

The lecture is a powerful call for including the word “local” in the definition of socially responsible businesses. It takes a deep commitment to a particular place and substantial effort to weave together all the threads of that place–people, land, and community–to create new economies that can counteract the devastating effects of the global economy. Judy Wicks is by example and intent, a leader in building these new economies.

In addition to founding the White Dog Cafe, the White Dog Foundation, and the Black Cat retail store, Judy Wicks is co-founder of BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) with chapters throughout North America. Among the numerous awards Judy has won are the prestigious Business Enterprise Trust Award, founded by Norman Lear for creative leadership in combining sound business management with social vision, and Business Ethics Magazine’s first Living Economy Award. White Dog Cafe has been chosen as one of American Benefactor’s twenty-five most generous companies and one of Conde Nast Traveler’s top fifty American restaurants. Inc. Magazine included Wicks as one of its twenty-five favorite entrepreneurs in the country.

Following are some of our favorite quotes from “Good Morning Beautiful Business.”

 


Quotes from “Good Morning Beautiful Business” by Judy Wicks

Business is about relationships with all the people we work with and buy from and sell to. My business is the way I express my love for the world, and that is what makes it a thing of beauty.

Today much of what I care about–nature and animals, community, family farms, family businesses, indigenous cultures, the character of our towns and cities, even our children’s future–is being threatened by corporate globalization. In order to protect all that I care deeply about, I needed to step out of my own company, out of the White Dog Cafe, and start to work together with other businesses to build an alternative to corporate globalization. I started my journey with the simple premise that a sustainable “global” economy must be comprised of sustainable “local” economies. Rather than a global economy controlled by large multinational corporations, our movement envisions a global economy with a decentralized network of local economies made up of what we call living enterprises: small, independent, locally owned businesses of human scale. These living enterprises create community wealth and vitality while working in harmony with natural systems.

Many business schools teach students to leave their values at home when they go to work. We teach our children the Golden Rule at home, but in the workplace gold rules. I believe this has caused a lot of unhappiness because most of our waking hours during our working years are spent in the workplace, and when our values at work aren’t aligned with our personal values, we lead unsatisfied lives.

We also are faced with a political crisis in which multinational corporations are increasingly dominating our lives–the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the news we see and hear–and controlling our government. Politicians and government administrators, who are frequently former CEOs and lobbyists, often owe their jobs to the corporations that fund political campaigns. The merger of corporate interests with government is defined as fascism. We need to bring power and freedom back to “we the people.” We can do that by transforming our economy.

In the process of building local economies, many small businesses will be created–businesses that grow, distribute, and process food, making preserves, sauces, and soups from local  farm products, as well as businesses that design and make clothing from locally grown fiber crops. When a product is not available locally, consumers should buy in a way that helps and supports the local community where the product, such as coffee or chocolate, originated. It’s important to know where your purchase comes from, to know that through fair trade other communities in other parts of the country or the world are the beneficiaries of the purchase.

We are taught that we’re losers if we don’t pay the lowest price as consumers, earn the highest profit as business people, and make the highest return as investors. We need a revolution in values so that we will value life more than money and so that we can make decisions as consumers and business owners and government leaders in our enlightened self-interest, at the same time benefiting all of life.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of the local-living-economy movement is that by creating self-reliance we are creating the foundations for world peace. If all communities had food security, water security, and energy security, if they appreciated diversity of culture rather than a monoculture, that would be the foundation for world peace.

 

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