We have to change our concept about how we measure value in things, and get people to be willing to pay more for something that’s well made, made locally, and that they would have for a long time. . . . This is a new way to operate. It’s about stepping outside your business and working collectively and cooperatively with others to rebuild local economies.
-Judy Wicks in her interview with Josh Harkinson for his essay “Profits of Place” in the January/February 2004 issue of Orion magazine.
Judy Wicks, owner of Philadelphia’s famous White Dog Café and co-founder of the nation-wide Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) will be one of the speakers at the Twenty-Fourth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, October 23rd at the First Congregational Church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Judy Wicks started the White Dog Café out of the backdoor of her Philadelphia home and grew it into an enterprise known for its advocacy of local organically raised food and for the farmers who grow such food. The adjoining Black Cat retail shop specializes in locally made products and fair trade goods.
A leading national spokesperson for the importance of creating healthy local economies, Judy’s experience with her own business led her to co-found the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), a two-and-a-half year-old national organization with chapters in over fifteen cities, the first national network of small, sustainable companies dedicated to buying and selling products locally.
Her awards include 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.” With Chef Kevin von Klause, she co-authored White Dog Cafe Cookbook: Multicultural Recipes and Tales of Adventure from Philadelphia’s Revolutionary Restaurant. Judy Wicks is a fine example of someone who has understood how to “reinhabit place” by working with the resources both human and natural of the region to shape a vibrant local economy.
Judy Wicks’ ethics of running The White Dog Café reflects a “small is beautiful” philosophy put in practice. We are pleased she can join us.
The two other speakers at the day’s event are: Chief Oren Lyons, revered leader of the Onondaga Nation; and environmental author and elegant wordsmith, Stephanie Mills.
The lectures are the twenty-fourth in an annual series sponsored by the Schumacher Center for a New Economics of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Past speakers have included Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Hazel Henderson, Winona LaDuke, Jane Jacobs, David Korten, Jerry Mander, Ivan Illich and other notable contemporary visionaries. The Schumacher Center is a national educational organization formed in 1980 and named for the British economist and author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.