BUILDING A COMMUNITY ECONOMY

by Hazel Kahan

This article first appeared as an op-ed in The Suffolk Times on Jan. 15, 2009; Reprinted by permission, Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

While the troubled national and global economy affects each Southolder in its own way, it also offers each one of us a role in sustaining our community.

My friends and I have been talking about the things we can do—or have done--to protect our community, regardless of how much we may have suffered (or gained?) in the financial downturn. We think of it as the new community economy, with some of the flavor of the underground economy but living firmly above ground, on home ground.

The unyielding torrent of dire information about the shrinking economy creates in us feelings of scarcity and pessimism, leading us to retreat, to keep ourselves to ourselves, to be less generous and outgoing.

But we don’t have to be like that.

Instead, we can change the lens through which we see things. What money things can we do without money? What if we look at money not as something for hoarding or buying but instead as a form of renewable energy, self-produced and transformative? What, to paraphrase Frosty the Snowman, can we do to let it flow, let it flow, let it flow?

My friends and I found that if we could replace our feelings of scarcity with sufficiency, we could start believing that we actually have enough. We find that our perspective changes once we shift from hoarding to sharing and once we discard the idea of life as a zero sum game in which I can only win if you lose and that your gain must mean my loss.

Here are some of the ways we are trying to build a community economy:

1. Spending as much of our money right here where we live. Almost everything we need is available right here and, if it’s not, maybe we can do without it. And if it’s not exactly what we were looking for, so what? And, of course, we can find things here we couldn’t find anywhere else—and not just in the summer!

2. We take an hour or two to visit locally-owned retailers, dropping in for a chat and finding out how they’re doing or buying something from them, even if we don’t actually need it right then. We can always tuck it away as a gift for later.

3. As factors in local businesses’ cash flow, we try to pay our bills on time, if we can. This helps them which helps us keep our community stable.

4. We raise the question to local fuel companies that have customers on locked-in rates: do you really have to insist on that agreement? What might you gain by reducing your customer-neighbors’ anxiety?

5. If we’re not feeling as financially stressed as a friend or neighbor, we consider asking if we could pay them to do a chore we might otherwise do ourselves. Encouraging money flow through our community will help us all.

6. We look to see what goods and services we can barter with each other. For example, I’ll cut your hair if you help me carry my stuff out of my basement to the dump. Time and energy replace money in the community economy.

7. We’ve thought of buying space in our local media when we have something to announce or celebrate. A weakened media would greatly affect the sustainability of our community.

8. If by good fortune or business sense one of us is presented with a lucrative project, we ask ourselves if we could share some of the work with a less fortunate friend or neighbor. This way more of the ‘lucre’ will flow through more lives. This can’t be a bad thing.


Contributing to Southold’s sustainability by recognizing and building the community economy will, of course, yes, save gas but, more significantly, will help preserve the quality of our town. We look at Riverhead and Patchogue and see how difficult it is to revitalize towns that forgot their people.

Finally, a community economy directly caters to our self-interest by protecting our investments in our own houses. One of us asks: “Who wants to buy a house in a community that looks like a ghost town?”