One to the team!

Just this Wednesday, I got a positive word from a long-time friend Jake Mercer. He studies Economics and non-profit management at Baldwin Wallace college, and is in to make this happen. This brings the team to two currently, and adds valuable fund-raising and farm experience to the venture. Let’s do this, Jake! Thanks for reading!

Things are happening very quickly now. The planning has passed the agriculture test, passed an economic analysis, with me in all the right places to make it happen. Next is deciding the structure: venturing into supply chain and cooperative design. This will be very well suited for my planned 7-month stay in Costa Rica, where I want to start. (For more information on this, visit:
Plan

This is an open invitation: do you want to join the team and work on this? There would be job options domestically or abroad, in any number of areas still to be defined. Please let me know on this, or any advice now before I go.

As an interim project, I’m taking a class with Oberlin College students in January on permaculture, an interesting variant on Organics. More on this soon!

-Eddie Miller
BU ‘10
http://eddiemill.wordpress.com/

Family, Community

A successful follow-through to the school year. Class high final grade in Development Econ, pretty sure I aced the Environmental Econ final, and Sustainable development finished nicely. Funnily, my Spanish literature class remains the only outlier, gave me a C+. Psh, I kinda cared… 3.5 not bad. Thanks to everyone that made it possible.

On the Oberlin front, trying to incite a riot with home friends. This mainly involves late night food runs, dance parties, and ultimate frisbee in the rain. Oberlin makes one appreciate the advantages of a small-town community, with local shops and local people. It’s exactly the feeling that’s missing from Boston University, where we subsist on large networks of acquaintances. It’s not without drawbacks, but I think that community is really worth working and fighting for. Our lives are a collective.

I’ll be returning to Boston to finish up some things Friday 12/26 and 27th, let me know if you are still around and are interested in a holiday meet-up. Mara and I will probably be hanging out with a car.

On the virtual front, my World of Warcraft character is so bomb. It will be a good distraction while prepping for Costa Rica (now on a 7-month planned trip February-August! More about this later).

-Eddie
http://eddiemill.wordpress.com/

In Defense of the Word

Eduardo Galeano, 1978
translation by Bobbye Ortiz.
–excerpts from my mind through his–

In defense of the word.
“One writes out of a need to communicate and to commune with others, to denounce that which gives pain and to share that which gives happiness. One writes against one’s solitude and against the solitude of others. One assumes that literature transmits knowledge and affects the behavior and language of those who reaad… One writes, in reality, for the people whose luck or misfortune one identifies with– the hungry, the sleepless, the rebels, and the wretched of this earth– and the majority of them are all illiterate.
Our own fate as Latin American writers is linked to the need for profound social transformations. To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked… so long as misery and illiteracy exist, and so long as the possessors of power continute to carry on with impunity their policy of collective imbecilization through… the mass media.

How far can we go? Whom can we reach?
…To awaken consciousness, to reveal identity.

Can a literature serve a better function in these times?
Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appalling. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet the twilight.
…
In Latin America a literature is taking shape and gaining strength, a literature that does not propose to bury our dead, but immortalize them; that refuses to stir the ashes of society but rather attempts to light the fire… perhaps it may help to preserve for the generations to come… ‘the true name of all things.’ In an incarcerated society, free literature can exist as both denunciation and hope.”

Original book, it lights my fire: The Open Veins of Latin America

Real lyrics, in hip hop form: K’Naan 2008 (try “If Rap Gets Jealous”)

International assessment on Agriculture Knowledge, Science, Technology and Sustainability

This changes everything.

This April, an independent project involving over 400 full-time researchers and 58 countries published a report. The full scope of the report is enormous, but you can view the summary here:
http://www.agassessment.org/docs/SR_Exec_Sum_280508_English.pdf

Some excerpts, which may echo well with what I’ve been saying here. (In fact the same thing that I observed from the farm 3 years ago, and have since dedicated my life to preaching…)

International Trade doesn’t work for poor people

My mind was blown today with a critical fact of Economics.

Returns to scale are a market imperfection in competitive markets.

The entire theory of competition, markets, and trade is based on the assumption of constant or decreasing returns to scale. This concept defines all trade theory, and largely defines the policy that affects entire countries and allocation of the great bounty of the world’s resources.
But returns to scale are a fundamental aspect of international business. Returns to scale, the idea that cost is cheaper as a firm produces more, is what leads to giant consolidated multinationals, concentrated market power (and lobbying clout), and factory agriculture. These are the industries that dominate in foreign countries, the ones that can take advantage of returns to scale. In fact, when we tell developing countries to open themselves to foreign investment, it’s these types of industries that are built.

Governments acting for free trade is acting for industry.

Then we have returns to capital. The people who own more, are more likely to grow. What if allocation of resources is originally uneven? And information is uneven? That might lead to initial conditions being exaggerated in the form of country inequality: rather than poor countries being able to catch up they are already behind on the big scalable high-wage jobs.

What about comparative advantage? Poor people have no comparative advantage. There is no perfect awareness among non-Americans, as Winters et. al write “there is evidence that poorer households are less able to protect themselves or take advantage of positive opportunities by trade reform” (emphasis mine). Who produces these comparative-advantage goods? Savvy foreign entrepreneurs who CAN take advantage of opportunity. For them, they see cheap labor. And bring in technology that raises total country output/head. The poor not only lose what they were doing to import competition, but get unskilled, low wage jobs, the benefits of which go to capital owners and middle men who understand international systems, and their resources are used more intensively, not for them. Inequality is exaggerated (returns to scale, again) and most of the profit is siphoned into foreigners hands or reinvested in growth (capitalists are rarely satisfied to just make a profit). For what end does this growth aim? “Those that do benefit directly increase their input consumption, production, and consumption of goods and services.” The winners get to consume more. But CEOs and developed countries consistently score the saddest on international surveys! By making money, the poor remain a given (their wage will increase once everyone in the world’s does…) and externalize the things that do matter in the name of increased world consumption.

Jobs do not equal growth. Poor are not creators in capitalism. Those who earn more do not know happiness.

All free trade is based on fundamental assumptions. Decreasing returns to scale is one of them. In International Economics, everyone has perfect awareness of opportunities, and access to international demand if your idea is good enough. Unfortunately they’re stuck behind learning curves, and we tell them not to subsidize their domestic industry. This dynamic inequality impacts thousands of millions of people; the international flow of all goods and capital is based on a lie.

How can this fundamental feature be overlooked at phase 1 of Economic theory? How can the concepts of increasing returns to scale and market power be an oversight before any microeconomics graph is drawn? This changes everything.

I don’t know whether to cry or be angry at the institutions we’ve created. Thousands of people are starving, while their countries make exports for rich people. Poor people are told they can’t farm, because rich farmers and plantation owners are better at cutting costs. Poor people are not creators. And helping them isn’t profitable for business. Then we’d have to pay them more for our jobs.

-Eddie Miller
Boston University
A Global Organic Mindset: eddiemill.wordpress.com/

A Day in the Life

Saturday, 10/6/2008!

A day worth getting out of bed for:

First, the Greenpeace Project Hot Seat rally and march: Greenpeace rocks
Had a good turnout. Over one hundred people met at Quincy Market in downtown Boston for a large rally, speakers and music, followed by a march chanting down Devonshire St, through Downtown Crossing, and up to the State House. They had a large postcard message to deliver, all around the UN climate negotiations that day. (The picture is a link if you’re interested in the outcomes!)

UN Climate Negotiations towards Copenhagen 2010

The Spirit of Renaissance and the Current Global Crisis! Conference at Bentley.
The Boston Pledge put it on.
In turbulent times, new ideas produce revolutionary change. This conference was all about what the next round of people’s movement will be guided by, as compared to the Renaissance thinking in medieval times. Amaryta Sen was there, the world’s favorite development economist from Harvard. Snuck in for the workshops!

Imokalee Farmworker’s movement: rally and discussion.
Then took the T back in to the city to catch this gem. Imokalee is the international organization that works in US and Latin America for tomato picker wage and human rights. Conditions are pretty bad (check their flickr slideshow) and sometimes literally form slave rings where pickers cannot leave the premises. So they’re fighting. Targeting large buyers of tomatoes on three premises:
1) 1 penny/pound extra to directly benefit pickers of tomatoes. This is insignificant for restaurants but represents a 60% wage increase for these workers.
2) Code of conduct zero tolerance policy: no slave rings tolerated.
3) Agreement monitored and enforced by representatives in the coalition.

The campaign has recently been very successful. Through boycott they convinced Taco Bell to sign on, then McDonalds, Burger King, and just last week Subway who is the largest fast food buyer. Now they’re targeting Valu-foods (Shaw’s, Stop-and-shop)… interested in being involved for fair food? http://www.ciw-online.org/tools.html

Immortal Technique.
Was playing at the Middle East. As one of my all-time favorite hip-hop artists, I jumped at the opportunity to see him live. There were three of us, went pretty early to get a good spot. This is a good story:

The first acts were pretty awkward, local rap artists who really just had the materials for mixing and some kinda thug connections. Meh. I really just wanted a drink… so decided to take things into my own hands. I was in the bathroom when I realized that the X mark was coming off under water and soap, and with a little work… got it off. It wasn’t until I was walking out that I noticed the staffer watching for just that. I was escorted roughly out of the building, with O’s on my hand and told not to come back. Fuck.

Sarah and Jane come out, and there’s a touch of bitterness in their shouts. You what?
Plan: wash off the O’s, change clothes (I was layered), and walk back in for Immortal Technique.
This involved walking around Central Square for a while, finding the materials and buying a new magic marker. After some work, we managed a pretty good replica, but there was no way the stamp was coming back on. I left the circle on instead. Let’s do this…

The three of us walk back in as planned, and stop. I’m called back to the front…
Terrified, I think I’m about to get beat. It’s the same guy that kicked me out earlier and told me not to come back. He makes me show my hands, and then– get this– RESTAMPS my hand over the O. I just got back in. SOOOO WIN!

Immortal technique was awesome. Never fails to inspire the revolutionary in me. I actually got his signature on a book I’m reading: Nicaragua: What difference could a revolution make?. The night ended well (even though the last bus totally blew us off), up till almost 5:00 at my place talking.

Story of the night..
Solid Saturday! Total time at home between events the whole day: 8 minutes. Onward to finals!

-Eddie Miller
A Global Organic Mindset: http://eddiemill.wordpress.com/

Listening to hip-hop: buy. K’naan a new face to hip-hop.