Transition, Reinvention, and Reconnection
Our economic security depends directly on our ability to reinvent our economy around a positive acceptance of nature’s order and an active intention to work within its laws.
Such a sustainable economic system is local in nature, builds ecological health, and produces profits commensurate with ecological intelligence. Community is the most important natural resource of the 21st Century.
The Center for Economic Security (The Center) develops strategic communication and community organizing campaigns to enable an effective and timely transition to economic security based on ecological sustainability.
The Center’s mission includes research, organizing, producing reports, radio and films. It’s innovative and award-winning work is based on four principles: respect local autonomy, do no harm to the welfare of future generations, restore ecological and economic health, and act with justice towards all species.
The Center recently worked in Benton Harbor, MI in conjunction with the Farm Research Cooperative and the Benton Harbor City Commission to develop and implement a local food system based on community gardens. Benton Harbor, among the poorest communities in Michigan ($19,000/annual household income) is a food desert with correspondingly high levels of nutrition based chronic disease. The program proposed by the Center, Benton Harbor GROWS, links urban community gardens to entrepreneurial training and opportunity to improved community physical and economic health.
The Center's current projects include: development of an effective, grassroots based Farm-to-School program in the 12 school districts of Muskegon County, MI, an education campaign about the impact of Peak Oil on Michigan agriculture, and the development of a Michigan-wide campaign to transition from conventional to organic agricultural practices.
To that end, we have produced a series of short films about Michigan agriculture including a film on the future of Detroit Eastern Market and the work of Michigan Thumb Organics, a cooperative of visionary organic farmers led by Joe Scrimger. These films can be viewed on You Tube under "christhefilmmaker".
http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhw4
The Center also works with the Muskegon Area Sustainability Coalition to develop public policy at the state and local levels to support a local food system, not dependent on oil, in Muskegon County. The work of Transition begins in individual communities. We are committed to creating pathways for this change.
"We can transform Michigan’s economy and make it a world leader again. The key lies in our relationship to nature and to each other. If we act to build community and ecological intelligence there is nothing we can’t accomplish.”
Christopher Bedford - Founder of the Center for Economic Security"