Walking The (Green) Walk

Living up to all of the tenets of the Green Party would be a tall order. We are friends of the environment and alternative energy. As such, we should all be living in small, ecologically-sound, passive solar homes. Are we? I would hazard a guess that most of us aren’t. We preach about global warming and vastly decreasing our country’s insane energy consumption. While many of us do own hybrids, walk, ride our bikes or take alternative transportation, as a group, we are still burning plenty of fossil fuels. We talk about the need for local food and the building of local economies. We talk about the need to fight corporate power and agribusiness. As such, we should all feel massive twinges of guilt at the supermarket even while filling our carts with “faux organic” produce often produced thousands of miles away on factory farms. In short, while it seems that most Greens make an effort we are probably still falling far short of really changing the landscape. That puts us in the same boat as everyone else in this country.

Green business owners are an interesting sub-group within the party. We are in a unique situation to act as Green representatives as the public may be more likely to see our efforts to push forward new thought processes about lifestyle and new alternatives to corporate politics. As a Green business owner myself, I spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating this subject. Am I uniquely positioned as a Green business owner (if at all) to help grow awareness of the party and to help foment Green change? How can I best serve the interests of our party? How can I use my heightened prominence in our community to “walk the Green walk” and help represent the party’s ideals and vision?

Since first registering as a Green over a decade ago, I’ve struggled with the lonely feeling that I am the only Green business owner in America. I know that this is far from true. I’m sure there are actually many of us but we are not the sort to be too candid about our business dealings. We are untrusting of this bureaucratic and somewhat dysfunctional group that serves as our political home. When Peter Camejo ran for VP in 2004, I was thrilled. I immediately read his book on SRI (socially responsible investing and saw that one can be a successful capitalist (albeit a socially conscious one) and also be openly Green. Peter’s example was truly an inspiration to me.

I own and run Rock Hill Bakehouse, a wholesale bread bakery in upstate New York. We pay everyone who works for us a living wage and we do our level best to provide the best benefits that can be afforded in our market. We use local and organic ingredients in our breads and foods whenever possible and have been instrumental in creating a demand for locally-grown and milled grains and flours. We use fair trade coffees roasted locally. We use organic teas from our local self-titled “Tea Maven“. The majority of our produce is local and we sell our breads at over a dozen farmer’s markets (many in new York City). My father raises free range chickens on his farm and we use their meat to make our popular curried chicken salad. We use beef from a small farm about twenty minutes away as often as it is available. Ingredients that cannot regularly be sourced locally are purchased from local distributors who have made a commitment to paying their employees a living wage and to buying local wherever possible. In short, we try really hard and we are always trying to build more and better relationships to tweak the formula.

As with most good Greens, I am also an activist. I have been very outspoken on important issues in our area and have become somewhat of a spokesperson for the Greens locally (letters to the editor, Indy media booster and protest and event organizer). Contrary to conventional wisdom, I have found that the cost of being outspoken has been minimal (if there is really any “cost” at all).

I did once have a Vietnam Vet come to my café from the area VFW to let my customers know from the bed of his pickup with a bullhorn that I “didn’t support the troops”. A handshake and an hour spent in conversation was all it took for this man to see that my problem with our occupation of Iraq is a problem with war in general and the military industrial complex and not with our economically-conscripted, working class, soldiers.

I have hosted visits by Ralph Nader twice to our area in the last three years and while some people have shaken their heads at me for doing do, they usually do it while ordering food. A larger number have thanked me and a larger number still couldn’t care less (its them I need to work on). I advertise in local Indy papers, usually putting controversial comments and political advice in my print ads). Only a few times have callers left messages that they would “never buy bread from a commie” or other such anonymous venom. My business has grown every year for the last ten years and, as such, I can’t believe that my being Green has ever hurt my business in any way.

David Doonan, a good friend of mine, runs Mohill Design, a freelance web design company in Greenwich. He has worked for himself since August of 2001. He does a lot of pro bono work for the Green Party and has also designed more than a few web sites for our candidates (including Howie Hawkins when he ran against Hillary Clinton last year). David writes for several Indy media papers and is a photographer who has faithfully chronicled many peace actions and protests against this war and others.

I asked Dave what its like to be a Green business owner in small town America. He relates that when he and his wife first moved up from New Jersey fifteen years ago, “If you wanted anything done, you had to be a Republican. You had to be quiet. You couldn’t put your name and your politics out there. I don’t know that this is the case now because when the town needed a website, I was the guy who got the job.”

Doonan recently accepted a board position with the local Chamber of Commerce. He says that things can seem somewhat “schizophrenic” being involved in activist and social justice circles and at the same time being involved in fairly conservative business circles. I am the same way and I know what he means. We also talked about using foreign goods in our businesses. It is often difficult to buy products that are domestic and that truly support proper labor practices and environmental law. I asked David if its possible to get around the cheap (almost exclusively foreign) hardware and technology that drives the internet boom his business so depends on. He says that if it weren‘t for said equipment he “would probably be working 40 or 50 hours a week for someone else instead of for myself.” Rather than feeling like a hypocrite, he simply uses that knowledge as fuel that drives him to offset that somewhat mandatory compromise by doing good progressive work to make up for it, primarily his photographic record of activist activity in an ever- increasing radius.

Mohill Design “recycles paper and turns the lights off.” The client list is almost entirely made up of local people and businesses that are within walking distance of his modest home office. I ask if he has ever seen any “blowback” as a result of his political work. He relates that he did have one client who was deeply offended by a link David sent out showing photos he had taken of an anti-war march in Washington. That’s probably the only client he feels he’s lost, though.

High Peaks Java is a small coffee roasting company and café run by Derek Java (that is his real name). He uses only fair trade, organic coffee beans and offers soy and organic dairy products. Java says that he “held most of his ‘Green’ opinions and values prior to becoming a Green about a year ago”. Derek says that he doesn’t really know if being a Green affects his standing in the business community because he doesn’t really get much feedback about it. He doesn’t hide who he is but he also says that he doesn’t necessarily project it either. “If anybody were to come into my shop, they would see a poster of Ralph Nader on the wall and … they can draw their own conclusions or they can ask me a question. Most of them draw their own conclusions.”

Java says that prior to becoming an enrolled Green, he was already trying to “walk the green walk”, as he puts it. Now that he is enrolled he says he does feel that its even more important to set the standard for others to follow. While “greening” his business was not an unwieldy task, as it was pretty much already done before he registered, but he now sees the need to help others see how they can do the same.

We discuss our mutual awareness of how limited financial resources are within the party and I ask him if he thinks that we (as Green business owners) should focus on becoming a better, more organized force within the party so that we can help financially support party growth on a state and national level.

“I think its absolutely the way Greens should go. The problem comes when you start thinking about levels of donation per individual and how to compete on a national basis against two players (the corporate parties). They set the playing field ridiculously high. I mean the major forerunners in this election will raise a half a billion dollars! 500 million dollars in eighteen months! I won’t raise that in my life. To compete at that level … the way to reach those people is through advertisement and … advertisement’s expensive, perhaps more expensive than can be managed with a maximum donor value.”

We talk about Green business changing the perception of what it is to be a business person. Green businesses can help get the message out by showing people who come into contact with them an alternative to modern corporate behavior and structure. Java says he is interested in seeing Green businesses throughout the country help get the message out by advertising directly about Green candidates and issues.

There seems to be agreement that, as a caucus within the party, it would be good to start a meaningful discussion about how best to utilize the unique skills and resources we bring to the Green table. We all seem to share the hope that, over time and with our assistance, the party can attract other entrepreneurs and business owners into the fold. We feel a new example can be set as to what “business” is and what it looks like when a moral compass and a little vision are added to the mix. We all talked about our desire to see a network form that would take stock of Green business owners nationwide and help Greens with resource network with each other to help grow the party.

If you are interested in helping to form such a group or caucus please contact me at the email address below and we‘ll get to work. mattfuniciello@earthlink.net