Anacostia Hours Fundraiser at Franklins
Monday, December 8, 2008
All Day and Night
dine in, dine out, shop at the General Store and Anacostia Hours will receive 20% of your purchases*
*In order for sales to be credited to Anacostia Hours, receipts must be provided to the hostess and identified as being part of the fundraiser for Anacostia Hours.
On Monday, December 8th, Franklins will be sponsoring a fundraising event for Anacostia Hours. Twenty percent of all proceeds from sales identified by patrons as purchases for the Anacostia Hours fundraiser will be donated to Anacostia Hours. The fundraiser runs all day, so please make it a point to stop by for lunch or dinner. (If you stop by after 5:00 pm, you’ll be greeted by one of the members of the Board.) If you are unable to dine out that day, you can still participate. Take out orders and sales from the General Store will also be credited to Anacostia Hours.
Can the Anacostia Hours Community Make the Difference for Glut?
Anacostia Hours aims to promote local economic strength, social justice, ecology, and community participation. These same words could equally describe another local entity: Glut Food Co-op.
Founded in 1969, Glut lives up to its mission—Natural Foods for People, Not for Profit. For shoppers who want to put their money where their values are, Glut makes it easy: local business ; collectively run ; field-fresh local organic produce ; vegetarian ; and face-to-face human connections . Glut is a rare, diverse place where folks strike up conversations with people they’ve never met. I heard Catherine, a Glut
collective member, offering a customer a naturopath’s name and then, realizing the case is urgent, even giving up her own appointment. Not a conversation you are likely to overhear anywhere else.
Located in Mount Rainier since the early 70s, Glut has been a community anchor organizing local buying clubs, supporting area farmers and promoting affordable natural food since a time when these were revolutionary acts.
No surprise then that Glut accepts Anacostia Hours. What is surprising? The many untapped opportunities for Anacostia Hours to benefit Glut. As I interviewed collective members (or “Gluttons,” as they’re affectionately called), we had several ideas which could help any Anacostia Hours storefront business: an Anacostia Hours Directory tethered near the checkout; a cue card reminding checkout folks how to make change for Hours. Other ideas were specific to Glut. Most important was this realization: Glut is currently an important part of the Anacostia Hours network. Many people use their Hours at Glut, and Glut too needs to be able to use their Hours to pay their bills. If Glut could pay their service providers in Hours, Glut’s use of Hours would then be sustainable. (See Glut’s Wish List for simple ways you can support Glut.) In one memorable conversation, we discovered that Dino makes artistic signs; Raquel can deejay; Michael tutors math; Kim is a painter; and Mac does promotion and marketing for artists. (Mac also had great ideas for promoting Anacostia Hours!) If all these talented Gluttons accepted Hours for these services, they would experience the power of Hours first hand. Both Glut and Anacostia Hours would be even more effective.
Glut’s Chris Doyle writes in a recent community letter that Glut will need to manage a tricky transition to adapt to increasing competition from corporate natural food stores. Collective members recently voted to take a pay cut to keep prices low: the challenge is real. Support from the Anacostia Hours community could make a difference for Glut. Glut’s Wish List outlines easy steps you can take. Glut has been promoting our shared goals for forty years. Now it is our turn to help Glut through this transition. We have the historic opportunity to help this local business survive and thrive again. Isn’t that what Anacostia Hours is all about?
Article by Surabhi Shah - Anacostia Hours Membership Committee
Glut Wish List
1. Ask for Anacostia Hours at Glut: Swing by Glut and ask for change in Anacostia Hours. Do it today, and do it often. Glut is approaching its ceiling for accepting Hours. With this simple act, Glut can continue to accept your Anacostia Hours and help us circulate them.
2. Shop at Glut: If you have not shopped at Glut recently, treat yourself to the high quality, affordable bulk items, field-fresh produce and the vibrant, community-building shopping experience. If you already shop at Glut, bring a friend to Glut. They’ll thank you!
3. Find and Move A Deep Freezer: Do you have a deep freezer? Are you an avid craigslist watcher? Yard sale enthusiast? Glut’s deep freezer needs replacement. If you have a lead, please contact jamie@glut.org. You’ll be protecting the environment by reducing Glut’s carbon footprint. (Dimensions: width = 31” or less; height = approx. 34”; depth = approx. 22”). If you can help transport the freezer, give Jamie a shout.
4. Volunteers: Interested in volunteering in this diverse, lively setting? Glut uses volunteer power to supplement the collective’s work. If your skills and Glut’s needs are a fit, you could be just the reliable volunteer they’re seeking. Glut pays volunteers in store credit and is considering paying in Anacostia Hours. To discuss volunteering, contact chris@glut.org.
5. Help Glut Pay Bills in Hours: Hours work best when they circulate through the community, so we would like Glut to be able to spend the Hours they accept. Glut currently pays dollars for pest control, electrical work, refrigerator repair, accounting, etc. Imagine if some of these service providers accepted Hours. They’d have a new client base —Anacostia Hours members—and Glut could use their Hours to pay their bills. So let’s reach out to these service providers and introduce them to Hours.
Baltimore Bioneers Reach Anacostia Frontier
Anacostia Hours has been invited to participate in a progressive forum that is both national and regional. The Baltimore Bioneers, a chapter of the nationwide Bioneers movement, will be interacting via satellite with the annual Bioneers conference to be held this year October 19-21.
The Bioneers began in 1990 in San Rafael, California as a gathering of scientific and social innovators who have demonstrated visionary and practical models for restoring the Earth and communities. Bioneers was conceived to conduct programs in the conservation of biological and cultural diversity, traditional farming practices, and environmental restoration. Their vision of environment encompasses the natural landscape, cultivated landscape, biodiversity, cultural diversity, watersheds, community economics, and spirituality. Bioneers seeks to unite nature, culture and spirit in an Earth-honoring vision, and create economic models founded in social justice.
The Baltimore Bioneers have formed and operated since last year as the Chesapeake Bay regional partner for the annual Bioneers conference. This forum is focused on practical and visionary solutions for restoring the Earth and healing human communities. The satellite partners receive a simultaneous broadcast of the conference plenary talks and complement them with local speakers, panels and workshops from the Baltimore region. The "Baltimore Bioneers: Cultivating Change. Inspiring Solutions" conference features a live satellite downlink of the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA to each of the participating regional Beaming Bioneer events. (You can visit the Bioneers website at bioneers.org for more information about the Bioneers Conference and our partnership.)
Julie Gabrielli of Urbanite magazine, Gabrielli Design Studio, and the Baltimore Bioneers recently invited Anacostia Hours to take part in one of the regional panels on October 20-21. (If Baltimore can be seen as a satellite of San Rafael, then could the Gateway Arts District towns of Rt.1 be re-imagined as a satellite of Baltimore?) The panel is tentatively entitled “Redefining Wealth,” and will include at least two other panelists: John Campagna and Dr. Edgar Cahn.
John Campagna is the current president of Baltimore Green Week and a financial adviser specializing in green investment opportunities. He is affiliated with both Legg Mason and Benchmark Asset Managers. Green Week is a volunteer-driven, weeklong celebration of “all things green,” and includes informative events about the benefits of a sustainable lifestyle, including green building, climate change and public health seminars.
Dr Edgar Cahn, a Civil Rights Lawyer and Activist, devised a time banking system, (then called ‘time dollars’ or ‘service credits’), while at the London School of Economics in the 1980’s. One hour equals one time credit was not exactly rocket science but his ideas were to prove revolutionary, even though economists at the time argued vigorously about whether this new community currency based on time could actually grow social capital and revive the ‘core’ economy of family, neighborhood and community. Leaving the economists to their debate, Edgar Cahn returned to the USA to put his ideas into practice. Over the next decade time dollar projects emerged all across the USA, led by grass roots practitioners working in deprived inner city neighborhoods. www.bioneers.org
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