Mission & StrategyILSR works with citizens, activists, policymakers and entrepreneurs to design systems, policies and enterprises that meet local or regional needs; to maximize human, material, natural and financial resources; and to ensure that the benefits of these systems and resources accrue to all local citizens.Institute for Local Self-RelianceILSRFor more than three decades ILSR has worked in the trenches, working with sanitation workers, engineers, bond counselors, small business owners, neighborhood organizations, city planning departments, city councilors, activists and others to develop strategies and projects that enable and manifest local self-reliance. In the process we have learned what works and what doesn’t.Sanitation WorkersEngineers Bond CounselorsSmall Business OwnersNeighborhood Organizations City Planning DepartmentsCity Councilors ActivistsCommunitiesOur technical assistance often is requested by communities fighting against something—a huge new big box store, a garbage incinerator, a high voltage transmission line, an unresponsive cable or telephone company. We work with them to overcome the negative but at the same time we stress the positive.
We provide the assistance needed to defer garbage incinerators and then work in an ongoing fashion with communities to maximize recycling, reuse and zero waste strategies as a new foundation for economic development. We assist communities in fighting against Wal-Mart superstores while building an alliance of locally owned businesses and environmentalists and others that later focuses on ways to nurture the local economy. We work with communities fighting extra high voltage transmission lines while at the same time helping them to maximize a decentralized energy approach. We respond to communities dissatisfied by the glacial pace at which current telecommunication service providers are building a high- speed information network by providing them the justification, information, and expertise needed to move toward a publicly owned telecommunications network with universal access.ISLR StaffNicola Chin(nee Wells) Director of Strategy and Development --
Nicola brings eight years of experience in community organizing and organizational growth to the Institute as the lead for fundraising and strategic planning. Before joining ILSR, Nicola served as the Director for the Maine League of Young Voters where she worked with diverse young Mainers to build power for local and state organizing campaigns and young voter engagement.John FarrellSenior Researcher, Energy --
John Farrell is a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and directs its work on democratic energy. John is best known for his vivid illustrations of the economic and environmental benefits of local ownership of decentralized renewable energy.Lisa GonzalezResearch Associate, Telecommunications --
Lisa Gonzalez researches and reports on telecommunications and how those networks impact life on the local level. Her background includes experience in state politics, law, writing, and freelance journalism.Christopher MitchellDirector, Telecommunications as Commons Initiative --
Christopher’s work focuses on telecommunications — helping communities ensure the networks upon which they depend, are accountable to the community. He has published several reports, articles, and interviews while also offering technical assistance to communities around the country.Stacy MitchellSenior Researcher, Banking and Independent Business --
Stacy Mitchell directs ILSR’s initiatives on independent business and community banking. An advisor to business groups, grassroots organizations, and policymakers, Stacy produces research and analysis, and develops policies and innovative strategies to curb economic consolidation and strengthen community-rooted enterprise. She is the author of Big-Box Swindle and has written for Business Week, The Nation, Grist, and many other publications.David MorrisVice President, Defending the Public Good --
Dr. David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. He directs its initiative on The Public Good. He has served as an adviser or consultant to local, state and national governments and to private businesses large and small.Brenda PlattProgram Director, Waste to Wealth and Sustainable Plastics --
Brenda Platt is a recycling expert and composting advocate, and co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). She directs ILSR’s Sustainable Plastics and Composting Makes $en$e projects and co-chairs the Sustainable Biomaterials Collaborative.Neil SeldmanPresident --
Neil Seldman, Ph.D., co-founded the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in 1974 and continues to serve as its President. An economic development planner and former manufacturer, Dr. Seldman specializes in approaches to municipal and commercial solid waste management that emphasize environmental quality and create economic development opportunities for small businesses, community organizations, and other targeted populations.Leigh CrenshawDevelopment Associate --
Leigh Crenshaw assists with ILSR’s fundraising efforts. She also works with the Washington, DC office on zero waste economic development and composting.Sarah PickellFinance Director --
Sarah Pickell is responsible for the fiscal management of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Having spent the previous 16 years with The Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Sarah brings over 25 years of financial and administrative expertise to ILSR.Linda KnappDirector, MACREDO Project --
Linda Knapp is a Senior Program Manager for ILSR, overseeing the Mid-Atlantic Consortium of Recycling and Economic Development Officials, a recycling market development group funded by US EPA Region 3. Her current work focuses on increasing on-farm composting.ISLR Board of DirectorsBecca Vargo DaggettFinancial ConsultantJolie JonesTake It Back FoundationKirk Marckwald California Environmental AssociatesDavid MorrisILSRRoy PriestAlexandria Redevelopment and Housing AuthorityAndy Reicher Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB)Neil SeldmanILSRTo provide innovative strategies, working models and timely information to support environmentally sound and equitable community development.Self-RelianceSince 1974, ILSR has championed local self-reliance, a strategy that underscores the need for humanly scaled institutions and economies and the widest possible distribution of ownership.IndividualismThe United States has always emphasized the individual and deemphasized the community. From the cradle onwards we are taught that whenever “we” becomes as important as “me,” whenever the social becomes as important as the individual, we are heading down a slippery slope toward tyranny and misery.FamiliesThis harsh American emphasis on individualism has always been tempered by the historical presence of extended families, of ethnic neighborhoods, of family farms, of small towns—places where people know when you’re born and care when you die. But in the last two generations we have moved more often and farther and our neighborhood based gathering places have been severely diminished.NeighborhoodMutual AidDecisions are made in an unintelligible and inaccessible process remote from the people and places that will feel their impact. Little by little, we have lost our sense of mutual aid and cooperation. Fewer than half of all adult Americans now regard the idea of sacrifice for others as a positive moral virtue.CooperationTerritorial CommunitiesSome view this decline in the importance of territorial communities as an inevitable consequence of modernity. But this theory of the inevitable decline of community implies that public policy has been neutral on the issue. It has not.
For half a century Democratic and Republican administrations have consistently pursued policies that disabled rather than enabled compact, strong, and productive communities.
Urban renewal programs literally bulldozed hundreds of inner-city neighborhoods. Federal housing programs encouraged suburban sprawl. Federal policies have encouraged centralized technologies like garbage incineration and high voltage transmission lines while more modestly support decentralized strategies like maximizing recycling and composting and reuse or the use of highly decentralized energy sources. Federal tax and regulatory policies encouraged leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers that shuffled hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate assets and forced tens of thousands of workers to abandon their communities in search of jobs.Localism ILSR challenges the view that localism and regionalism represent a misguided desire to turn back time. There is nothing inherently progressive about globalization, and there is nothing inherently backwards-looking about localism.
At the end of the 19th century, as we switched from wood to steel, from water wheels to fossil fueled central power plants, and from craft shops to mass production, technology seemed to demand larger scale and eventually worldwide production systems and economies. But at the beginning of the 21st century, as we switch from minerals to vegetables as industrial materials, from fossil fuels to sunlight and wind for energy and from mass production to flexible manufacturing, technological progress may mean more decentralized, localized economies.RegionalismSmallnessILSR challenges the conventional wisdom that bigger is better, that separating the producer from the consumer, the banker from the depositor and lender, the worker from the owner is an inevitable outcome of modern economic development. Surprisingly little evidence supports this conventional wisdom. In every sector of the economy the evidence yields the same conclusion: small is the scale of efficient, dynamic environmentally benign societies.Policy InnovationAnd unsurprisingly, we make better and more informed policies when those who design those policies are those who feel their impact. History shows that most policy innovations come from below: unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, minimum wage and maximum hour laws, environmental protection, and health care reform.International PolicyIn an increasingly planetary economy, strong communities must be nurtured and protected by international policies, too. Currently what we call “free trade” is not at all free. Indeed it comes with a high price tag: the subordination of our desire for community and equity and sustainability and democracy to the quest by ever-larger corporations to eliminate all obstacles to the flow of resources.Global VillageMoreover, the increasingly ubiquitous internet – unmediated by corporate media or big governments – plus the introduction of new technologies such as rapid translation will inevitably and inexorably overcome the inward looking nature of even the most parochial community. We might envision a time where two metaphors guide our thinking: a global village and a globe of villages. Products made of molecules will travel ever-shorter distances while ideas delivered by electron or photon will be exchanged on a planet-wide basis.RulesWe make the rules and the rules make us. Part of ILSR’s mission is to identify and design the new rules necessary to channel entrepreneurial energy and investment capital and scientific genius toward the creation of a global village and a globe of villages.Entrepreneurial EnergyInvestment Capital Scientific GeniusFederalismBoth conservatives and liberals recite the proverb, “Give a man a fish and he will be without hunger for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will never be hungry.” Yet the ability to fish will not keep someone from starving if he or she has no access to a net or a boat. Even a boat is insufficient if the community lacks the authority to prevent overfishing or stop the pollution that can destroy spawning grounds. And all of these additional considerations are immaterial if the person fishing bears no greater responsibility to the community at large.
It seems oxymoronic to argue that the federal government can promote self-reliant communities. Yet we are at an important crossroads in world history. People are clamoring for a more effective voice in government at the same time as the management of corporations are moving farther and farther away from their workers and their communities. The federal government can play a key role in mediating between local demands and global realities.MediationCommunityWe at ILSR believe in the ARC of community: Authority, Responsibility, Capacity. AuthorityWithout authority, democracy is meaningless. ResponsibilityWithout responsibility, chaos ensues. CapacityWithout a productive capacity we are helpless to manage our affairs and determine our economic future. EvaluationInternational, national, state and local policies should be evaluated on the basis of how it strengthens all three cornerstones of strong communities.Public EducationEngage in public education.1We present the concept in many popular forums, through books and reports, through articles and interviews in journals and newspapers, in appearances on radio and TV, via presentations to many different types of audiences and through social networks and blogs. We publish well-documented and accessible policy briefs and longer reports. We use many forms of media: print, webinars, videos, and graphics.Rules LibraryIdentify the best rules that promote local self-reliance and thwart concentration.2A library of rules and tools -- One of the key lessons we have learned is that the possibilities for local self-reliance are undercut by the reality of rules—regulations, tax incentives, codes, standards, laws—that channel investment capital, scientific genius, and entrepreneurial energy toward the construction of centralized and absentee owned institutions and production technologies. Our New Rules Project was launched in the late 1990s to directly address and overcome this obstacle.
The New Rules web site identifies the best rules that promote local self-reliance and thwart concentration and posts the text of the actual rule on our web site. More than 95 percent of the 400 rules posted to date have been enacted in at least one jurisdiction. That is helpful in overcoming the reluctance of other communities.
The New Rules web site also offers ongoing news items about local self-reliance efforts here and abroad, as well as links to pertinent research documents and organizations.Technical AssistanceProvide technical assistance.3Direct technical assistance --
Since we have a small staff, we focus our direct technical assistance and strategic outreach on a few sectors. We choose sectors based on four criteria:
1. Something is already happening. Thus ILSR does not have to try to get a community involved but rather to inform and guide its involvement.
2. The work illuminates and furthers the local self-reliance paradigm.
3. Success is possible in the short term.
4. The skill set needed to provide useful assistance is available either in-house or within our networks.
Based on these criteria, we focus on the following areas: solid waste, energy, retail business, and telecommunications. The first two are sectors we have worked on since our founding. Retail was added in the late 1990s and telecommunications in 2005.2013-09-18OwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net