Jeff Dicken and Michael Tew
Reality Sandwich
Where are we now, and how did we get this far?
The energy is building. Even before we have printed a single note, everywhere we go in Baltimore people have already heard of the BNote, and businesses are signing on to accept them when we launch next year. We are finding that people are very receptive to the idea of an alternative economic system – one that will benefit people instead of corporations. Google searches now show blogs and internet media referencing Baltimore’s new local currency, and we’re starting to get coverage in the local press and on the radio. Our currency design contest went global when other sites starting picking us up on the net. When the BNote arrives in Baltimore, only the birds will be surprised.
In less than a year, we have managed to build this idea into an organization that is on track to create a strong local currency with broad participation. Much of this progress has to do with the diversity and positive vision that the Evolver movement has already been able to foster in its local groups.
The first Baltimore spore on local currencies happened in mid-2009. Damien Nichols, who attended, suggested to his friend Michael Tew that he come to the next spore and meet the people there, who seemed to be working to achieve similar goals. Michael had background in both microfinance and legislative lobbying, and had been looking for an opportunity to advance alternative economic systems on a community level. Michael attended the food spore, and on the strength of his participation in the discussion that night, he was invited to make a short presentation at the 2012 spore on the subject of microfinance. There, he put forth the idea that, by the end of 2012, a micro-finance based economy (which is fundamentally different from the Capitalist economy in many important ways) would be the dominant form of economic organization for the majority of the people on planet earth. And that Baltimore would be a very good place to bring microfinance and local currency together.
At the end of that spore, Michael met Jeff Dicken, a long-time supporter of microfinance efforts with an IT systems and arts background. Through this and subsequent conversations, the idea of a local currency being a necessity for a resilient community and city, in the face of the economic meltdown and further upheaval to come, began to take root. Soon after, Jill Harrison brought her own social justice and non-profit background to the endeavor. After some informal meetings over the winter, Michael moved to Baltimore in March 2010, and a series of regular meetings was established. At first, there were just two or three of us, but as we continued to talk with other Evolvers about the effort, we started to attract people willing to help, and by the end of June we had an increasingly effective and growing team of enthusiastic volunteers.
The basic questions on starting a currency were raised: debit system or paper money; what organizational form to adopt; how to go about designing and printing the currency; how to enroll people in participating, and so on. Notes from each meeting, including links to relevant Internet resources, were distributed among the group. Keeping everyone communicating was one of the keys to forming a committed, ongoing project, and many of the system’s features – the “BNote” name, the approach of issuing only 1- and 5-dollar value notes the first year, etc. – were discussed informally via email between meetings before being adopted by the group. The Lewes (England) Pound site’s guide to starting a currency and Peter North’s book Local Money provided invaluable guidance as we started to put together the strongest features of other currencies already in existence.
We decided that our currency would be convertible to and from U.S. Dollars, and that we would restrict ourselves to a specific, identifiable geographic neighborhood for a pilot project. Both Jeff and Ian McDonald had realized independently that the Hampden community in Baltimore would be a strong launching place for the BNote, and as we looked more closely, we found that the area had many features that are important for the strong adoption of a local currency:
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