Cape Cod Time Bank

What is TimeBank Youth Court All About ?

2009-09-22T06:52:00.000-04:00

Pictures from TimeBanks USA Annual Conference Madison, Wisconsin

2009-07-13T18:04:00.011-04:00

Panelists Jo-Ann Wallace, from The National Legal Aid & Defender Association and panelist as well as our Conference Co-Host from Madison, Wisconsin, Dane County TimeBank's Director Stephanie Rearick

Cape Cod TimeBank was mentored by Woodstock TimeBank

Christine Gray, John Bangert and Edgar Cahn

Dr. Edgar Cahn Founder of TimeBank USA

Christine Gray- Executive Director of TimeBanks USA
and John Bangert President of Cape Cod Time Bank, Inc.

Gail Bangert Writer for Cape Women On Line

2009-06-21T08:14:00.004-04:00

http://www.capewomenonline.com/

Can You Do Me A Favor?

by Gail Bangert

How can transform our Community

The Cape Cod Time Bank has been launched, and it’s getting people’s attention. The idea is simple: members give an hour of service to someone else and are entitled to receive an hour of service from another member in return. If you’re new to the concept, you might be wondering, “What’s the big deal? Countless organizations already enlist volunteers or even pay people to do the right thing.”

The difference between time banking and many other ways of helping people is subtle, but profound. Time banking works because everyone involved is valued. Consider for a moment the way we usually think about giving. “It’s better to give than to receive,” our simple mantra for teaching compassion, inadvertently sums up how demeaning it can be to need help. Whether the receiver is a senior citizen asking for help with home repairs or a poor person in need of free professional services, when only one person has the opportunity to give, the other feels useless or less valued. People want to give back.

This is the insight that Edgar Cahn, creator of time banking, gained lying in a coronary care unit. In his book, No More Throw-Away People, he explains that before the heart attack that landed him in the hospital in 1980, he had proudly spent his life helping others by fighting for justice.

Cahn worked with Robert Kennedy at the Justice Department and Sargent Shriver in the War on Poverty. He challenged the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the hunger and injustice faced by Native Americans. With his wife, he created the Antioch School of Law with a unique teaching law firm that represented thousands of poor people. Cahn realized in his hospital bed that being a person who could do things that other people needed was central to his self-worth, and he didn’t like feeling useless.

Cahn’s other key insight was about money. Perhaps you’re content in the knowledge that you have the means to buy the services that you need, that the economic market values your contribution, and that you can value others by paying them in turn.

The catch is that in the economic realm, not only commodities but also human abilities are valued based on their scarcity. Scarce items have a high value. Abundant items have a low value. When judged against this standard, the most common human capacities, like caring for each other, are devalued.

In the economic marketplace, values are assigned in a hierarchy, and everyone is well aware of how high or low they fall on the ladder. In a time bank, an hour of service given by one person is equal to an hour of service given by any other person. The hierarchy is gone.

For me, the truly fascinating element of time banking is this reshuffling of the social deck. We trudge or glide through our days, the heaviness of our steps determined to some degree by our status and the amount of money in our pockets. Our assigned rankings inevitably color our interactions, in spite of egalitarian myths.

That a time bank member, perhaps previously unknown to another, can step into that other person’s life and be judged by a single act of kindness (and maybe how the recipient’s garden looks without weeds) seems to me an amazing gift of fresh perspective.

When my husband, John Bangert, first shared the time banking concept with me, and announced his determination to start a time bank on Cape Cod, I found the idea immediately appealing. This is a remarkable statement for me to make after living with a community organizer for thirty four years.

John and I share deeply held values, but he’s the one with the zeal for outreach, always out front with a new idea. I listen, steer, edit, sort, and carry boxes. I have been known to try to stifle his irrepressible urge to act, if only to dig out the office from the last adventure. Our home is strewn with flyers, contact lists, and life-sized candidate cutouts, and there is always a project afoot.

I work 75 hours a week at my paid job and come home to a buzzing community headquarters. I’m not even sure how I’ll find hours to give. And yet I’m excited and energized by this simple idea. I should be balking at the prospect of more to do, but time banking sounds more rewarding than burdensome.

An amazing thing happens when people fill out the membership form. As they begin to list services they want to offer, there’s often a wonderful moment when they realize how capable they really are and how much they have to contribute.

Looking outward, members have the chance to see others with new eyes. A quiet woman you’ve seen around town turns out to be a retired physical therapist and personal trainer. The IT person that you plague with computer questions at work is also a banjo teacher. There are actually people who love to weed!

The financial cost of living on Cape Cod is high, and it requires many of us to work more hours than we wish, leaving too little time to focus on our families and friends. But the price we pay is not just time. The real cost, says Edgar Cahn in his book No More Throw Away People, “is the hold that money has on our sense of what is possible, the prison it builds for our imagination.”

The vision of Cape Cod Time Bank is to help people break free of this yoke and weave a new kind of community. The “free market” may say that you can’t afford a gardener. Time banking says you can. The recession threatens to close the door to home ownership, higher education, and other pieces of the American dream to a growing segment of our population. Maybe the America dream just needs a new definition.

Gail Bangert is a community activist and member of the Cape Cod Time Bank. She lives with her husband in Harwich.

Time Banking Deficit Spending Works!

2009-06-21T08:10:00.001-04:00

Subject: Kick Starting the Trading of Time Dollars

There is a psychological hurdle that every Time Bank needs to overcome
to build a thriving core economy of people exchanging services for Time
Dollars. We all need to overcome our training that debt is bad. For the
Time Dollar economy to work half of the members need to be in debt.
Unlike the market economy where people compete for a limited quantity of
dollars, Time Dollars are created on the spot when every people agree to
trade time for Time Dollars. The sum of all member balances in the Time
Bank is always zero.

If everyone in the Time Bank decided they weren't going to spend a Time
Dollar until they earned one, no one would ever have a chance to earn a
Time Dollar. Many of us have been taught since childhood that "it is
more blessed to give than receive." In the Time Dollar world it is "as
blessed to receive as it is to give" – it may be more blessed because it
takes some courage to overcome deep habits learned in the market economy
that don't apply in the core economy of Time Banking.

To help people get over the psychological barrier against going into
debt, we strongly recommend that the Time Bank goes into debt to give
people a starting positive balance. We suggest that you pay each member
for signing up and placing ads. Many Time Banks pay their members a Time
Dollar for going through a one-on-one orientation and another Time
Dollar for a pair of ads – one offer and one request. People have a
tendency to put in many more offers than requests, so we want to provide
an incentive to list offers. (Remember the Time Dollar economy can't
work if everyone is focused on offers.) You may even choose to offer up
to five Time Dollars for up to five pairs of offers and requests.

Members of the leadership team are paid Time Dollars for running the
orientations. During the orientations the member coordinator (and their
deputies) goes over the member's profile to fill in any blanks, takes a
picture for their profile if they haven't already uploaded one, and
explores the types of services they would like to offer and receive.

Here is a list of issues that we've found to be important in orientation
meetings:

Don't fall into the trap of only listing what you could get paid to do
in the market economy – The Time Dollar economy is an informal economy
of people doing the types of favors that family and neighbors have been
doing for millennia. Thus mentoring, dog walking, braiding hair, chicken
soup are all fine offers. Someone can offer guitar beginning lessons if
they've only been taking lessons for a year. Many people try out a new
found skill in the Time Bank and then go on to offer it for money
outside the Time Bank.

Neither the giver or receiver should expect professional standards.
Sometimes you get professional quality work, but that is not the point.
The point of Time Dollar trades is to build relationships of give and
take. It about building that village referred to in the phrase "it takes
a village to raise a child."

Be courteous and respond quickly –When members get a request they should
respond quickly and be willing to say no. Though the services may not be
at a professional level, our courtesy to each other should be more than
professional. These are people who will become extended family. Don't
leave them hanging. One shouldn't say yes when you would prefer to say
no. That's a dysfunctional extended family. If one is swamped that week,
just say so. We all get swamped.

Offer what you like to do, not what you can do – Sometimes people go
crazy and list everything they could possibly do. Then when someone
calls them, they drag their feet on doing the service. Members should
only list they would be thrilled to do.

It is as blessed to receive as it is to give – Please make sure that
everyone understands at asking for a service is what drive the whole
Time Dollar economy. Many of us have blocks against asking. Askers are
the heroes in the Time Dollar economy. Each Time Bank sets its own limit
for how much member can go into debt. We recommend that the member
coordinator have a chat about earning opportunities when a member's
account gets below negative ten.

Trust and verify – Time banks are all about building trusting
relationships you can count on. Trust is built from time spent
together – at potlucks and doing trades. At the beginning, trust comes
from knowing that everyone has had an orientation meeting, everyone has
two character references, and personal contact at potlucks.

There are some services where assuming the best may not be the best
policy – specifically, child care, elder care, transportation and
letting someone in the house while away. Members may want to be in
earshot for the first few times that they hire a babysitter. Member
should be encouraged to call the references listed in a person's
profile. Time Banks don't generally do criminal checks or driving record
checks. It is the responsibility to of each member to determine the
safety of each exchange as they would with any other neighbor that
offers to baby sit, house sit, drive, etc.

Membership Fees – Orientation is the best time to discuss membership
fees. Some Time Banks charge the fee during the orientation. That is
harder to do in a brand new Time Bank where there isn't already an
establish economy of giving and receiving. You may want to explain that
fees will be charged three months after the Time Bank has started.

We recommend a sliding scale of $10-40 and TD$ 1-4 per year. Explain why
the Time Bank needs both federal and Time Dollars to run.

Member survey – Filling out the member survey is very important for
getting grants. This allows you to get data on the type of people in
your Time Bank and later you will be able to generate statistics for how
lives have been improved by belonging to the Time Bank. Hard data needs
and benefits will greatly improve your chances in getting grants.

Writing better ads – The orientation is a great time to spiff up the ads
the member's ads. Be creative. Make them fun to read. The member will
get more activity if the ads are well written and everyone will have
more fun reading the ads if people put time into make them fun, enticing
and creative.

Invite into Leadership – A member-led Time Bank needs lots of leaders to
keep the burden of leadership light. Every role should have an
understudy in case the designated person for the role is unavailable for
some reason. Leadership roles should rotate every 6-12 months to keep
the leadership fresh and to provide new ideas and contacts for the Time
Bank. Ask new members if they have any interest in participating in any
of the Time Bank leadership roles in the next six months.

It is hard to overstress the importance of the orientation. Time Banking
is a new cultural experience and there are many things that need to be
explained. The necessity and valor of going into debt for the Time
Dollar economy to work needs to be explained because it is so foreign to
our standard money culture. The informal nature of the offerings, doing
what you love to do, ability to say no, the courtesy of quick replies,
the central importance of potlucks for building community are all part
of bringing people into a new culture.

At the beginning we are letting the Time Bank take the brunt of peoples'
weird feelings about going into debt. The Time Bank goes into debt so
everyone can start with positive balances. Many people ask what are the
consequences of the Time Bank going into debt. When the federal
government prints too much money, the money is worth less. Similarly, if
everyone has very high Time Dollar balances there will be less incentive
to say yes when someone responds to a service ads. That's the only
problem we know of with a Time Bank going too far into debt.

Even with high positive balances, many people will continue to happily
do Time Bank activities. They just like to give. After all, there are
millions of people who do volunteer work for years with no TD$
compensation. Volunteers on average burn out after about three years.
Time Bankers stay engaged in helping their neighbors for much longer.

If people's Time Bank accounts get too high you can raise your TD$
membership fee or hold a TD$ fund raiser. With a Time Dollars$ fund
raiser, you will probably get your biggest donations from the people
with the highest balances and they'll be charging off to earn more.

So far we have only spoken about priming the pump. Once your Time Bank
economy is in full swing, you'll still need to juice it every now and
then. The primary strategy is to get people to come to potlucks.
One-on-one time is the most important driver of trust to build trades.
The secondary strategy is to have the membership coordinator comb the
list of wants and offers and play match maker. "Hey Jim, I noticed that
you were looking for someone to sew drapes. Have you met Sara Smith who
has an ad up for sewing projects?" These introductions are best done in
person at the monthly potluck, but can also be done via email.

Cheers,
TonyBudak@TBMW.org
www.tbmw.org

"Failure is impossible" - Susan B. Anthony

Cape Cod TimeBank Member Policies

2009-06-17T10:44:00.003-04:00

Cape Cod TimeBank Member Policies

Policies:

Liability: Cape Cod Time Bank refers members who state that they are able to perform services. Cape Cod Time Bank cannot guarantee the performance of anyone who is referred, nor will the Cape Cod Time Bank or its staff or members be held responsible for any injury to persons or damage to property experienced while involved with the transaction.

Limitations:

No service is guaranteed, and there may be situations when the service provided does not meet the expectations of the receiver. Wherever possible, appreciation of another’s best efforts is part of what makes the TimeBank work. Additionally, all problems should be brought to the attention of a COORDINATOR.

Confidentiality:

All members must protect the privacy and confidentiality of other members. A member can be dismissed from the program for violating this rule. The only exception for sharing information is when a member feels that the health and/or safety of another member is in danger. Please communicate these concerns to a coordinator immediately.

CCTB Code of Conduct Agreement:

As a Cape Cod TimeBank member, I agree to:

1. Clarify all details of my transaction before meeting with my partner.
2. Respect my exchange partner’s privacy and confidentiality.
3. Recognize that my TimeBank service is voluntary.
4. Respect my exchange partner’s home, property and valuables.
5. Refrain from smoking in or bringing pets to my exchange
partner’s home, unless invited to do so.
6. Post and maintain at least one offer and one request on the CCTB website with my availability.

7. Communication is key to a successful TimeBank and it is my responsibility to answer all CCTB phone calls and emails directed to me in a timely manner, within three days.

8. To be notified via an email from sysadmin@timebanks.org of activity on my website page and that it is my responsibility to check my email in a timely manner. When I receive this email from sysadmin@timebanks.org, I will immediately go to the CCTB website to look at and respond to the email sent to me by another member.

9. To seek out, via the CCTB website, offers from other members that appeal to me.

10. Cape Cod Time Bank members, and administrators, in order to promote the common good and safety of all members, may ask you to submit a CORI or Criminal Offender Record Investigation to be conducted when agreed in writing. This mutual benefit does not exclude the possibility of other character background checks do be asked for and furnished by any member in good standing. If this is denied, then some members will not be matched for offers and requests in the marketplace.

* Under circumstances where the exchange involves services such as transportation, childcare, elder care, plumbing, etc., it is the responsibility of the CCTB requestor to ascertain the competency of the server to the extent that meets the user’s level of comfort.

CCTB Membership Liability:

I agree that all services I give or receive as a member of Cape Cod Time Bank are on a volunteer basis, and that I do not expect to receive or give any money for those services, except if there are related material fees agreed upon in advance (for example, workshop materials or gas money).

I take responsibility for my acts as a member of CCTB and agree that neither CCTB nor any member of CCTB shall be liable in any way for my actions as a member of CCTB.

I waive any claim against any other member of CCTB for any act or commission in the performance of membership exchanges. I further waive any claim against CCTB for the acts or commission by any member.

This waiver shall not encompass intentionally wrongful conduct by a member. However, liability for such conduct shall be limited to the person who takes such wrongful actions.

I understand that there will be immediate termination of membership of any member who has been found to harass, harm, or interfere
with any other CCTB member or the CCTB organization.

I agree to refer any complaints or concerns to CCTB administrator or regional coordinator.

I also agree to provide at least 2 character references.

The annual membership cost is $10 - $50 per family depending of size and use. Checks should be made out to:

Cape Cod Time Bank

5 Stage Coach Road

Harwich, MA 02645

E-Mail: membership@capecodtimebank.org

Office Phone: (508) 470-8587

SHARING SOLUTIONS - Cape Cod Thyme Bank!

2009-06-05T15:44:00.000-04:00

Bring Some Thyme to Share!

BOOK TALK AND SIGNING : A The Sharing Solution: How To Save Money, Simplify Your Life and Build Community by Emily Doskow
Friday June 5th, 7-8pm

From housing and childcare to cars and household tools, many people are motivated to share resources but don't know how or where to start. The Sharing Solution is a practical and legal guidebook designed to help people create and maintain successful sharing arrangements while addressing commonly held concerns about liability and individual security.

There will be plenty of sharing at our event! We will share snacks with you, we encourage people to share a ride coming to the event and we will also hold a plant swap!

Bring some plants to share...everyone's garden needs some thinning out at this time of year. Thin out what you don't need and bring it along!

Come to Titcomb's Book Shop in Sandwich and meet Author Emily Doskow of The Sharing Solution will in Sandwich, MA on FRIDAY, June 5th, 2009 at a book signing from 7:00pm -8:00pm. The Cape Cod Time Bank is co-sponsoring this event.

Remember if you are a CCTB member or join Cape Cod Time Bank, you will get 10% discount off this price of this book, you will also get 1 hour of time from your community time bank.

Read the the latest book from Nolo Press, The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community.

Oakland, CA attorneys Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow have put together a lively, practical guide to help anyone and everyone create sharing arrangements.

The book is chock-full of tools, instructions, tips, resources, and sample agreements to allow anyone to share a car with a neighbor, form a childcare co-op, join a co-housing community, start a tool-sharing group, and integrate sharing into a host of other areas of life. Janelle and Emily will share a wealth of great stories, information, and guidance on how to share all manner of things. Their Blog is here! http://www.sharingsolution.com/

They believe the beauty of sharing is that it's a solution we can create for ourselves.

Signed copies of the book will be available to purchase at Titcomb's Book Shop in Sandwich, MA

Cape Cod Time Bank's Newest member Heather Blume brought this video back from visiting her family in California. Please watch and who wants to head this adventure up. Pam, Chuck, Taylor, Heather Anyone?

Also we found this on-line community below. Have fun, share what you know and what you grow.

http://barnyard.ning.com/

To borrow the complete video e-mail Heather at She will earn time credits: heatherblume@verizon.com

To Watch a this vedio a bit click on the YouTube video below.

Grow Food Party Crew

FYI

2009-06-02T04:21:00.001-04:00

The three rules a Time Bank must follow in order to maintain the tax-exempt status of the Time Dollars are:

1. All exchanges must be one to one - an hour for an hour, regardless of the service, NO EXCEPTIONS!

2. Members should have only a moral obligation to participate in making exchanges in the Time Bank. If someone performs a service, there is no guarantee that they will receive a service in exchange.

3. The purpose of the Time Bank should be charitable (not for profit).

Why does this work? Well, in a regular barter or cash economy, you are 100% right in saying that services are taxable. That's because there is still a relative market value to the service, and you usually have to give something in order to receive something. So, if you want that plumber to come spend two hours at your house, you'd better give her something worth her time. If she would normally earn $100 for those two hours, then you have to provide $100 worth of goods or services to get the plumber.

This is absolutely not the case in a Time Bank. In the same example, to have the plumber come to your house for two hours, there is nothing you need to do but ask. She comes, fixes your pipe, and two Time Dollars are deducted from your account. Later, if you decide to earn those two Time Dollars back, you can do it anyway you like - babysitting for two hours for Bob, or walking dogs for a few afternoons for Jane and Roy, or applying your knowledge of tax law to a thorny tax return for Ellie. You are under no obligation to return the favor to the plumber, or to anyone else.

If there are two things that the IRS does not understand, it's morality and equality. Smile

As far as goods are concerned, it is possible, but exceedingly difficult, to exchange goods in a Time Bank. You can only spend Time Dollars on stuff if it can be valued in terms of time. So, for example, if it took me two hours to crochet a hat, I can offer it for two Time Dollars. If you attend a movie that is 3 hours long, the theater could charge 3 Time Dollars. Other things, like manufactured items and agricultural products, would be hard to trade within the Time Dollar system.

At least one Time Bank has solved this problem by creating an incentive program that parallels the Time Bank. For a certain number of exchanges, a person earns a token. The tokens accumulated can be spent on items in the Time Bank's store. Notice I said for a certain number of exchanges - not hours! And they have to be a combination of gives and receives.

I hope that answers your question thoroughly! The IRS rulings that are out there are local, and not national, but as long as everyone is following the same guidelines, there shouldn't be any trouble.

...and this is from Edgar Cahn:

IRS: Time Banking is Not Commercial Barter Edgar Cahn

Beginning in 1985, the US IRS has ruled that Time Banking programs are not “barter organizations” and that Time Dollars are not taxable.

The first ruling, made by a regional office of the IRS in 1985, involved the state-sponsored program operated in Missouri, said that "there will be no taxable consequences" to volunteers who earn credits as ‘reimbursement’ for services rendered. This ruling focused on the charitable nature of the organization, the charitable class served by the program, the fact that the organization was not a commercial for-profit barter club and that any qualifying person would receive such services without regard to cost.

The second was a private ruling covering a program set up to generate “service credit” exchanges among members. The central reason given for the ruling was that the credits were used primarily to motivate members and that no ‘contractual rights’ arose by owing them. The ruling noted that all hours were valued as equal, regardless of market value, and that the primary purpose of the credits was clearly to motivate members. Moral persuasion was the only means of enforcing a debt.

Charitable purposes include the relief of poverty, the advancement of education or religion, the promotion of health, governmental or municipal purposes, and other purposes the achievement of which are beneficial to the community.

The IRS distinguished time money from commercial barter clubs on the following grounds:
• Absence of a commission.
• Cash cannot be used to buy credits or eliminate a debt.
• The predominance of ‘like-for-like’ services in the exchange.
• The equal valuation given to all hours.

There can be no guarantee that the IRS will not reconsider its position at some future time. All rulings apply only to the particular party who applies for the ruling and state that they cannot be used or cited as precedent. Nonetheless, the rationale for the decisions involve basic principles which are consistently invoked in subsequent “individual” rulings.

We believe that the non-contractual nature of the exchanges, the specific charitable purposes pursued, the valuing of all hours equally, the potential savings to the taxpayer and the focus of the program on rebuilding family, neighborhood and community make it unlikely that Time Dollars will be treated as “taxable income” or that local Time Banks will be treated as commercial barter exchanges.

The following excerpts from a 1995 ruling illustrate the reasoning found persuasive by the IRS:

Section 6045(c)(3) of the Code defines the term “barter exchange” as any organization of members providing property or services who jointly contract to trade or barter such property or services.

Section 1.6045-1(a)(4) of the Income Tax Regulations states that the term “barter exchange” means any person with members of clients that contract with each other or with such person to trade or barter property or services either directly or through such person. The term does not include arrangements that provide solely for the informal exchange of similar services on a noncommercial basis.

As explained below, we conclude that X is not a barter exchange within the meaning of section 6045(c)(3) because X’s operations provide a means for the informal exchange of similar services on a noncommercial basis and do not result in the creation of contractual rights and obligations among members (or between members and X) for the exchange of property or services.

Other elements to be considered in determining whether an organization is a barter exchange are whether services are exchanged on a commercial or noncommercial basis and whether the exchange of services is formal or informal. See section 1.6045-1(a)(4). The application of these criteria to X is discussed below.

X facilitates the exchanges of services on a noncommercial basis as evidenced by the following considerations. First, all services receive a point value based solely on the number of hours of service provided without regard to the type of service. Second, a member who has performed services does not thereby have a contractual right to receive any services from X or from X’s members. Third, the organization does not place any limits on when services must be received. Thus, there could be a gap of several years between the time when a member provides services and the time when the member first receives services. Fourth, a member cannot assign (except to family or household m embers) the points that he or she has accumulated for services performed. Fifth, X is a community organization whose membership consists primarily of individuals living in the Y area. Sixth, X does not charge a fee for participation or membership in the program. Seventh, the records maintained by X show significant disparities in members’ accounts as to the number of hours of services provided and the number of hours of services received. Some members typically receive many more hours of services than they provide, while other members – who are apparently motivated by a desire to serve the community – typically provide many more hours of services than they received. Based on X’s records as of July, 1995, there were at that time approximately __ active participants over 25 percent of which have performed services but have not received any services in return.

The informal nature of the exchange of services is also evident. X simply links members in need of services with other m embers who are potential providers of services. It is up to the members, rather than X, to determine whether any services will be performed, to determine the time and place for performance of the services, and to ensure that the services are satisfactorily performed. Also, X does not have any responsibility for crediting the account of the service provider or debiting the account of the service recipient unless a member first contacts X and indicates the number of hours of service provided. Moreover, either member (the service provider or the service recipient) can contact X to indicate the number of hours of service provided, and this information may be provided to X informally through a phone call or postcard.

Section 6045. Returns of Brokers - Private letter Ruling

2009-05-24T08:28:00.006-04:00

Americorps*VISTA Program Coordinator position available soon!

General Description

1. Promote member participation and leadership in the CCTB and its programs.
2. Administer the Agency’s day-to-day operations, including maintaining the service exchange program database.
3. Redesign or edit website.
4. Coordinate a Cape Cod youth oriented, court approved, peer to peer - juvenile justice system interface with community service projects with students and families, recruiting participants, and reaching out into the community

5. Ministering to the immigrant population, international workers, students and other new comers along with No Place for Hate communities, Cape Cod Human Rights Committees and communities of faith already working among this community.

Recommended Skills and Qualifications
1. Interest in and ability to work effectively with diverse populations, and have commitment to the mission and goals of the Cape Cod Time Bank and its partnering organizations.
2. Comfortable working independently as well as collaboratively.
3. Flexible, energetic and innovative, and thrives on handling several tasks simultaneously.
4. Proven organizational skills.
5. Conversant with most commonly used computer programs and social network sites.
6. Experience with creating or editing websites.
7. Experience with community programs.
8. Bi-lingual in Spanish or Portuguese would be ideal.

Please e-mail capecodtimebank.org for more information about the position. For more information about the VISTA program, go to www.vistacampus.org

--
Migrating to a new Website soon!

Time Bank movement comes to Cape Cod

2009-05-21T10:43:00.005-04:00

Cape volunteers unite to swap chores

By Karen Jeffrey

kjeffrey@capecodonline.com

May 18, 2009 6:00 AM

EASTHAM — Lyn Chafetz is a wiz at organizing closets and pulling together profitable yard sales. She's not so adept at plowing up the earth for a garden.

But she needs that done, and done soon, if the fixings for her summer salads are to be picked from the backyard.

So where does she turn for help?

She signed into the Cape Cod Time Bank, a nascent volunteer program in which members exchange services, but not necessarily in quid-pro-quo fashion. Chafetz put in a request for help through the time bank and within short order got e-mails and phone calls with offers for yard work. No one is asking her directly for anything in return.

Although the language of time banks is that of financial institutions, the reality "is people helping people," said John Bangert of Harwich, who helped found Cape Cod Time Bank in March.

Joining the Cape Cod Time Bank gives members access to a Web site (www.capecodtimebank.blogspot.com) where they can list services available or services wanted. Each hour of service given to another member of the time bank earns the doer one time dollar. No material goods are exchanged. Those without computer access will be able to make contact by telephone.

People who join the local time bank automatically earn two time dollars. There is a $10 fee to join — money that goes to support the Web site. But, exceptions could be made for someone "in real financial hardship," Bangert said. "We want to include, not exclude, people."

"This is like bartering, but not bartering," Bangert said. "It isn't 'you do something for me and I'll do something for you.' You might do something for someone and then weeks later someone completely different does something for you."

John Kelley doesn't need his closets organized — or at least he's not admitting to that. What he would like is someone with gardening or landscaping expertise who also belongs to the Cape Cod Time Bank to stop by and maybe accompany him to a gardening center with advice on what plants will work best at his Wellfleet home. Someone else will seek out Chafetz, whose skills also include putting together informational fliers.

Time banks are the brainchild of Edgar S. Cahn, a former speechwriter for Robert Kennedy and a social-justice lawyer. Cahn, who is traveling in Europe and was not available for comment, writes on the TimeBanks USA Web site — www.timebanks.org — that the idea came to him in 1980 after he had a serious heart attack. He felt helpless that he was unable to do anything for those who were helping him to recover. Thinking that others might have similar feelings, he created a system in which people can give as well as receive.

The impetus for the Cape Cod Time Bank comes from the Cape Cod Citizens for Economic Recovery, a coalition launched earlier this year to help people cope with the recession. The idea is to extend communities and social networks.

In some ways the time bank is a throwback to an era when "neighbors helped neighbors without question," Bangert said.

"It was just something you did," he said.

Just about any sort of service can be offered or requested through the site — yard work, cooking, music lessons or rides to and from the store, doctor's appointment or car repair service, he said.

"Say for example you are a senior citizen ... you can offer a multitude of skills like reading books to children, baking cookies, teaching someone to knit or giving a music lesson," Bangert said. "Or maybe you take care of your elderly mother and just need a couple hours to yourself. Someone in the time bank can come to the house and keep your mom company. ..."

The Cape site features offers of transportation, foreign language lessons and someone to play the harp at a dinner party. A retired hairdresser has offered to do at-home haircuts.

The site monitor — in this case Bangert — keeps an eye on accounts and offers, to ensure nothing untoward is offered and to verify that no one's withdrawals exceed their deposits. Neither has been a problem so far, he said.

"Our real problem right now is getting people to make withdrawals," he said. "Everyone is eager to help someone else, but they haven't been taking help themselves."

On the web

For more information or to sign up for the Cape Cod Time Bank, visit www.capecodtimebank.blogspot.com or call John Bangert at 508-432-0545.

To learn more about the national organization oe to join, TimeBanks USA, and time banks around the world, visit www.timebanks.org.

Upcoming Meetings!

2009-04-25T19:03:00.023-04:00

Cape Cod Time Bank Breakfast Club

When: Every Saturday, June & July, 2009

Time: 9 am - 12 Noon

Where:

Harwich Central Cafe
98 Parallel Street
Harwich Center, MA 02645

Cafe Phone: (508) 432-9801

Cape Cod Time Bank Office Phone: (508) 470-8587

Weekly Conference Calls on Every Sunday Evening at 7PM

~ Part I - Only 15/20 Minutes for New Membership Orientation

~ Part II - Leadership "Kitchen Cabinet Business Conference"

> Dial 1-(218) 486-1616

> Input Access Code # 563904
> Input Pin # 2009 if asked!

General Organization E-mail:
capecodtimebank@gmail.com

CC Time Bank Administrator's E-mail:
johnbangert@capecodtimebank.org

Current Website:
http://capecodtimebank.blogspot.com

New Website URL:
http://capecodtimebank.org

2009-04-20T09:32:00.004-04:00

The Five Core

Values of

Time Banking

Time Banking turns strangers into friends.

Hey, can you do me a favor?

Have you ever wished you had someone around to give you a ride somewhere, help you run some errands, pick you up after you’ve dropped your car off for repairs, or just give you a hand when you need it. Someone you really trust?

Many of us have friends, neighbors and family members who help us out, but they can’t always be there in a pinch. In a Time Banking community, someone is always there when you need them.

It is like having an extended family to help out—with rides to the doctor, trips to the supermarket, help with the yard, chores around the house or elder day care or child day care.

With Time Banking, sharing gifts means building trust!

Time Banking honors the unique gifts, talents and resources that each of us has to share, regardless of age, employment or ethnic background — such as tutoring, yard work, simple repairs, running errands, and storytelling. It’s labor with love.

Time Banks exist to promote exchanges that honor five core values.

Assets

We are all assets.

Every human being has something to contribute.

Redefining Work

Some work is beyond price.

Work has to be redefined to value whatever it takes to raise healthy children, build strong families, revitalize neighborhoods, make democracy work, advance social justice, make the planet sustainable. That kind of work needs to be honored, recorded and rewarded.

Reciprocity

Helping works better as a two-way street.

The question: “How can I help you?” needs to change so we ask: “How can we help each other build the world we both will live in?”

Social Networks

We need each other.

Networks are stronger than individuals. People helping each other reweave communities of support, strength & trust. Community is built upon sinking roots, building trust, creating networks. Special relationships are built on commitment.

Respect

Every human being matters.

Respect underlies freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and everything we value. Respect supplies the heart and soul of democracy. When respect is denied to anyone, we all are injured. We must respect where people are in the moment, not where we hope they will be at some future point.

Edgar Cahn is the founder of TimeBanks USA, a nonprofit that promotes Time Dollars, local currency for community building and a Distinguished Professor at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law. He is the author of "No More Throw-Away People" and "Priceless Money."

What are Time Banks?

Time Banks Weave Community One Hour at a Time.

For every hour you spend doing something for someone in your community, you earn one Time Dollar. Then you have a Time Dollar to spend on having someone do something for you. It's that simple. Yet it also has profound effects. Time Banks change neighborhoods and whole communities. Time Banking is a social change movement in 22 countries and six continents.

Click on image to enlarge.

http://www.timebanks.org/how-it-works.htm

http://timebanks.blogspot.com/2007/12/welcome-to-priceless-money.html

Visual Illustration of How Time Banking Works!

http://burlingtontimebanks.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/03_the-time-dollar-way.jpg

Time Banking Conference

2009-04-01T09:04:00.000-04:00

Time Banking Conference

By Sean Gonsalves

From Five Years Age September 14, 2004

Ever since I came across Mike Albert's Participatory Economics, I've been fascinated, energized and left wondering: how do we get there from here?

In Toronto last month, I was introduced to "Time Banking" and thought it might be one possible path to the end-goal of a more just and sustainable world, which is what Participatory Economics seeks to establish.

Indulge me this brief story.

The legendary investigator Sherlock Holmes and his able assistant Watson decided to take a needed vacation. So they headed off for a camping expedition.

After a day of hiking, as the sun began its descent beneath the horizon, they set up their camps walking down to a stream where they caught fish and at sat next to the fire that Waston sparked with a stone and a stick.

It wasn't long after they returned to their campsite when they crawled into their sleeping bags to rest for the following day's hike. Side-by-side, Holmes and Watson lay there, gazing up at the clear night sky.

That particular evening, as if they had set up camp in the world's most magnificent planetarium, the stars lit up the black night sky. It looked like an angel had poked holes in the veil separating heaven and earth, allowing divine light to pierce the dark night below.

"Do you notice something my dear Watson?" Holmes questioned his friend.

"Yes, the stars are quite prominent this evening."

"No, no. It's right before you're eyes. Look carefully."

"Oh, yes. The big dipper is right above us."

"For Pete's sake," Holmes exclaimed.

"It's elementary, Watson. Someone stole our tent!"

The conventional wisdom accepted uncritically by economists, politicians and pundits alike is a bit like Watson's cosmic cataracts. They point to THE global economy, as if there is only one - or rather, the only one worthy of our attention.

However, those who attended the 3rd International Time Banking Congress in Toronto on the last weekend of August know better. In addition to the dominant global capitalist economy, there is another emerging economic order, global in scope and universal in its appeal.

It's a "time banking" economy that uses "time dollars" as its currency and is based on the reality of human interdependence, rather than the myth of rugged individualism that barely holds together the so-called free-market order.

The simplicity of time banking

The time banking concept is elementary, really. In fact, it is so much easier to grasp than the abstractions espoused by the economic "experts" that, like Watson, those who are distracted by the stars of moneyed wealth might miss the fact that the tent of natural, living, human community has been stolen.

Valued exchange in "time banking" is measured in "time dollars," which are a tax-exempt form of money that anyone can access with their time, energy and special (not necessarily "specialized") skills, such as lawn mowing, babysitting or woodworking.

The exchange rate: One hour of service provided to another time bank member, or to the community at large, earns one "time dollar." So, a "time dollar exchange" is formed whenever "time dollars" are earned and spent.

At the 3rd International Time Banking Congress, held on the idyllic grounds of the Kingsbridge Center just outside of Toronto from Aug. 27 to Aug. 29, a glimpse of how time banking is actually working in nine different countries outside of the United States, including Japan, Scotland, Spain and even the Northern Antilles, was on display.

Edgar Cahn, who first dreamt the dream of time dollars in a Washington, D.C. hospital bed 25 years ago, welcomed the 125 congress representatives after dinner on Friday, Aug. 27.

"What was a dream is no longer just a dream. This is no longer one person's vision. It belongs to all peoples and all nations," he said on the eve of the 41st anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech.

"We want to change the world...but we don't always savor the moments of triumph - moments when human beings dare to assert hope."

He concluded his welcome with an insight into the very heart of time

banking: "We have what we need if we use what we have."

Throughout the weekend - in panel discussions, in workshops and over dining room tables - stories of human beings daring to assert hope using "what we have" were shared. And, like with any fruitful congressional gathering, there were intense cross-cultural discussions about the direction of the emerging time banking movement in its various expressions around the world.

The global 'time banking' economy

The first peek into the international time banking movement was provided by Martin Simon, co-founder of Time Bank UK. With the aid of an overhead slide projector, Simon gave a brief overview of a half-dozen time bank projects across the UK.

He outlined the workings of Time For Health, a local time dollar economy in which health care services are provided using time dollars. In fact, Time For Health has been so successful, Simon reported, that the UK's National Health Service has commissioned a study on how it works.

Simon also said that Time Bank UK has been coordinating other time banking initiatives, such as Time Between Generations in which youth, including juvenile offenders (or "no hopers" as they are called in English-speaking Europe) have formed a time banking community with the elderly, exchanging services using time dollars.

"Their self-confidence grew to no end," Simon said of the youth participants, many of whom struggle with issues of self-worth.

Time banks for child care and for food have also been established, he said, noting that the time banking movement, in addition to being studied by the National Health Service with regards to health care, 10 Downing Street is in the process of planning and co-sponsoring a series of seminars for politicians to become familiar with time banking.

In Wales, 20 time banking projects across Wales Valley are being partially funded by the European Union, as time banking leaders there are "looking to mainstream" with communities of mineworkers breaking down under the weight of "globalization." And as in England, time banking has caught the eye of government officials, earning Cahn an audience with the Wales National Assembly.

All told, in the UK there are 143 time banks up and running, exchanging over 200,000 hours of service involving over 5,000 time bank members.

In Spain, time banking took root among leaders at the forefront of the women's movement there. According to Elvira Mendez, who spoke at the Toronto gathering with the help of a translator, time banks in Barcelona were initially promoted by women's community organizations to "promote the conciliation of family and professional life" under the banner, "Compartir: Promoviendo El Reparto De Los Tiempos Entre Mujeres y Hombres," which translates "Sharing: Promoting the Equality of Time Among Men and Women.

"We only exchange services and not material goods," Mendez said. Time dollars, she added, are "instruments for reconciling family and work. We use time banks for community building. It's a bank of dreams."

On the other side of the globe, time banking has taken root in Japan on the tiny island community of Seizken. Masko Kubota spoke about her introduction to time banking when Time Bank USA Director of Outreach and Technical Assistance Ana Miyares visited Japan in 1991 at the invitation of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation.

"I was so interested I came to the U.S. to learn about time dollars and to meet Edgar (Cahn)," Kubota said. Kubota came to the U.S. in 1994. Five years later she set up a time bank on Seizken Island with just 12 members.

Today, the Seizken Time Bank counts 72 members, exchanging everything from wake-up calls to an intergenerational project in which the community elders tutor the young in history and other school subjects.

"The life stories (of the elders) were compiled in a book and gave to the elders as a gift," she said, noting also that she's translated and helped distribute Cahn's book "No More Throw Away People" into Japanese.

Also to Kubota's credit, she created a time dollar board game designed to help people steeped in market morality, acknowledging "it's difficult to ask for help" - reciprocity being one of the four "core values" of time banking.

Neighbor-to-neighbor vs. 'co-production'

Though time banking is practiced differently in different parts of the world, all time bank participants adhere to the four "core values" - assets, redefining work, reciprocity and social capital.

In time banking, assets are defined by a simple acknowledgement that everyone has something within themselves to offer, whether it's house cleaning or the gift of making people laugh.

Redefining work means that, in contrast to a market-based understanding, building community is real work.

Reciprocity is perhaps the most important of the core values because in time banking those who receive help earn it by giving something more than gratitude in return.

The fourth and final core value is social capital, which is the immeasurable wealth built by tying people into networks of social cooperation.

These core values are present wherever time banks operate but that doesn't mean all time banks are organized in the same fashion.

Some time banks are simply "neighbor-to-neighbor" while others engage in "co-production."

Neighbor-to-neighbor is essentially self-explanatory, working as it does outside of official institutions. Co-production is the marriage of time banking with established social service organizations or programs.

In one workshop, Edgar Cahn illustrated the importance of co-production by recalling how Legal Services for the poor was gutted by goverment budgetary cuts. When Cahn realized other government funded social service organizations suffered the same fate, he began to ask why.

His conclusion was that social service clients didn't organize and pressure legislators and other community leaders to leave these vital services intact.

Cahn attributes that to the fact that most social service workers didn't have a true communal relationship with their clients.

"As a lawyer, if you came into my office I would ask how I can help you. We never asked how you can help me too. We didn't consider that these people have something to offer. What if we said: 'I can help you with your legal problems in exchange for you walking my dog or something like that'?"

That line of thinking led Cahn to the idea of co-production, weaving time banking principles into the very fabric of established agencies and institutions with specific missions, such as the criminal justice system.

The Time Dollar Youth Court in Washington, D.C. is an example. The Youth Court, which is composed of former juvenile offenders serving as jurors for their first-time offending peers, can earn time dollars doing various community service projects.

"There's a qualitative difference between neighbor-to-neighbor alone and co-production, where time banking works along with informal support networks," Cahn said.

The anthropological evidence

Perhaps the most intellectually interesting presentation of the weekend was delivered by anthropologist Polly Weissner, on Sunday, Aug. 29.

Weissner, who has studied reciprocity among tribes in South Africa and New Guinea for over 30 years, said time banking principles are affirmed and corroborated by anthropological study.

She said there are certain criteria anthropologists use to determine "biological behavior," among them being: Is the behavior universal and does it manifest itself in children at the same age in all cultures?

The anthropological evidence, she said, refutes the assumptions of classical and neo-classical economics, namely that human motivation boils down to maximizing monetary acquisitions.

"There is scientific evidence that there is a neuro basis for social cooperation" and when there is a breakdown in systems of non-market reciprocity, aggression naturally follows."

She also emphasized that because time banking is not a charity program but a non-market system that relies on reciprocity, it does not inflict "charity wounds" on those who participate.

To illustrate her point, Weisnner pointed to the American rebuilding of Europe after World War II. Because that act of charity didn't involve any reciprocity it has injected a false sense of superiority into the American popular consciousness. Also, she said, conventional development programs offered by western economic institutions like the World Bank and the IMF tend to stress the importance of economic capital at the expense of social capital, which fosters an unhealthy dependent relationship between the aid provider and the recipient.

In her studied view, Weissner added, time banking is not only crucial for peaceful human societies; it is also vital in terms of environmental health of the planet, given the ecological destruction wrought in the wake of market-driven forces.

Furthermore, "satisfaction from human relationships" - which time banking fosters - "reduces the desire for material things, she said, providing both an indictment and insight into the environment-destroying a culture of conspicuous consumption.

The appeal of time banking

Though the Time Bank Congress was a weekend with hours of panel dicussions and workshops, it didn't completely sap the energy of the participants, which was evident by the conversations outside of the workshops - over dinner and even into the wee hours at the conference center bar.

Wisconsin invesment advisor Robert Wynn said he came to the congress to see if he could learn how to combine time banking principles with the work he's involved with back home, mentoring black youth in building capital.

"There's a lot of potential here. I'm going to bring some this back home with me," he said at lunch on the final day of the congress.

If this all sounds like a love-fest to make people feel good about each other - something that people in the "real world" wouldn't bother to give much credence, that would be mistaken, as time banking has drawn the financial interest of people like Mark McDonough and Richard Rockefeller - two time bank funders who've had great fortune in the market economy.

McDonough, an MIT Sloan School of Business graduate who sold database interfaces to the world's largest supplier of microcomputer databases and the acting CEO for Time Banks USA, was one of three panelists who spoke about funding time bank projects.

Considering time banking froma philanthropical businessman's point of view, McDonough said it was "universal, efficient and effective. It gives you the most bang for the buck."

"For every one dollar of value you put in you get $6 of value out," he added.

Richard Rockefeller, another time bank funder with deep pockets, said he "bought into this because of the idea of social capital" and the realization that economic growth, as it is currently conceived, destroys social capital.

He said an article written by Jonathan Rowe about the misleading nature of America's primary measurement of economic health - the Gross Domestic Product - caught his attention.

"It's a faulty measure," Rockefeller said, referring to the GDP's inclusion of social ills like the cost of environmental clean-up as something that helps fuel economic growth.

"Yet we are making social policy based on it," he said. "Cash economies cannibalize society. I find that argument very convincing...So I feel very fortunate to hitch my wagon to the time banking movement."

Time banking, Rockefeller added, helps us see the limits of a cash economy.

Limits of cash economies and the rise of â€˜grass roots globalism'

The limits of a cash economy were laid bare later that evening when Dr.

Hazel Henderson took the podium.

Henderson, an evolutionary economist, internationally syndicated columnist and author of "Beyond Globalization" among others, offered a sobering analysis of globalization in its present crisis and an upbeat assessment of an emerging "attention economy" - "the rise of grass roots globalism."

"Money has no value but we are controlled by it," she said, agreeing with billionaire financier George Soros that a global "financial meltdown" is possible, even likely, contrary to popular economic assumptions. And that's precisely why time banking and economies that deal in local currencies are so vital, particurlarly at this historical moment, she said.

The discussion following Henderson's remarks sparked an underlying concern raised the previous day by Calvin Pearce, a time banking phenom from Chicago who has been at the forefront of a city-wide tutoring program using time dollars that spans 45 schools and has delivered 4,075 refurbished computers to Chicago students.

Pearce asked: what about jobs for those involved with time banking organizations but who are also living in dire economic conditions?

After Henderson's presentation, Pearce once again challenged this year's theme of "Time To Unite," telling the story of a time bank member who had earned 300 time dollars in Chicago but was without a car, nearly destitute, and coping with news that his wife was terminally ill. Pearce wanted to know how those time dollars would help in that situation.

The challenges ahead

Embedded in Pearce's concern is the question: how can the time banking movement be even more responsive to the immediate needs of communities of color in particular, and to poverty-scarred communities, in general.

It's a challenge that Time Banking creator Edgar Cahn is ready to confront, having left the three-day gathering with a notion to establish a working group to look more carefully at possible shortcomings and/or perception gaps that may exist in communities of color suspicious of movements that don't offer empowerment.

Having served communities of color for over three decades, perhaps most notably in his role in establishing the Time Dollar Youth Court in Washington, D.C., Cahn has seen first hand how time time banking has empowered African-Americans struggling to make ends meet.

But, he said, he would like to see time bank leaders more aware and proactive on issues pertaining to where race, class and time banking intersect.

In the end, he said, time banking is a universal concept that transcends race, class and gender divisions as long as we remember "we have what we need, if we use what we have."

New York Times Article on Time Banking

Time to Join Cape Cod Citizens Committee for Economic Recovery

2009-03-31T08:02:00.004-04:00

Cape Cod Time Banking - Do Me A Favor ?

A Time Bank is a software run network that allows members to exchange services. Members place offers for things they enjoy or don't mind doing, such as cooking, gardening, or tutoring on the 'marketplace'. Then, when a member needs something, they first look at offers and then either respond to an offer to check availability, or create a request if none exists. When an exchange is completed, the member who gave the help debits the appropriate amount of Time Dollars from the recipients account. One hour always equals one Time Dollar. Every member starts with two Time Dollars.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=61716860126

http://capecodtimebank.blogspot.com/

In economics, a time-based currency is an alternative currency where the unit of exchange is the person-hour.

Time-based currencies value everyone’s contributions equally. One hour equals one service credit. In these systems, one person volunteers to work for an hour for another person; thus, they are credited with one hour, which they can redeem for an hour of service from another volunteer. With dentists getting the same as dog-walkers, there are few dentists.

Main article: Time Banking

Time Dollars are created via mutual credit: Each transaction is recorded as a corresponding credit and debit in the accounts of the participants. In a Time Dollars system, or Time Bank, each participant's time is valued equally, whether he/she is a novice or an extensively trained expert. Time Dollars thus recognize and encourage reciprocal community service, resist inflation without encouraging hoarding, and are in sufficient supply, which enables trade and cooperation among participants. More importantly, the Time Bank is a tool for reweaving the very fabric of community. The tool has proven to be extremely flexible, working equally well across ethnic, socioeconomic, religious or racial groups. It has been implemented in a wide variety of settings - rural Appalachia, urban St. Louis, in Youth Court, and in retirement communities, to name a few.

Time banks

Edgar Cahn came up with Time Dollars as "a new currency to provide a solution to massive cuts in government spending on social welfare. If there was not going to be enough of the old money to fix all the problems facing our country and our society", Edgar reasoned, "why not make a new kind of money to pay people for what needs to be done? Time Dollars value everyone’s contributions equally. One hour equals one service credit."^{[citation needed]} Cahn wrote two books, Our Brother’s Keeper and No More Throw-Away People.

The largest and most active Time Bank in the United States is the Portland Time Bank in Maine, offering startup training and comprehensive offline/online time bank management software. In the United Kingdom the plans are called timebanking, time banks and hour banks. There are reported to be 75 plans running in the UK, with 30 operating in Greater London. They are promoted as a tool in community regeneration.

In Spain a new time bank community, Kroonos, combines the latest internet social networking tools with an Exchange Trading System. With an international perspective and users in Spanish-speaking countries it also enables non-local exchanges facilitated by on-line technology.

The Next Story

2009-03-24T15:35:00.001-04:00

A Second 9/11 in Slow Motion With a Whimper, Not a Bang! the Old Neighborhood Empties

By Tom Engelhardt

A block from my apartment, on a still largely mom-and-pop, relatively low-slung stretch of Broadway, two spanking new apartment towers rose just as the good times were ending for New York. As I pass the tower on the west side of Broadway each morning, one of its massive ground-floor windows displays the same eternal message in white letters against a bright red background: "Locate yourself at the center of the fastest expanding portion of the affluent Upper West Side."

Successive windows assure any potential renter that this retail space (10,586 square feet available! 110 feet of frontage! 30 foot ceilings! Multiple configurations possible!) is conveniently located only "steps from the 96th Street subway station, servicing 11 million riders annually."

Here's the catch, though: That building was completed as 2007 ended and yet, were you to peer through a window into the gloom beyond, you would make out only a cavernous space of concrete, pillars, and pipes. All those "square feet" and not the slightest evidence that any business is moving in any time soon. Across Broadway, the same thing is true of the other tower.

That once hopeful paean to an "expanding" and "affluent" neighborhood now seems like a notice from a lost era. Those signs, already oddly forlorn only months after our world began its full-scale economic meltdown, now seem like messages in a bottle floating in from BC: Before the Collapse.

And it's not just new buildings having problems either, judging by the increasing number of metal grills and shutters over storefronts in mid-day, all that brown butcher paper covering the insides of windows, or those omnipresent "for rent" and "for lease" signs hawking "retail space" with the names, phone numbers, and websites of real estate agents.

I hadn't paid much attention to any of this until, running late one drizzly evening about a month ago, and needing a piece of meat for dinner, I decided to stop at Oppenheimer's, a butcher shop only three blocks from home. I had shopped there regularly until a new owner came in some years ago, and then the habit slowly died. The store still had its awning ("Oppenheimer, Established 1964, Prime Meats & Seafood") and the same proud boast of "Steaks and Chops Cut to Order, Oven-ready roasts, Fresh-ground meats, Seasonal favorites," but you couldn't miss the "retail space available" sign in the window and, when I put my face to the glass, the shop's insides had been gutted.

Taken aback, I made my way home and said to my wife, "Did you know that Oppenheimer's closed down?" She replied matter-of-factly, "That was months ago."

Okay, that's me, not likely to win an award for awareness of my surroundings. Still, I soon found myself, notebook in hand, walking the neighborhood and looking. Really looking. Now, understand, in New York City, there's nothing strange about small businesses going down, or buildings going up. It's a city that, since birth, has regularly cannibalized itself.

What's strange in my experience -- a New Yorker born and bred -- is when storefronts, once emptied, aren't quickly repopulated.

Broadway in daylight now seems increasingly like an archeological dig in the making. Those storefronts with their fading decals ("Zagat rated") and their old signs look, for all the world, like teeth knocked out of a mouth. In a city in which a section of Broadway was once known as the Great White Way for its profligate use of electricity, and everything normally is aglow at any hour, these dead commercial spaces feel like so many tiny black holes. Get on the wrong set of streets -- Broadway's hardly the worst -- and New York can easily seem like a creeping vision of Hell, not as fire but as darkness slowly snuffing out the blaze of life.

A Stroll in the Neighborhood

Let me take you, then, on a little tour of the new face of my neighborhood. Along the ten blocks closest to my home, the banks (with one exception), the fast food restaurants (Subway, Dunkin' Donuts, Blimpie), and above all the chain drugstores that crowd onto successive blocks (Rite Aid, Walgreens, Duane Reade) still stand. It's the small places that seem to be dropping like flies.

So here we go up those subway steps at 96th where a branch of WaMu (Washington Mutual Bank, placed in receivership by the FDIC in September 2008 and quickly sold to JP Morgan) stands empty. Now, start walking up the east side of Broadway, past Citibank on 96th and the Bank of America at the corner of 97th, until you come to little Alpine Sound Electronics, or the shell of it anyway, where I used to buy my cheap, waterproof watches for my daily swim at the Y. Now it's gone, though an emphatic "sale, sale, sale, sale, sale" sign over the door is a reminder of its final moments.

Take another sec and check out the other side of the street, where at mid-block a canopy advertising "Moroccan & Indian Home Decoratives, Aromatherapy, Exotic Gifts" still stands, but with a "Store for Rent" sign in the window and a desolate interior -- a couple of ratty shelves, a single chair, a half-filled black garbage bag, and a broom. Right beside it is (or was) a tiny children's clothing store. Its striped awning now sports a gaping hole in its center as if it had been hit by a missile, though its window still says, "Made in New York City" enjoyed worldwide!" Not so much today.

But let's not tarry. Keep going past 98th, by that butchered butcher shop, but do note, next to it, another vacancy, the shell that housed a small wine bar and restaurant, Vinacciolo, that came and went. Only two long, bare, narrow tables remain on a floor scattered with trash.

Now, we're almost at 100th, passing those two towers with their unrented frontages and, on the east side of the street, the classic facade of the old Metro movie house, closed to build one tower, and still empty. The cracked glass of the ticket teller's booth backed by plywood gives the neighborhood that distinctive Last Picture Show feel.

Just above 100th on the west side of Broadway is the store once occupied by Sterling Optical. They moved more than two years ago (I followed them faithfully) and the metal security grill has remained in place ever since. Ditto the storefront next to it, empty but for a little hand-lettered sign on the door, "Fedex Please Knock Hard" -- it better be mighty hard! -- and a tiny "Zagat Rated 2006 Shopping Guide" decal on the window.

Well, you get the idea, if you haven't already experienced the equivalent wherever you live. At 101st, A & S Art/Framing ("custom framing and mirrors"), a sliver of a store, has closed up shop. Between 102nd and 103rd, Planet Kids is emptying out. ("After 18 years we are closing on March 31st...") On 103rd, the Royal Kabab & Curry restaurant has, like the optician, moved on to lower-rent digs without being replaced; and, on 105th, Tokyo Pop, a Japanese restaurant, all of whose wait staff mysteriously spoke English with French accents, has also disappeared, though its papered-over windows uniquely promise a "Pizzabar" in the Spring. (I'm not holding my breath.)

Actually, if you head in just about any direction, the toll is apparent. Go south on Broadway from 96th, for instance, and you pass the same proliferating patches of emptiness. At 93rd, the tiny storefront of the all-detective bookstore Murder Ink, which closed on the last day of 2006 (about the moment when this deepening recession officially began) remains unoccupied.

Further south, there are slaughtered neighborhood restaurants galore. Not surprisingly, even in food-mad New York, people are eating out less and our streets, except perhaps on a Saturday night, seem visibly less populated. Near the corner of 91st, Mary Ann's, a festive Tex-Mex spot, bit the dust; just before 90th, the upscale seafood restaurant Docks Oyster Bar shut its doors so recently that its red "restaurant" sign is still lit ("Docks thanks you all for your loyal patronage over the years but this restaurant is now closed!"); at the corner of 88th, in the spacious two-floor space that used to house Boulevard (on whose paper tablecloths my kids and I drew faces with restaurant-provided crayons), and then a dizzying succession of restaurants whose names escape me, the bar chairs are carefully stored upside down on the bar and a "For Rent" sign is in the window; and, on 77th, Ruby Foo's, a giant pan-Asian joint, described by Zagat's as "Disneyfied," has shut, too.

Only below 72nd street, where the neighborhood gets noticeably tonier, and the banks (TD, HSBC, Capital One, Chase, Bank of America) begin to breed and multiply, and the urban mall stores (Pottery Barn, Barnes & Noble, The Gap, Bed Bath & Beyond) proliferate, do the deaths end (except for a Circuit City branch at the corner of 67th that went down with that bankrupt chain).

Here, stores are still clean, well-lighted places, though a remarkable number of them sport signs that say: "save up to 50%," "up to 70% off!"

9/11, The Sequel

Let's not exaggerate. New York City is not downtown Elkhart, Indiana -- not yet anyway (although the other night on Amsterdam Avenue, just east of Broadway, I noted a block of 12 tiny storefronts, nine of which had been emptied). Yes, rents on avenues like Broadway remain sky-high and, these days, getting a bank loan if you're a small start-up is bloody murder, and the city's zoos are losing their state funding, the hospitals are getting rid of staff, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is having layoffs, the unemployment rate is rising fast, property values are sinking, mass transit riders are facing fare increases as well as major service cuts, and the Greater New York Orchid Society has canceled its annual show. Nonetheless, this global financial capital is still surfing the final modest wavelets of the tsunami of money that flowed through its veins in the good times (some of which continues to head "our" way, thanks to government bailout plans).

Still, as you walk past those patches of darkness, a thought almost can't help but form. For the last seven years, we've been waiting for 9/11, The Sequel, to arrive from Afghanistan or some similar place. The media has regularly featured fantasy scenarios in which Islamic terrorists sneak atomic bombs or "dirty bombs" into cities like New York and set them off. ABC's Charles Gibson even highlighted such a possibility in a Democratic presidential debate. ("I want to go to another question... The next president of the United States may have to deal with a nuclear attack on an American city. I've read a lot about this in recent days. The best nuclear experts in the world say there's a 30 percent chance in the next 10 years...") And the Bush administration claimed as one of its great accomplishments the prevention of a repeat of 9/11.

And yet, in a sense, as on September 11, 2001, maybe we were just looking the wrong way. After all, you might say that an economic dirty bomb did go off in downtown New York and this city (not to say, the nation and the world) has been experiencing a second 9/11 ever since, even if in slow motion.

In my neighborhood, back in those fateful September days in 2001, you could hear the sirens, see the jets streak overhead, catch the acrid smell of the towers and everything chemical in them burning, and like the rest of America, watch those apocalyptic-looking scenes of the towers collapsing in clouds of ash and smoke again and again. But if the look then was apocalyptic, the damage, however grim, was limited.

This time around there's no dust, no ash, no acrid smell, no sirens, no jets, and no brave rescuers either. And yet the effect might, sooner or later, be far more apocalyptic and the lives swallowed up far greater. This time, of course, the fanatical extremists were homegrown. Their "caves" were on Wall Street. They hijacked our economy and did their level best to take down our world.

And they may have come closer than most of us imagine. Alpine Sound and Oppenheimer, Tokyo Pop and Planet Kids, Docks and Ruby Foo's have all gone down (and more are surely headed that way). For the people who owned, or ran, or worked in them, unlike the survivors of the original 9/11, there will be no moving bios in the local papers, no talk of compensation, and no majestic memorials to argue about.

For the perpetrators, who have, at worst, gone home pocketing their millions, there will be no retribution. No invasions will be launched, no missiles shot into homes or hideouts. None of them will be pursued to their lairs, or kidnapped off the streets of New York, or from their palatial mansions, or apartments, or estates. None will be spirited to foreign lands to be imprisoned and tortured. None will be labeled "enemy combatants."

Quite the opposite, in 9/11, The Sequel, the U.S. government is willing to pay many of them and their institutions in the multi-billions for their time and further efforts.

In the second 9/11, all the pain and torture is in the neighborhood.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.