How Do You Eat an Elephant?

One piece at a time.

I never liked that old chestnut, the idea of eating an elephant is repugnant, but it is instructive. Tackling a large task successfully inevitably means chopping it up into bite-sized pieces. No matter how large the goal, it can always be achieved through a succession of smaller actions

After viewing the Crash Course last year, and reading the SANZ document Strong Sustainability for New Zealand, I was motivated to focus my energy on promoting strong sustainability on Waiheke Island where I live. But where to start?

What is the first, most important task in creating a resilient comunity? Such a large question and for each person a different answer, which leads to groups pursuing different aspects of transitioning, from transportation to food security.

When I asked myself the question, the answer that came to me is that for me the most important task is to get the largest, broadest cross-section of my local population on the same page, which requires some basic education. I was most immediately concerned about economic issues and having already taken the FI course in the past I approached Waiheke Budgeting Services to see if there would be value in offering the course here.

They have been very supportive and have contribued seed funding to allow the course to go ahead, as well as their knowledge and experience having been at the front lines of this crisis as it has developed over many decades.

Financial Integrity, Intelligence and Independence- 8-week course at Waiheke Comunity Education Centre,  starting 3 August (Tuesday evening 7-8:30pm). Giving practical tools to get a handle on personal finances with an eye toward strengthening communities. $35 including couarse materials. Call 372 6417 to register

http://www.financialintegrity.org/index.php?title=The_Nine_Steps

Through starting this financial literacy project I also became more in touch with what is happening on the island. We have a rising rate of middle class, 2-income-earning families who are finding it increasingly difficult to keep their heads above water financially. This amounts to a debit on our community. The anxiety and exhaustion from working leaves people with little energy for community initiatives and little empowerment to meet the extraordinary changes we are facing.

There is also a rise in families on the island being affected by white collar layoffs. During the vineyard harvest season I picked grapes with more than one former corporate employee who had been laid off- losing the corporate credit card, the company car and other benefits in addition to losing their job.These people did not just lose income, they lost some sense of their self-worth and their sense of 'making the grade' in our Winners Only society.

The rising New Zealand forclosure rate is a silent epidemic, and that silence benefits coporate and banking interests greatly. The responsibility for foreclosures has been laid on the individual homeowner without looking deeply into the true causes. An (outrageously) artificially inflated housing market caused many people to take on loans which were over their heads just to have a roof over their heads. Media framed the event as young first time home buyers being priced out of the market without recognizing that the ages affected ranged across the board, and that those who could take out mortgages might be the worse off.

We are accustomed to telling the story that mortgage foreclosures happen to the financially dissolute and the disadvantaged, those not able to take full advantage of New Zealand's abundant employment opportunities. The myth is that anyone not able to buy houses and afford vacations, the latest gadgets, clothes and everything else is somehow not capable in their lives. The pravailing attitude- 'the market is fine, so there must be something wrong with the individuals who are struggling'.

This allows the banks and related organizations to come down hard on the very people they fleeced to begin with. The average homewoner, not realizing this, feels a sense of personal failure at not measuring up to the standard and feels themselves culpable for their inability to honor the (outrageous) financial obligation. Sold on the idea that their home was a path to security, they are now facing an unforgiving foreclosure system that will prey on the uninformed and portray them as bludgers if they can't make the scratch.

As a community, we will either allow this business as usual practice, resulting in more people moving off the island, or we will regard every individual on the island as a resource we can't afford to lose and fight to keep them in their houses. The question comes down to a moral one- you can skirt the issue a long way, but in the end it will have to be answered- is access to decent housing a right or a privilege?

Housing has been billed as a privilege, and the flip side to that is that if you can't afford it you can't have a home. The homeless rate in the USA is astronomical and has been steadily building for decades- because it is portrayed as the individual's fault, not the fault of a flawed economic system. Will New Zealand step into the selfsame pothole, even though it has been clearly marked as such by the other countries who are already deeply mired in it?

The movies by Kiwi filmaker Alistair Barry, 'In A Land of Plenty' and 'Someone Else's Country' show the beginnings of the current crisis. Turning New Zealand's caring community into a self-seeking consumer society has been engineered,  along the way framing the people who end up needing help as 'dole bludgers'. It was originally a hard sell as New Zealanders were proud of their ability to care for everyone in the country regardless of circumstances. It took awhile to turn public opinion against those hardest hit by economic hardship. They have been largely successful. Today people are afraid of not being able to keep up with the Jones's, because it is seen as failing at life. And we are all aware that there is little sympathy for those who struggle and fall behind.