In closely knit communities, people care about each other and help each other, too. But healthy “social fabrics,” as the expression goes, can tear. Inequality can tear them. The wider the income gaps between us, the less we share in common, the less we care about those around us.
Over time, in a deeply unequal society, we come to feel almost totally on our own — and unprotected. Our society becomes a place where people don’t help each. They fear each other.
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But small bands of other Americans weren’t wondering and worrying. They were busily building an infrastructure for an alternate future. The building block for this infrastructure: the “Common Security Club.”
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Local Common Security Clubs have already started up in over four dozen communities. The clubs typically bring from 15 to 20 people together for face-to-face sessions where they can grapple with their personal financial stresses, learn more about why our economy isn't working, and explore what people can do, through mutual aid and shared action, to increase our economic security.
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What are the clubs doing? Their efforts vary.
In the spirit of mutual aid, clubs are helping people deal with immediate personal crises — like foreclosures. They're also raising issues around long-term family financial planning, through a club network partnership with Vicki Robin and Monique Tilford, co-authors of Your Money or Your Life, a widely respected program that helps people rethink how they relate to money matters.
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We can’t ignore,” says Zaleska, “how larger economic policy failures wrecked the economy — and the need for ordinary citizens to weigh in on the direction of future economic policy.”
Local Common Security Clubs are starting to do that weighing in. They’re campaigning, for instance, to beat back the Wall Street blitz against the proposed national Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009104111/mending-americas-torn-social-fabricAt least somebody is doing something. Hope these keep growing into a huge network. Can't really rely on anybody but ourselves.
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