Dave Beckwith:

So, the first question is what do you do and how did you come to this?

Len Usiskin:

Well, I guess I, my title is, I manage Community First Development Corporation, which is a nonprofit, community economic development organization, and we’re serving the five core neighborhoods in Saskatoon. And we’re operating a broad base, a, grassroots driven, community economic development organization. And so a lot of that, I mean we do, just quickly, really we do work on affordable housing, and we transgenerate and spin off as much economic benefits out of a housing strategy in terms of training employment and stabilizing neighborhoods and all the rest of that. And then we also provide we have a whole mandate to provide jobs and employment and training, generally. We also help people start small businesses or coops or community enterprises and so we have a whole training program that goes on around that. And we operate a few micro-loan plans for start up capital. And then we’re also helping spin off a few other organizations like the Community First Foundation, which is going to be a major community economic development-financing arm. And there’s sort of a, for low income communities there’s always an equity gap, for even, so even if you can access loan capital, the initial equity is never in position. So, Community First Foundation is being set up to sort of overcome some of those gaps. And then, we’re also setting up a Saskatoon Housing Initiative Partnership which is sort of trying to bring some of the financial institutions to the table and evaluate, sort of facilitate the development of more housing in the city here, affordable housing. And, overcome some of the gaps and the barriers that are in that area. and then there’s another piece of organization that’s sort of part of the city, what I call setting up the infrastructure for local communities economic development. I’m working with this group in the Community University Institute for Social Research. And part of that is just sort of the academic or the research support for a lot of this work. And one of the areas off that that works on is community economic development and I think one of the first areas that they’re looking at is how do we change how we measure the success or impact of CED programs and, for those, a lot of that is going on all over the place, general process indicators as opposed to just traditional economics indicators, right.

Outcome.

You know, start looking at wealth and income of institutions and quality of life as opposed to just dollars and cents. So, that’s generally, really in a nutshell that’s what’s going on. I mean my focus is on, looking at this marginalized community within Saskatoon and sort of creating locally controlled economic development. I guess I see that how I came here is I see this as I am doing CED as the response to what’s going on in a larger economic economy, and I see the larger economy is one where we’re moving towards more global market integration and a lack of community control over their own destinies, right? And, it all being, what happens in communities coming through by external forces and larger global external forces. I think one of the ways we can start taking, is to build a, more independent, not globally controlled economies as a response to that. People taking back ownership and control of their communities. And not being held at the whim or the mercy of the international finance market etc., etc., right? And what is the response, obviously there’s a political, and we need to be challenging things, you know, IMF and the world trade organization and and multi-lateral agreements. But at the same time we need to start to work up power, and create economic literacy and skills in marginalized communities and start actually taking control back at the local level. So, I mean, I come to this work out of, you know, my background is with the trade union movement, and with community and political organizing. I’ve worked with international solidarity work and worked with on y0ou know, all the global issues, opposition to the global trade agreements, and worked with the Council of Canadians, at the local level here. I worked with a group that worked with, you know, in Canada we have the alternative budget. I don’t know if you’ve heard about them yet,

Yes.

So there’s groups, when I was in Winnipeg I was working with CHOICES, we were working on federal and provincial and municipal alternative government budgets. We’ve done one now here in Saskatchewan for about four years, a provincial alternative budget, so those are, you know, clearly seen as an alternative way that people have for building people centered economic solutions. I guess, I got here, how did I get here, well, when I was doing union organizing and really seeing the impact of free trade agreements that were going to have direct impact on the issues that we were working on in terms of protecting public services, and the rights of public employees and federal and public sector unions, and seeing how all this globalization of each sector into free markets globally, it was going to undermine a lot of our ability to do that. I went, I need to take a more systematic analysis of what’s driving this whole agenda, so I went back to University and studied economics.

Where was that?

At the University of Manitoba. And so sort of, more and more seeing that we need to get back to more locally controlled solutions here, and rebuild community. And so that’s how I got into this whole area. But I do it always in the context of the larger, how this fits into the larger analysis, right? So.

Say a little bit more if you would about the preparation for the work that you do. What sort of training or what kind of background do you think helped you to become ready to do what you do?

Well, I mean we always say community economic development, or here we say, it’s we’re working both as a balance of social and economic developments, right? I think you need to be really tuned into the social issues, but at the same time, you need to be in the economic realm. So I don’t know, I guess there’s a lot of people who work in one or the other, and it’s hard to, what is this thing that we’re doing, we’re sort of crossing both areas eh, and kind of trying to do both. But I think to me that’s it, I mean, I think my history as a political organizer and a social activist and then understanding of economics and sort of the really market theory. You know, I don’t know if I’m the best person for this job or not, but we’re doing stuff, and that’s what I think, that’s what was in the whole CED movement, that was the big question. This whole movement’s about, I know that there’s people talking about how do we professionalize this whole thing called a CED practitioner, right, and I’m really hesitant to go down that road, because I think first and foremost people have to come out of it with some kind of a commitment to some social social change, right? And if you start professionalizing and creating all this sort of professional associations, I think we’re just going to create a whole bunch of technocrats who don’t have the commitment to the social change side of what we’re doing. So I don’t know, am I answering?

Oh yah. Absolutely, I mean preparation has a bunch to do with what your passion is.

Yah. And I think that’s part of what makes us an effective organization; everybody who is working here virtually has a passion for the work that’s going on. It’s a great place to work because I’m working with folks here who all are really strong believers in the work and they all put in, I mean, I don’t think this is the kind of work that you expect to get remunerated for every hour of work you put in. It’s just, you work until you run out of, or until you need to go to sleep or you run out of time or whatever, until the job is done.

How big is the organization?

Well, it’s always changing a little bit, but, we have in the sort of the core project staff we have about a dozen people working here and then when we have, we always have people on in community training posts, renovating houses and learning, so there may be another ten, and that, … so that’s generally it.

You said that in the neighborhood development work, your goal is to be community driven and to build political literacy and economic literacy as you do development work. Say some more about how you do that and what works in that arena?

Our organization is governed by a board of directors, a volunteer board of directors. Three quarters of them are residents of the neighborhoods in which we work and then we were formed as a result of a partnership of the five community associations, representing five neighborhoods. So, it was very much a bottom up process of the five community associations coming together about a little over five years ago now. I mean, those organizations, the community associations are set up as sort of organizations within the city, and it was all about recreation. From about ten years ago they started looking at, you know, we can’t just be talking about recreation in our communities, because in order for us to talk about recreation we need to talk about other issues, right? You know, people need jobs and people need poverty issues, so they started talking about broader poverty alleviation issues in the core areas of Saskatoon. So they came together to form a big three day workshop about five years ago to talk about poverty alleviation and partnership between the five community associations. Out of that, and a whole community economic development that sort of meets that goal, and so they that’s where the decisions form a community economic development organization came out of. So we have now, each community organization has a designated spot on our board as well, so they appoint a rep to the board of directors.

How are the other grassroots represented?

The other at large are just elected at our annual general meeting and through the usual nomination and election process.

How many at the annual meetings?

Well, we had about 75 people at the last at our last one in June

How many people in those five areas?

The population of the five neighborhoods I think is around 16,000 or 17,000. I think we, there’s about 6,000 households in those five neighborhoods. And so, like I said, three quarters of our work is community building and then there is about three slots that we leave open so if we want to bring in anybody that we think can provide some help to the board or whatever. Then we have some advisors and basically it’s from different government departments and we do get some government core funding from the provincial government through a new program called the neighborhood development organization program. So they’re funding organizations in Saskatoon, Regina, and Prince Albert. And although QUINT is the oldest of those organizations, and I think the whole funding structure came about because of, QUINT was formed before the funding was in place, right?

Yah. And how did the funding come into play?

Well, it was just a few key people in government who helped form QUINT and sort of are really passionate about community economic development and the potential of it and rebuilding community. And they pushed, and happened to be in key positions within government, so they sort of pushed the agenda and a few people went out on a limb to sort of add little pieces of funding out of government here and there. I think that people were seeing that we were demonstrating that there was some potential here, some genuine progress going on and so they formalized it into a government program. Now, you know, core funding is hard to find these days, it’s all project based funding, so we’re really grateful for that, that’s really increased our capacity immensely. I mean, you know, there’s always a few problems with you know, core funding and governments trying to dictate about what should be the agenda and how we should function, but they, in fairness the policy has, it has left it very open. I think there’s been some very good thinking about what needs to, how can they facilitate this work but allow the communities to drive it, eh? And so it’s, I could give you a copy of that.

I’d be interested.

And if you, I could refer you to a couple of names in government, who did a lot of the ground breaking work and are still very much supportive in working in that. So, I guess, the question again,

How do you stay grassroots driven, what is the nature of the empowerment work that you do? How do you in your daily work make that a reality?

Yah. Well, I mean, we’re a nonprofit organization, I mean we run this, I try and run this place as democratically as possibility, so we run it as cooperatively and try to get as much input into decision making and then on the board we try to do as much training with our board of directors as we possibly can. We put out a newsletter 3 or 4 times a year. In there we always talk about, obviously the opportunities that Quint is providing but also, we try and put in there as much opportunity, I call it my economic literacy section in that newsletter. We just talk about issues you know, and explain, try and give people a broader economic and political context for the work we’re doing here. And again, you have to be trying to keep it so that it’s successful, and that’s always a challenge. Right now we’re doing an interesting project coming up, a partnership with the health district here and the Political Action Group on Poverty, which is an informal organization in the core area and the extension division in the university, and Quint is the other partner on it. I’ll give you a copy of this; this is our latest newsletter. Understanding your economy, creating people centered budgets and so, it came about with, one of the community development workers with the Saskatoon district of health is facilitating the Political Action Group On Poverty. I think there was a recognition especially for low-income women, who when it comes time to speak out on economic issues there seems to be a really disempowered community there on that front. And so she was saying, you know, if we could do some training to make economics not such a daunting issue, right? For people to sort of attack, so there’s going to be a series of nine workshops, to learn, I guess part of it will be, what’s involved in budgets and creating alternative budgets and why it’s done. But then even, workshops in, how to organize public forums and work effectively with the media and teams and public speaking and all around economic issues, eh? So then the extension division is sort of going to certify us a little bit. And so, it’ll be an interesting, it’s just going to start next month.

You’ve been talking about the extension of this, and the connection in public health. I’m interested in sort of who you see as your colleagues, who do you see as "us"? When you think about not just the people that work here, but who is in the enterprise together?

Well, I mean, obviously we work with the community itself very closely and there’s other non-governmental organizations that we see as partners that are very much parallel to us.

Examples?

Okay, well there’s the child hunger and education project; they’re just down the hall here. There’s a renter’s rights organization; there’s the political action group on poverty, the community development team of the health department. There’s the whole coop sector, it’s a really large sector in Saskatchewan, so we work a lot with, we have really good partnerships with some of the credit unions, they help us a lot and we’re building partnerships with the Saskatoon coop, they operate two grocery stores and lumber yards and gas stores in the city and just the larger coop community in the province here. Well, obviously, I guess we work with government, because it’s their responsibility to support this work and so various government departments. We’ve been working with schools a lot; we’re seeing a lot of issues we’re working on have a direct impact on the ability for them to teach the kids in their schools.

Both elementary and,

Elementary and high school. We’re even working in direct partnerships with some schools right now on issues on housing for young student mothers. So a couple of the schools are actually invited on, sitting on advisory boards around some of this stuff and taking a very active role in the whole housing question with us. So we’ve got a really diverse group of partnerships and it’s actually, you know, right now there seems to be just a general shift in thinking. It’s very much turning towards supporting this kind of work in the city and I guess even now, I mean, working on the Saskatoon housing issues and partnerships, and we’re even bringing a lot of the finance and investment community to the table around this whole issue of housing and the role it plays in building the quality of life in the city here, eh. And so, I mean, obviously they’re at a different level in understanding and applicable persuasion, but there seems to be, we’re finding some areas of commonality that we can work together on.

Do you have any leverage over them? In the States we have a community reinvestment act, which,

We’re trying, I mean that’s the whole,

We pretend it gives us a legal power, forcing them to cooperate with us, it doesn’t really.

But it seems to have leverage to reinvest into the community, right? No, I think right now it’s purely moral persuasion that we’ve and with just the big five banks it’s not much of that, either because there’s not much,

Not much moral suasion.

No, and there’s not much dollars moving around, eh? Yah. And I mean the federal government operates in the Western Economic Diversification, it’s sort of an arm of the federal government. And what they’re providing now is a 20% loan loss guarantee to the Saskatoon Credit Union so that makes them more comfortable, the credit union can free up over a million dollars over five years for micro loans, loans that they otherwise wouldn’t normally be able to make. The 20% loan loss guarantee fills their requirements under the credit union act or whatever you know, that they have to,

The equity requirement, Yah.

Yah. So there’s some of that going on, but you know, I mean it’s a good first step, see, and, sorry so that wasn’t the question,

Who are our partners, and

Yah. So we’re working with government and nonprofits, NGO sector, some of the schools, the coop sector, and even now in community first there’s one union that has become a member of that, and we would like to expand that,

Which union?

The Grain Services Union is a member of the community first foundation and has actually made, they were the first ones to come to the table out of all the partners within that, to make an investment into the social reinvestment fund. So, that’s really interesting. And they were the ones who greased the wheel so that the people at the credit union and the coops could would then, they then,

A comfort level, yah,

A comfort level, so it was like, it was good. And that you know, that partnership there with the green services it’s interesting because, well, Don was involved, Don Kossick and the only reason that the Grain Services Union felt that comfort to be part of this community first foundation was the partnership, the solidarity that had been built with them over years of organizing. We felt that they knew who was involved in community first and they knew that there was some solidarity there, right? And that this was a legitimate organization for them to be partnering up with.

That history, and some of the people in the community first, I think, I don’t think still appreciate or understand that…

Cause they haven’t been around that long.

You know, that’s 15-20 years of being around that they’ve been around, but they’ve been working in church communities or in other areas, but they need to understand, you know, that the reason that Grain Services came to be a part of this organization is because of the solidarity work that’s been going on with them and us in other capacities over this,

A long relationship

Yah, a long relationship. So I think that what I started saying is that I think we’re finding a great deal of support work in our community right now and I think we look to other Canadian cities and some U.S. cities and say, this is going to be the cost of not paying attention to issues in the core area. I guess that the other partner that I would list is the aboriginal community, because I think that it’s important to recognize that Saskatoon has a large Aboriginal population and the core communities

The five neighborhoods,

The five neighborhoods is an even larger percentage of the membership is aboriginal background and

And how is the relationship with the community structured? Are there organizations? Is that,

Well we do some work with the Saskatoon tribal council and we’re starting to do some work with the Metis communities, but they don’t have representative positions on our board of directors but you know, our board is even looking at how do we restructure our organization to build even more fundamental links with the community. And maybe there are different organizations that should be represented on our board of directors. So that’s the debate that’s going on right now. And we’re sort of at a point in this work where we’re sort of taking stock of what we’ve done over the last five years and trying to set up a strategic plan for the future, like where we want to be going. And it’s also, I mean, we’re kind of going oh, man, …

How did we get into this?!

Yah! So, It seems that we just sort of continue on, but I think it’s really critical to sort of to not just let inertia carry, but that we actually take some leadership on the whole thing.

What is it that really sustains you in the work, what keeps you getting up in the morning and coming to work here.

Well, I mean, here is a job where I can do, I think what is my passion. I mean, you can do a combination of what is a social and a political job, community organizing, and combine that and create a lot of really concrete opportunities for community residents through whatever, through housing, or through employment, or helping them set up their own enterprise or coop. And I think through that process, you know, just empowering, and mobilizing community, right? So it’s got all that, to me it’s just exciting every day. It’s sometimes overwhelming sometimes, and you feel swamped most of the time. And part of it is that yah, sometimes I think we’re just so busy that I’m afraid sometimes that maybe we’re not giving enough attention to detail but, but then again, that’s why I work with all these great people helping, and that’s what their jobs are to do. And it’s the people we work with too. I work with these people that are just passionate, and so coming to work here everyday is really, everybody what’s the word I’m thinking of, when, when somebody talks up the work that you’re doing, supports you in your beliefs and your work. I’ve worked in worse places in my life where if you work, your political and social orientation is not appreciated, it’s always an argument, right? So it’s great to work in a place where we’re all sort of thinking and we can all support one another in a common direction. And then this building is an incredible building because, it’s owned by the health district at St. Paul’s hospital, an old nurses residence but it’s not used anymore, there aren’t nurses training anymore. So they’ve opened it up, a vacant space, they’ve opened it up to community organizations, at really low costs and it’s become almost sort of a community unto ourselves here because there’s a lot of interesting community organizations based out of here, so it’s just a whole, a synergy happening in this building as well, you know.

Could you describe some of the other people that work here?

Well, there’s child hunger and education project are down the hall, and there’s the community development team of the health district one floor below, and there’s the Elizabeth Fry Society, there’s immigrant women of Saskatchewan, there’s the inter church uranium committee in the building, there’s equal justice for all, which is a welfare activist organization in Saskatoon. So you know, there’s just all of these organizations, you know, and there’s a lot of just you know people hopping up to our office, or we’ll pop down to their office just to, if there’s something going on, you know, we can share information. Once in a while we’ll just have a potluck where people can meet one another and tell each other what’s going on at their work. So it’s just a good environment to work in. And we’re situated right in the centrally, right in the heart of the neighborhood. SO it’s really accessible space for the community as well. I guess one of the things, you know, it could be physically laid out a little bit better, I’d like to set up a resource center for you know, just a place where people could come and do their own reading and work, and we just don’t have that space here, but, that’s a small price for,

Blow out a couple of walls!

Yah! Those are plans for a down the road. Yah.

Can you give me some examples of what it’s like when it really works? Just so that other organizers when they’re reading this can get a sense of what are the challenges and what are the successes in your work?

Well we’ve had, our housing work is a good example of a success, the problem we were trying to overcome was a really high proportion of rental housing verses home ownership in this area and all the destabilization that occurs with that situation.

We’re talking about wood frame houses,

And a lot of apartments, and yah. The single family dwellings that are, a lot of them could be subdivided into two or three or four

Two stories, three story,

Yah. And the people, the schools are telling us the high turnover rates among the kids because people were moving all the time, right? And so that part we’ve seen setting up home ownership coops. We’ve set up seven of those with ten families in each one, so with seventy families. And basically for the first five years it’s owned by the coop and then if they’re in good standing, then the coop will transfer the title over to the house, directly to the,

So it’s a coop ownership of houses?

Yah. And what we’re trying to do is create more stable home ownership opportunities, and affordable costs for families, and we seem to be doing that, and we seem to be doing that more affordably even than what they were paying on their rent. So, I mean, there is some government subsidies on that program, which help, obviously. A good evidence of that was that we had a social with all the coop members and Quint staff and, it could have been over 250 people with kids and anyways, it turned out to be about 100 people there from really diverse backgrounds and we just sort of had the sense that this is really, we’re starting to make an impact into the community here. So it was really rewarding just to see that, it hasn’t been that long, you know, it’s been three years work, eh? And I guess some of the struggles we face, you know, there are policy road blocks for low income people that the government has put up and we’re trying to say, look, you’re always talking about wanting to move people towards more self reliance and yet, there’s all these disincentives and actual physical road blocks that they create and policies, and we’re always struggling with that and banging our heads, right? But we are chipping away at it, too, and I think if I step back and take a bit of a longer-range approach we are making progress. So those are some of the struggles but also some of the successes that are going on.

Would you characterize yourself as hopeful?

Oh yah. I’m hopeful. And I would say we’re working in a political environment in Sask. that’s you know, we’re not, I don’t know if you know the Canadian political scene much, but we’re not in a political environment here like in Ontario, where there’s a really neoconservative government, or Alberta which is the same you know, even though we have a lot of issues with provincial policy there’s still a lot more room to maneuver there? Which helps us, you know. So we’re hopeful, but there’s a long way to go.

Yah.

And I don’t think we, if poverty alleviation is our ultimate goal and building a healthy social, improving the social and economic well being, we’re having, you know, sort of a long way to go. But we have made a lot of differences in a lot of people’s lives, and,

The nature of what this is all about is really a conversation among organizers; I’m trying to create opportunities to learn from one another’s work. Do you have questions for other people or about what other people are doing that you sort of want to add to the mix?

Well, I could think about that one, and if there’s a way that I could get that back to you. I think it’s, yah, let me think about that.

Sure.

Nothing is popping into my mind that I can,

Yah, yah. In sort of a characterization with firebrand activist, change agent, with picket signs on one end of the continuum and accountant on the other, where would you place yourself, and where do you want to be?

Well, I mean, I guess that’s the peculiar nature of economic development, we’re trying to do the very detailed work of, the financial work of the economic field, creating opportunities, community based opportunities, so we need the bean counters and we have a number of them working here. But we’re really fortunate that we have people with those technical skills, but also have that social understanding and commitment. I think we’re trying to combine that social activism with doing the sort of nitty-gritty, what you need to do to conduct business sort of, and so, we spend a lot of our time just sort of doing that technical work, but then, I make sure that there’s time there, and the board’s time there to do the community organizing work that needs to go on in conjunction with it. And I make sure even that the people that are involved even in the technical day to day that they have an opportunity to be part of that, too, so that they never lose sight of why they’re doing that work. Because you need to be empowered once in a while or energized, right? By seeing that, I don’t know how to answer that question, we’re trying to build a cross over between those two worlds, because, I think you know, we’re trying to build a new economy and we need to be combining all those elements into how that works.

And I don’t mean to value one or the other. I mean, a lot of my work, with the center for community change is just working with folks to make sure the business is done in a business like way, because that’s a political vulnerability. If the books don’t balance at the end of the year, you’re in trouble!

We go to really great pains to do really serious accountability, eh? And sometimes more then I care to, we have a debate about that, whether we should, but, no, my identity is totally at the other end, of, that’s where I come from, and even my family roots come out of that activism side of it.

What’s that about?

Well, my family is immigrants, from Russia and Ukraine and we came here, my grandparents, my grandfather on my father’s side came here to set up an agricultural commune in the early 1900’s.

Where, in Saskatchewan?

Yah, in northern Saskatchewan, and didn’t last that long. And then he moved to Winnipeg. And on my mom’s side, my grandfather was a union organizer who was active in the, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Winnipeg general strike of 1919, but he was active in the sheet metal workers, and my mom was a, my mom has been very much an activist throughout her life, so you know, I guess I come by my work honestly. So,

Well, and that’s sort of just the environment that I grew up in, and that’s sort of part of who I am. I come from that, my background is organizing, and human rights, and environment, and unions, trade union sector and then sort of an evolution of wanting to get more understanding of what were the driving forces here and a much deeper analysis of what it was that was driving this whole agenda and then moving on to… I mean aside from let’s say, advocating for a socialist state, what are some real doable alternatives that we can work on here, and that’s how I moved into the community economic development field, eh. Hopefully to create some democratic community economic development.

What do you think it’s going to take to advance community organizing? You know, what are the obstacles, or what are the big opportunities, or, or what?

Advance community organizing, hmm. Well, I’m really encouraged about, I don’t know if I have an answer for that, but what I am encouraged about is when I see what is going on in Seattle, the battle in Seattle and all the demonstrations going on about the free trade agreements, and the number of young people that seem to be heading it up, I don’t know how to, I’m trying to still, I mean, I’m glad of it, I just don’t know how to analyze it or why that’s coming about. I guess it’s the sense of the lack of control that people are feeling over their own destinies and that it’s all being taken away, you know, undermining our own democratic institutions and systems. I’ve been in the past doing some work with the Council of Canadians, I don’t know if you know about that organization, which is a grassroots organization, I think they’ve got, I forget how many members, but I think 100,000 members and a really strong political force in this country to be reckoned with. So I see those kinds of organizations as being really critical. I think I‘d like to see the credit union movement play a stronger role in tackling some of those larger questions. Those are big questions about how do we move forward the agenda and how do we create more organizers. I guess my only observation is that I’m really encouraged, it seems to me that the tide seems to be turning in terms of young people taking a real radical response to a lot of this global market agenda.

I think that is very exciting.

Yah.

And I think we’re creating, we’re seeing a whole generation of veterans being created. Were you there, do you remember, here’s where you learned the hard lessons of…

Yah, And I’m still trying to understand why, what has mobilized, what is this critical factor that has causes them to be mobilized. I don’t know if in your travels anyone can give a good reason of that, I’d be interested to know. Because I know Don was down in Seattle, and that’s what they were feeding back to me is that there were mostly young people there. In Washington a few months ago, and Ontario, and all around these things there are very large questions which normally you would think would be very removed from people. The people wouldn’t be able to see the link to their daily reality, you know, of global trade agreements, right, but people are being able to, they understand it.

There’s an interesting controversy right now in community organizing … about whether this represents positive organizing or whether it’s just a,

A blip or something?

Well, sort of as advocates just crusading a cause, it’s not organizing people for their own interests, it’s a cause that people are taking on…

And I guess the question would be, are there long term organizations being built around this or is it just… because, I think that’s the question, you know, are they really rooted, I guess, or that would be a question. That’s one thing about the Council of Canadians is that it seems to be able to sustain itself. And setting up locals or factions across the country, right? I don’t know if there’s a similar movement in the United States or Australia like the council of Canadians. It seems to be that there’s a lot of talk, you know, I check e-mails and there's a lot of stuff going on, more then I can keep up with that’s for sure. I mean when we were fighting the MAI thing about 3 or 4 years ago. I was on the MAI-NOT list, and I was getting from around the world about 60 or 70 e-mails a day and really long long well thought out essays, you know. And I just thought, you know, we can’t keep up with it, it’s just overwhelming. But it’s interesting to see that that is happening.

Well,

One of the questions that have always come up is what role is the Internet playing and e-mail. People are claiming that the whole MAI thing was defeated by the role rapid communication that e-mail and the Internet played in that, so that’s an interesting question, you know, it sure is an effective tool for organizing.