I t RAIN Page 13 objector doing alternative duty. The advantage was that I could enjoy some flexibility and gain a diversity of experience. But there was also accountability in my work, because I was on salary ($2,800 a year!) and had a responsible staff position. That forced me to focus and learn. I recommend to people that they get involved in a structured internship and be willing to sacrifice income for experience. My whole concern about our educational system is that it's geared to a fact-bank ~pproach, where p·eople receive deposits of information and are not given the chance to really test themselves through experience. What has made the difference for me is the combination of learning facts and having concrete experience early in my hfe. What was the next step for you? Well, I've always been interested in international problems. But the more I probed the root causes of hunger and poverty the more I had to follow the lead of Watergate informant Deep Throat: "Follow the money . . . follow the money." I began to ask basic questions concerning the economics of poverty and our financial links as U.S. citizens to the poorest and most oppressed peoples of the world. For example, here in our own country, where do the pension funds ($500 billion!) go? The disturbing answers to those kinds of questions compelled me to learn inore about economic alternatives. I saw no value in reforming the status quo. I made a conscious deci- . sion to try to get involved in an organization that was building eco- :~. 1,~t-,r~\\1ld1\ I nomic alternatives. ----- I ,.. • l )~jj_ij~~HB'111111 I\ "C . ~~ 1 iii t fffi 11 th';*~t11,, . opreneursh1p," ~~~~~ • •, \ 1 l~fri1 \' that is the best of , , l ~=:::;;:a,~~1~·1l4lw ' ,"t, • 1 ,1i ' t:\~', '~"\ ·entrepreneurship ~( ,, ," ~~luqp 1\11h • d • h h b 1 11,1 111{f\ ,y8,l,~\ ,1lllllH'''f~;} tt m1xe wit t e est I~ I I f ~ I\\Y~\I 'NI J \h11\l\ ll I f t. • I I \"''''"' 11111 a~tiliJ:~'~?11\1 1 , 1 !/11\ 1 l',1111)M,1L\1,h\.11\.\''11'?'\ 111 n 1 0 coopera IVISm. ,,,111111,:;; 11 l\l\tl\ '"'~' 111111 1,1111: 1, 11111 \li')il"111 l111,,,11{11~H1111\\\\I I I\ \ I Ill I I 1 1 I 1 ~ 1//IJ \ \\\I 1\1 I I I " I/ 1 1 \ J1 II JI I l I I\ I \ • I I \ I\\ fl/ \ \\\ \ \ \ \ I ) • •I \\ l \I I\ I [I I " tl community ,,,, will provide a D facilitate ent. signed to Nicaragua after the earthquake in 1972. I saw firsthand all that I had read about despotic Latin American dictators such as Somoza. What struck me was the incredible collusion between our military advisors, corporate executives and the elite of Nicaragua. For me, seeing colonialism's more subtle impact, by living with a Nicaraguan family in San Francisco, and then seeing colonialism's ugliest form in Nicaragua was shocking. I did not predict the revolution in Nicaragua. I never thought it possible. The people I met in both the urban and rural areas were desperately oppressed and, worse, caught in a cycle of dog-eat-dog. It looked hopeless. The fact that the revolution has occurred despite such obstacles offers exciting testimony to human resilience and potential. My professional career in international development began as an intern with VISTA. I served my first two years as a conscientious Now I'm playing a small part in building this community investment fund. I see it as the flip side of the d~vestment button. Many people are working to get investment funds out of southern Africa. That's fine. But if you only operate with the choices immediately available, it's going to mean money taken out of South Africa and reinvested into repressive countries like Haiti, Brazil or in nonunion corporations in the southern United States. So our work is to build a community investment fund that will provide a reasonable return and facilitate community development instead of oppression. To my surprise there's nothing exactly like it. There are other alternatives to conventional investment, but ours is the only one which is concerned with systemic change. We want to change the system, not compensate for a screwed-up system. How does your fund support systemic change? Our fund is designed to finance entities where there is a high degree of community ownership which often takes the form of a cooperative or a community land trust. We expect to fund a number of "sweat equity" cooperative housing projects in the inner city, cooperative farm projects in the Fresno valley of California, and other •projects where people have been working together for quite a long period of time to develop the program and cut down on costs. But, by virtue of their cooperative structure (and in some cases, their politics), they're having difficulty in getting loans. Faced with a choice between a private business and a community-based cooperative, the banks invariably favor the former. Among conventional sources of finance there is little interest in democratic entities. 1:f owever, our role is not only to provide direct loans to cooperatives, but to help them get conventional financing through loan guarantees and other mean&".
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