Main St. Returns from Exile

A short walk from the University of Pennsylvania, on a block of Victorian brownstones once condemned to the wrecking ball, resides one of the East Coast's great salons for the liberal intelligentsia. A visitor on a given evening might find Eric Schlosser deconstructing fast food, former ambassador to Czechoslovakia William Luers analyzing the United Nations, or a gaggle of TV cameras crammed in to cover a protest of the Republican National Convention. Yet the crowds are as likely to be pulled in by the Sweet Potato Plantain Soup, Crispy Twice-Cooked Quail, and Organic Pear Salad with Jumbo Lump Crab Meat as they are by a lecture on the hydrogen future.

Judy Wicks founded the White Dog Café on the first floor of her Philadelphia home in 1983. Her food took its cue from the innovative New American cuisine of Alice Waters's Chez Panisse in Berkeley: updated regional dishes, rebuilt on a foundation of seasonal local produce. At the White Dog the food was a hit, and diners soon spilled onto the sidewalk, waiting for a chance to taste farm-fresh strawberry pie and the succulent local tomatoes on Betty's Beef Kabobs.

As the restaurant grew, so did Wicks's notion that the strength of her business relied upon the quality and sustainability of its locally grown ingredients. Six years ago, after reading about the horrors of industrial hog farms, she stormed into her kitchen, scratched pork off the menu, and went searching for a farmer with a soft spot in his heart for pigs.

Her hunt took Wicks beyond the meat wholesalers, who knew not whence their cuts came, to Glen Brendle, a farmer who delivered produce to the White Dog in his compact pickup truck. Brendle knew Amish farmers in nearby Lancaster County who still were raising hogs the old way. But he barely had room in his pickup for vegetables, let alone pork chops, so Wicks gave him a low-interest loan to purchase a refrigerated cargo truck. The loan enabled him to deliver meat to more than fifteen restaurants and caterers, creating an entirely new market in Philadelphia for locally grown, humanely raised, free-range pigs.

"Judy is an enabler," Brendle says. "Without her encouragement and financial help I probably wouldn't be doing this."

That could have been the end of the story, but Wicks saw something powerful in what she and Brendle had done. She began to envision how strengthening relationships between independent, community-rooted enterprises could inspire broad and profound cultural change. In 2001, she and cofounder Laury Hammel unveiled the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), the first national network of small, sustainable companies dedicated to buying and selling products locally. The organization supports merchants who are deeply committed to their communities and who define success more holistically than the managers of investor-owned corporations.

"In a living economy, investors seek a 'living return' -- one partially paid by the benefits of living in healthy, vibrant communities and participating [in civic affairs]," Wicks says. "By addressing the deeper needs of their employees and community, business owners can grow their companies in new ways, providing more fulfilling jobs, healthier communities, and greater economic security for their bioregions."

A living economy sustains community life, economic viability, and the natural environment. "We have to change our concept about how we measure value in things, and get people to be willing to pay more for something that's well made, made locally, and that they would have for a long time," Wicks says.

BALLE members join local "affiliates" (a term intended to emphasize how BALLE -- which is pronounced "bah-lee" -- is a bottom-up kind of organization) and pledge to purchase as many locally made items as possible -- everything from energy to personal clothing. Banding together, they attempt to construct an alternative to corporate globalization by building local and, if their plans work out, international networks of self-sufficient economic communities. "This is a new way to operate," Wicks says. "It's about stepping outside your business and working collectively and cooperatively with others to rebuild entire local economies."