s people, we are more alike than different in our common goals of peace, justice, a future for our children, a healthy planet and healthy environments for all living things. As our worldviews are continually challenged by new information, and as we become more aware of the consequences of our collective actions, it becomes harder to live a "normal" life. To live in adherence to our values, we must change not only our living patterns but the basic systems upon which we depend. How we obtain the food we eat, the clothes we wear, our shelter, our means of transportation, and education for our children takes on greater meaning. These activities become political acts--broadcasting our belief system and values--and in the process, each of us must experience the contradictions and paradoxes of transformation.
    The Earth, with all its complex, interlocking ecosystems, is the foundation of our lives. The greatest gifts are given freely to all living things. Indigenous peoples recognized that the relationship between humans, plants, animals and all life forms was sacred. They lived within a gift economy where exchanges helped to nurture relationships, communicate and create bonds between people and the natural world. Two of the fundamental assumptions by which the world has operated for the past several thousand years are based on fear. The deeply held core beliefs that "the world is dangerous" and that "resources are scarce" have led to vast expenditures to promote military expansion, police, prisons, population control, oppression, competition, greed, and over-consumption. A tiny percentage of people hold most of the world's land and wealth. They have driven indigenous people off their land, forced them into cities or wage slavery, and torn them from their cultures. The United Nations accounting system does not recognize the value of peace, an intact ecosystem, or the unpaid labor of women (film review, Sojourn, Spring, 1997: Who's Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies & Global Economics). 
    By confusing money with real wealth, our civilization is rushing to destroy itself. Most of the world's work (paid and unpaid) is done by women, who hold only one percent of the world's wealth. As the ruling elite blame the world's ills on overpopulation, they subtly encourage the idea that masses of people are expendable. They promote the idea that industrialized nations are worth more than "developing" nations; the rich are idolized, and society's ills blamed on the poor. In reality, if truth were told, we would know that growing economies are indicative of the rape and exploitation of resources and that giving the displaced poor access to land, equality, education and family planning would dramatically decrease birthrates.
     Federal Reserve notes perpetuate the false economy. I think we should stick warning labels on our cash. I have a T-shirt with a dollar bill on it that clearly states, "Warning! Use of this product may cause apathy, laziness, selfishness, ignorance, loss of identity, greed,...environmental destruction, racial tension, murder, war, and impoverishment for others. Continuous and excessive use could render a permanent state of indifference to the welfare of those around you. Use at your own risk!"
     Money as a tool of the empire has produced an economy that has been disastrous for the culture. The weak links in the cultural fabric are those seduced by the toys of Western civilization, who abandon their traditions in search of the quick buck and the "surface glamour of the modern world." Where money intrudes, greed is kindled.
     In his book Debt Virus, Jacques Jaikaran writes: "The most pernicious of all viruses is the one that confiscates the wealth of the productive elements of society and transfers it to the hands of a nonproductive few." When money is created by the banks and loaned to governments or business at interest, it becomes mathematically impossible to pay back all the money with interest (because the interest money is never printed). Not all debts can be repaid; foreclosures result. Wealth is continually transferred from the poor to the rich. Bankers, like magicians, do not like to reveal their secrets. Able to create money out of thin air; they have learned that belief is the key to their success. When people begin to doubt the purchasing power of money, banks fail and a currency collapses.


In 1944, at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the ruling elite decided to establish the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to smooth the way for their domination of the world economy. Working with the elite in other countries, the "Bretton Woods Institutions" forcibly resettled more than ten million of the poorest people on the planet, many of them indigenous minorities--taking away their land, destroying their production systems, weakening their community structures, and dispersing kin, cultural identity, traditional authority and potential mutual help. Anthropologist Thayer Scudder insists that "resettlement is about the worst thing you can do to people, next to killing them." The World Bank's projects, particularly in the Earth's forests, mineral deposits, and rivers, are the most destructive on the planet. Its support of repressive regimes has exacerbated human rights violations.
     The Structural Adjustment Programs forced upon nations by the World Bank and the I.M.F. have meant exporting crops, devaluing local currency, cutting health and education spending, reducing wages, privatizing national industries, selling off natural resources, and removing tariff protections for local industries. Hunger, unemployment and inequality are the direct results of World Bank policies.

 
he U.S. dollar is the de facto world currency. I.M.F. and World Bank loans in dollars must be repaid with interest in dollars. For Argentina to trade with Chile, it needs dollars. Ninety-five percent of foreign exchange transactions consist of sheer speculation. Less than 5% of them have to do with real goods or production, and these are dominated by the largest 500 multinational corporations. 
     According to Margrit Kennedy, author of Interest and Inflation-Free Money: "We are living in World War III already, an economic war. It is a non-declared war: A war of usurious interest rates, ruinous prices, and distorted exchange conditions. Remote-controlled interest rates and terms of trade have killed millions of people on a plundered planet. They are killed by hunger, sickness, unemployment and criminality. Every day the Third World pays us $300 million in interest."

or most people living in industrialized nations, the cost of money is hidden, included in the price of the goods and services we buy--on the average, about fifty percent of the cost of the necessities of life. If interest rates were abolished, most people would be twice as rich or be able to maintain their standard of living by working half as much as they do now.
     In the past, Egypt, Babylon, Persia and Rome fell when a small percentage of the population controlled nearly all of the wealth. Today, 358 people are worth the combined income of 2.5 billion people--45% of the planet's population. While 80% must pay more than they receive in interest, 20% enjoy an "unearned" income from inherited or accumulated wealth. The rich have never been richer, nor the poor poorer. Greed and fear are manifested in our dominant institutions, and what cannot be controlled by force is controlled by money.

 
Have you heard of the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (M.A.I.)? This proposed treaty is a corporate bill of rights--a global investment agreement under negotiation within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.). It would allow corporations the right to take their money in and out of any country, at any time, without any local, state or national restrictions. It would eliminate all environmental laws, labor standards, and corporate accountability to reinvest profits within local communities. 
     When the activist community got wind of the secret meetings and fast tracking of this global corporate agenda, Public Citizen posted it on their website (www.citizen.org/pctrade). Coalitions began popping up all over the world to stop it. There was enough public pressure against this agreement to keep it from passing last April when it came up for a vote. Now bits and pieces of its agenda are being tacked onto bills for the I.M.F., the World Bank and the Sub-Sahara Africa Trade Bill. Africa would be used as a free-trade zone, which would benefit transnational corportions wishing to avoid tariffs by shipping their goods via Africa. This would have terrible human consequences in Africa, and cost many jobs in the U.S. 
    The Ethyl Corporation just won an out-of-court settlement for $10 million against the Canadian government and received a deep apology from Canada for passing laws "banning" Ethyl's gasoline additive MMT. Canada felt that MMT was cancer-causing, and would be a public health hazard (MMT is banned in the U.S.). "This precedent removes decision-making from the public arena to private areas where corporations have more power than government officials." 
     Now corporations are suing governments for lost "possible future profits" because those governments have attempted to pass laws protecting the health of their people, their environment, or an endangered species like dolphins. These protections restrict those corporations' ability to trade and make money. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is now under attack for passing legislation to boycott products made by corporations who had dealings with Myanmat. Boycotts and selective purchasing laws are powerful citizens' tools that are now being challenged by corporations who see them as a threat to their power. Power doesn't concede anything without a struggle.
     As corporations are organizing and fighting on institutional levels, an unprecedented number of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are networking to fight globalization. People have to globalize from the grassroots level upward, and create new institutions that reflect the vast will of the people. A trial People's Assembly was just held for the U.N. in June. San Francisco just passed anti-M.A.I. legislation and became an M.A.I.-free zone. A lot of towns are doing that now. 
     Since it would take three or four Earths to pay off all the world's debts, it's not really a question of "whether or not the global monetary system is going to collapse," but "when." Right now, many corporations and governments are laughing at the alternative institutions, but in the event of a crisis the alternatives gain more legitimacy and begin to represent the will of the majority. They even become a lifeline. When things fell apart in Russia, the Parliament (considered a joke in Russia) helped hold the country together. 
     We have a rare opportunity to replace a system that depends upon greed and scarcity with one that nurtures generosity and abundance. It's time to change the rules of the global money game. Some of the groundwork has already been laid; we need to build upon it. The best way to predict the future is to create it.
 

Buckminster Fuller illustrated that the world's problems are very solvable, if people simply play cooperatively. His World Game is based on love, compassion, truth-telling, abundance, sharing of basic resources and voluntary simplicity. In the real world, what we lack are not resources, but the political will to put aside narrow personal interests and act on behalf of the greater good. A new accounting system would respect and honor people for their integrity, character, wisdom and gifts to society, as opposed to the amount of wealth they can extract from society. Recognition of the gifts we have received from the Earth, and a focus on our health, the health of the environment and our quality of life would safeguard our living heritage for future generations. If every baby born were loved, nurtured and given the opportunity to develop all of its mental, spiritual and physical abilities, therein lies the hope of humanity and the world. The dominant worldview is a dying worldview. The holistic, cooperative worldview is being born and, given the opportunity, the youngest members of society are quickest to grasp its truths.  In modern society, although we do not measure its value in monetary terms, it is the gift economy that sustains life and forms the basis for all other exchanges. Were it not for the Earth's gifts and the unpaid labor of women (who bear, nurse and raise the children) there would be no civil society. Within our societies, a buffer zone of government institutions and infrastructure supports the "market economy." This monetary aspect of the economy gets all the attention, yet it depends on the Earth, the gift economy, the networks of cooperation, and the subsidies provided by government services. We have gotten so far away from this awareness that almost everything has become commodified.
     A gift economy existed on this continent before its history was written. Nature was abundant and the relationships among people, the Earth, the animals and plants were sacred. Money, or wampum, held a special meaning to people living within a gift economy. Feathers, stones and shells--worked to become objects of beauty--held a promise, a consolation, a message far beyond their material features. Exchanges promoted relationships and bonds between individuals, families, communities, and distant cultures. 
     Wampum had a very different meaning and dynamic from the money system introduced by the Europeans. When the settlers heard that shells had value, they massacred the Indians who lived near where they were found. Believing they could purchase land with shells and beads, they missed or ignored the treaty aspect of the exchange. The value of the beads was not in their beauty, physical properties, or utility but in their message and meaning. The settlers were oblivious to this, since their focus was conquest and the acquisition of land and resources.
     Jerry Martien's book The Shell Game: A True Account of Beads and Money in North America explains this in detail. To quote from the back cover, "He shows how a gift relationship based on beads was replaced by monetary relations based on credit, and how the ancient ways of bookkeeping exemplified by the Iroquois' wampum exchange were replaced by a social contract based on scarcity and deficit."   In theory, money is supposed to activate the production of goods and services; to simplify exchanges and the settlement of debts; and to provide a means of storing values or savings. Suppose we create a new money that encourages healthy relationships, builds community, and restores the environment. By writing these values directly on the money, we would remind people of what is important. This is what communities all over the world are now doing. Not only do local currencies prevent resources from being drained away by transnational corporations, they are consciousness raising tools that help reweave the bonds of community. 
      Money as a tool can be impersonal, anonymous and destructive or it can be designed to build a world based upon respect and healthy relationships. Explaining the monetary system to most folks is not easy. It shatters too many long-held belief systems. It is much easier to explain this to first-graders, who quickly grasp the main ideas and have little to unlearn. In one sentence: Our current monetary system concentrates wealth and power, destroying the Earth in the process; we need to create a new system that redistributes wealth and power, healing the Earth in the process.
     The shared values of richly diverse communities are giving rise to regional or bioregional currencies. The old system relied on fear to control others, while the new systems nurture people and life. The old system depended on "experts" who imposed their ideas upon the many. The new system takes us from a "smart" culture to a "wisdom" culture in which all are respected and we recognize that our own well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of all people.
      With our current monetary system at a critical state now, local currencies can provide a wonderful safety net in addition to modeling a new system that is more conducive to life. Local currency can be a way to transition from a pure exchange economy towards a gift economy. This moves us toward an egalitarian, cooperative, respectful exchange by supporting face-to-face relationships. As we raise our awareness, we can move to better, more enlightened systems.  n the present system, people receive interest on money saved or kept out of circulation. This encourages hoarding. "Money in the bank" or "investments" provides a false sense of security in a world of scarce national currencies. This hoarding practice has separated the wealthiest twenty percent from the plight of the vast majority who suffer under increasingly harsh conditions.
    In 1890 Silvio Gesell formulated a theory of money as revolutionary as the notion that despite appearances, the Earth circles the sun. Gesell suggested charging a negative interest, called demurrage, to inhibit hoarding and keep money in circulation. His ideas were tested by the mayor of Woergl, Austria in July, 1932. The holder of this local currency was charged a one percent stamp tax on the first of every month to maintain the value of the certificate. To avoid the charge, people spent their money quickly. Money flowed in the community and people even paid their taxes in advance. 
    Jobs and public works projects flourished in Woergl. The town was able to repair its streets, build a ski jump and a bridge, and provide relief funds for those unable to work. This experiment inspired hundreds of local currencies in other parts of Europe, in Canada, the United States and Mexico. The central bank of Austria eventually put pressure on the government to declare the system illegal. Thriving local currencies in Germany were also made illegal. 
    I read an excellent paper entitled "When Money Power--Suppressing Successful Money Reform--Prepared The Way For Hitler." According to the paper, when Germany was doing well, Hitler could not win an election. It was only when a vast number of people were unemployed that he was able to win office and target minorities for the ills of society.
   A top economist urged Franklin D. Roosevelt to encourage local currencies. However, Roosevelt opted for "The New Deal," which flooded the nation with Federal Reserve Notes, putting an end to currency experiments in the United States, and effectively centralizing power.
     An ethical international green currency with a demurrage feature could fund healing for the planet and put energy where it is most needed--e.g., renovation and reforestation projects all over the world. This would be a way to channel excess money out of a speculative, destructive cyber-casino, into real projects that benefit people and life-forms. 

We are at an extraordinary point in time when patriarchal systems are breaking down. We need to build something new in their place. A caterpillar spins a chrysalis and goes through a process of metamorphosis. First there are "imaginal cells"--cells that want to be a butterfly. The immune system attacks and kills them, but more and more imaginal cells begin to cluster. Eventually the caterpillar begins to dissolve, and all the energy goes into forming the butterfly. That is the way our economy will be transformed.
     The imaginal cells exist now, and will continue to cluster together to create a new vision and form. I still have friends who are fighting the caterpillar, but many others are actively engaged in creating the butterfly. It's hard to say when it's time to stop fighting the system and devote our energy to building butterflies. 
       The global economy, with its crashes and crises around the world, is producing a systemic imbalance capable of producing whirlwinds of astronomical proportions. Bernard Lietaer, author of The Future of Money: Beyond Greed and Scarcity, says that in a crisis situation, if all the central banks pooled their assets and tried to control the economy, they would have an effect for only a few hours. At some point the whole system will crash. Coupling the Asian crisis and other monetary crises with the Y2K (year 2000) computer problem, it will not take much to topple the world's economic balance (see: www.co-intelligence.org/y2k_breakthrough.html). 
Things are very shaky.
       Although I think we need to be very aware of our history and of the faults, shortcomings, and inadequacies of existing systems, it is even more important to get positive alternatives up and running as a safety net. It is therefore imperative to create positive examples of local currency, networks of cooperation and local self-reliance to demonstrate sustainable and ecological practices in line with our values. This is more critical now, while the old system is collapsing, than at any other time. If the system crashes in a sudden and dramatic way, then people won't fall into panic and fear. Instead they can say, "Well, this is what we can do." 
     I agree with John Perkins, author of The World as You Dream It. The world is a physical manifestation of the collective dreams of all the living things on the planet. The old dream is a reckless, male-dominated, adolescent dream. That's why we have big buildings, rocket ships, war machines and technological toys. It's time to grow up and mature our dreams to embrace life and allow it to continue. 
     What are the blind spots of our civilization? What wisdom revelation do you wish to offer others? How do we realize our collective hopes and dreams for the future? These are the questions we asked in a wisdom circle at my birthday gathering this year. It came to light in the circle that once a person becomes self-actualized, the next level is building community. You can't be a whole, deep person in isolation. We are connected and interdependent with others and with our culture. If the culture and society is destructive and messed up, this will have an effect on us. 
     It is a challenge to create healthy communities when the systems are still oppressive. It is a struggle to pull ourselves out of a demanding system, so that we can nurture new forms of 
community that allow us to flourish.

We are in a period of  chaos, paradox and transformation. This is reflected in relationships, institutions and organizations. 
 

At the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom's recent International Congress entitled "Women Define Globalization," there was a session called Theater of the Oppressed. Augusto Boal, the workshop leader, shared the evolution of participatory theatre with us. He had learned how to involve people in figuring out how to stop the oppressions they suffered. He had also been elected to local public office in Brazil, and all of his legislation came from suggestions from oppressed groups. 
     We used some of Boal's techniques in our workshop, "Global Trade Policy: Governance by Corporations." We were also  inspired by a group in Arcata who actually proposed a town hearing on the questions, Can we have a democracy when corporations have so much wealth and power? What city council policies and programs do we want in order to ensure democratic control over corporations conducting business with the city, and to protect the health and well being of the community and its environment? We divided into six groups, each playing a part—local government, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, environmentalists, concerned citizens groups, "workers" and corporations. We enacted hearings, and tried to create language to help oppressed people gain sovereignty and rights over the corporations. This was very empowering and inspiring.
  The Social Movement Empowerment Project in San Francisco has published the eight stages of any social movement. Applying this idea to economic change, stage one is awareness of a problem in the monetary system. At first people don't see it, because they tend to accept the system as always having been there. The next stages represent a growing awareness of the problem until a critical mass is reached. Then alternatives are posed. 
     Problems imply the responsibility to change a behavior or system. That is scary, and creates resistance because we don't know whether the solution will be worse than the problem. It is more comfortable to be with something we are familiar with. At the end of the social movement process, however, the alternative becomes more compelling than anything else. That is how slavery was abolished, and how women got the vote. 
     I feel we are moving towards this compelling stage now with local currency. Some localities are moving forward more quickly than others, but any successes will help bring along other communities. The United States is behind other countries such as France, England, Australia, and New Zealand in this movement. Yet what we do will have a huge effect in other parts of the world through a good example. We could help relieve the burden of the industrialized world's consumption of three-quarters of the world's resources.
     I have learned five basic leadership principles that can be applied to any type of activism or leadership activity. These are beautiful principles that we should all know and follow: 

 1) Challenge the process/system 
 2) Inspire a vision 
 3) Enable others to act 
 4) Model the way 
 5) Encourage the heart 

     A friend of mine, Tom Atlee, who writes about "co-intelligence" says, Things are getting better and better and worse and worse, faster and faster all the time. It's true. There are wonderful discoveries, insights, breakthroughs and projects occurring each day that are rarely heralded in the mainstream media but there are also horrendous things going on which are even more obscured by the corporate press. Our challenge is to allow the worst systems to collapse or die, and to nurture healthy, just, sustainable and healing alternatives. 

---

arol Brouillet, from Palo Alto, is an international speaker on behalf of local currencies and feminist economics. This article is a summary of a Sojourn Interview and a compilation from her papers, Reinventing Money, Restoring The Earth, Re-weaving The Web Of Life, which won an honorable mention from the Millennium Institute as one of the best ideas for the 21st century, and The Feminist Perspective. The latter was written for an economic summit in Denver last year (coinciding with the G7 meeting) at which Carol moderated a panel on local currencies.
 
She has created a model for a global currency called "Gaia Futures," backed by renewable energy and environmentally sound products. Its negative interest rate would maintain the system and fund special projects to meet pressing human and environmental needs. Grants and interest-free revolving loans of Gaia Futures would provide seed money for local endeavors. She has been nurturing local currency movements, and hopes to connect them to create regional, bioregional and global currencies that will redistribute wealth and power--healing the Earth in the process.