Magazine

Late last year, when the White House announced it would send $700 billion in bailout money to Wall Street, Milwaukee community organizer Sura Faraj began wondering what it would take to create a cash infusion for her corner of the world, hundreds of miles from the glass towers of Lower Manhattan.

Faraj first determined the financial system that got the United States into a recession wasn’t going to be the system that got it out. America couldn’t simply trust in God and the Federal Reserve anymore. With that in mind, the longtime activist began talking with neighbors in her community, Riverwest, about the idea of creating a local currency or credit system for the area, a progressive enclave not far from the University of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee campus. The idea spread quickly, and before she knew it — even before AIG blew its share of the bailout on bonuses — Faraj was fielding emails from perfect strangers. One newly unemployed computer programmer wanted to barter tech skills for a carpentry work. A gardener was looking to barter with homegrown vegetables. Another person was willing to walk dogs or baby-sit.

With the economy in shambles and localism all the rage, Faraj isn’t the only one experiencing this resurging interest in community-based economic exchange. In Philadelphia, Paul Glover, who in 1991 founded a local currency in Ithaca, N.Y., recently began working to expand a dormant Philadelphia currency program. One store, Bella Vista Natural Food Market, has already agreed to accept the community cash. Across town another Philadelphia nonprofit, Resources for Human Development, is expanding its own community- based currency and trading system called Equal Dollars. In California’s Mendocino County, a small group of activists printed up their own money this year. And while there are no plans to create a local currency in Newark, N.J., city officials briefly flirted with the idea last year.