Ted Quant speaks at marketumbrella.org graduation
Director of the Twomey Center for Peace through Justice at Loyola University and long-time supporter and friend Ted Quant has known marketumbrella.org from its inception nearly 14 years ago, when it first began under the name, the ECOnomic Institute. In August 2008, marketumbrella.org matriculates from its status at Loyola University to become a free-standing nongovernmental organization. Ted is also one of the first board members for this newly independent organization. At the July 8, 2008 Crescent City Farmers Market, Ted addressed the well-wishers on hand in the heat and sun to cheer the organization's growth.
Thank you for coming and allowing me to say a few words in reflection on the significance of what we celebrate here today.
14 years ago, Richard McCarthy walked into my office and said he wanted to pursue the idea of creating a farmers market for community gardeners. He had already seen a powerful transformation in his neighborhood when he created a community garden on a vacant lot. It created a new relationship between neighbors, the earth and food. He knew he was on to something.
I don’t believe he understood then where his vision would take him, but he was already, as a philosopher said, “making the road by walking.” He was making a road that would transform his life and the lives of thousands of people in the process.
In today’s global economy old modes of thinking are being challenged. The corporate ideology of unrestricted market forces and the commodification of everything, including human life itself, is bearing its fruit in the destruction of the environment, mass poverty and starvation, human rights abuses, and even a resurgent international slave trade. But the human spirit rebels against injustice. On every continent, people are not only dreaming of a better world but are actively organizing to create it and their isolated impulses of creative economic alternatives are becoming the shared knowledge and practice in a new fabric of relationships and struggle.
14 years ago, with his nascent vision of a farmers market, Richard entered into this stream of synchronistic possibility. I believe an idea in its time attracts what it needs to materialize.
When Richard, civic activist Sharon Litwin and downtown resident John Abajian realized they shared a common vision, a partnership was created. Soon the synapses were firing in their creative minds and the vision got grounded in the reality of business plans, marketing strategies, organizing and outreach, leadership development, convincing, coaching, advocating, selling a dream, and overcoming urban/rural prejudices, fears, and stereotypes. It all came together in the hugely successful grand opening of the Crescent City Farmers Market.
They turned “making groceries” from a once a week necessary chore into an economic and social relationship and significant weekly cultural event. Shopping was transformed into a personal relationship between producers and consumers and an almost spiritual connection back to the land and a renewed awareness of meaning in that connection.
Ideas are often limited to the experience and reality that created them but once the idea is realized there is a whole new vision of possibility. 14 years ago the idea was to create a farmers market. Today, marketumbrella.org creates and contributes to a global social motion of change that includes consumer cooperatives, credit unions, community supported agriculture, community land trust, fair trade, green development and technology, and even the developments of local alternative currencies in some communities.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.” marketumbrella.org is “being the change it wants to see in the world.” It is creating tomorrow today. And the more change it creates, the greater are the possibilities that become visible to seize upon and take to a higher level.
I want to congratulate you today, and thank all who made this possible, including Richard’s excellent staff, dedicated board members, vendors, and customers. I hope that today launches your next great leap in achievement. Again, thank you for writing another chapter in the 60 years history of the Twomey Center. It is a chapter that will always be a source of pride for the Center and for Loyola University.