 Thank you, Penelope, and thank you to Rosalie and Kevin for putting on SoCAP. This is my first time here, and I'm having a ball. That's a great party. So during my years that I lived above my business, the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia, I had a sign in my bedroom closet that I would see each morning that said, good morning, beautiful business. And it was a reminder to me of just how beautiful business is when we put our creativity and our care and our energy into producing a product or a service that our community needs. And I just realized that I don't have a clicker here. Ah, there it is. So I would also take that time in the morning to think about our farmers out in the fields picking fresh, organic fruits and vegetables to bring into town that day. And I would think of the farm animals out on pasture enjoying fresh air and sunshine and of our goat herder, Dougie, who said that when she kissed her goat's ears, it made the cheese better. And I think that's true. So for me, business is about relationships. Money is simply a tool. Business is about relationships with everyone that we buy from and sell to and work with, and about our relationship with Earth itself and all the species who live here with us. My business was the way that I expressed my love of life. And that's what made it a thing of beauty. Thank you. So this is a photo of Judy and Mark Dornstrike from Branch Peak Farm, a supplier of the White Dog Cafe. And Mark once told me that successful farming is the balance of masculine and effeminate energy, of efficiency and nurturing. Too much efficiency and not enough nurturing, you might have a well-run farm, but a poor produce. On the other hand, too much nurturing may produce great tomatoes, but you'll have a failed business in the end. Our industrial food system is all about efficiency and no nurturing whatsoever. It's about how much can we wring out of the soil and the workers and the animals and give as little back as possible? How little space do we give that egg-laying hen? How little light in air? How little food and water to get the cheapest egg possible? No nurturing there. In windowless factory farms, mother pigs are kept in crate so small that they can't take a step forward or backward or turn around or lie down almost their entire lives. They never feel a ray of sunshine or have a breath of fresh air. They never get to socialize with other pigs that they're very social creatures. They're artificially inseminated. The baby's taken away prematurely, artificially inseminated again as though there are pieces of equipment in a factory. But pigs are mammals, like our dogs, like us. They're intelligent beings with a capacity for friendship and the range of emotions that all of our mammals share from joy to despair. When I first learned of these pig factories in 1999, I was horrified of the idea that I was serving this pig a product in my restaurant that came from this cruel system. So I finally went into the kitchen and said, take all the pork off the menu, the ham, the bacon, the pork chops, that we cannot be a part of this system, that we had to find a humane source. So we contacted our supplier of free-range chickens and eggs, and he led us to a farmer that raised pigs on pasture. And we were able to purchase two pigs a week. We bought the whole pig and learned how to use all the parts on our menu. Then I learned about the plight of the cow. Cows are herbivores. They're supposed to eat grass, but they're taken off pasture and fed grain subsidized with our talkstowers through the farm dough. We found a source for grass-fed beef and grass-fed dairy cows, and finally I looked at my menu and thought to myself, well, you've finally done it. We have a humane menu. All of our dairy and poultry come from small family farms where there's plenty of nurturing. This is going to be our market niche. This is our competitive advantage. This is all about us. But then my transformational moment came, and I said to myself, Judy, if you really do care about those pigs, if you really care about the small farmers being driven out by these big corporate farms, if you care about the environment that's being polluted by the concentration of 10,000 pigs in one barn that's polluting our air and our rivers, if you care about the consumers that are eating this meatful of antibiotics and hormones, then you will, instead of keeping this as your competitive advantage, you will share this information with your competitors. Up until that point, I had thought that the best I could do as a responsible business person was to have good business practices within my company to recycle on compost and pay a living wage and use renewable energy and so on. But I realized that there's no such thing as one sustainable business, that we can only be part of a sustainable system and that we need to cooperate with each other, including our competitors, to build a whole economy that shares our values for fairness, compassion and alignment with natural systems. So I asked the farmer who was bringing us two pigs a week, would you like to expand your business? And he said yes. And I said, what's holding you back? And he said he needed $30,000 to buy a refrigerated truck so that he could deliver to more restaurants in town. So I loaned the money and he bought the truck to increase the supply of pasture pork to our city. Then I started a nonprofit with projects to increase the demand for local, to build our local and regional food systems and economy, using 20% of the profits from my own business. Our first project was a wholesale directory that listed the farm products available to our area, including all the farmers that the white dog purchased from with their contact information and handed it out to the other restaurants and stores in town. Through this work, we gradually expanded the network of farmers supplying my own restaurant to a much larger network of farmers and small businesses supplying our region. It didn't take long before I realized that our local economy was a network within a still larger network, the global economy. And it occurred to me that a sustainable global economy, one that's socially, environmentally and financially sustainable, must be comprised of a network of sustainable local economies. Rather than a global network monopolized by long distance shipping routes supplying basic needs from far away places, I envisioned an intricate network, a global network of small fair trade relationships connecting local economies that are self-reliant in basic needs, which exchange excess production and unique local products for what is not available locally. This vision led me in 2001 to co-found Bali, the business alliance for local living economies, a network of over 50,000 local entrepreneurs, community leaders and local economy funders and self-organizing communities throughout North America. Bali is connecting leaders, spreading solutions and driving capital to build a network of local economies that serve the needs of all people while restoring our environments, our local ecosystems and creating more joyful community life. For more on Bali, Executive Director Michelle Long will be speaking at noon today. So all this began with compassion for pigs. My decision to share my supply sources and lose my competitive edge did not come easily. I was afraid. I was afraid my sales would go down. My profits would go down. But I did not make that decision because I decided in my head that it was the right thing to do. I made the decision because I loved the pigs, because I felt it in my heart. My love for the pigs, for my community, for healthy food and family farms, for the beauty of nature were greater than my fear. So what lessons did I learn from this experience? The decentralization of our food and energy systems and other production of basic needs creates more owners and broad-based ownership increases equality and strengthens our democracy, now at great risk from the concentration of wealth and power. When we increase local production, build local supply chains, distribution systems and support our main street retailers, we shift economic power to our communities, provide more meaningful jobs and increase community wealth. Local ownership ignites vibrant communities. When we invest locally, we not only receive a financial return, but also a living return, the benefit of living in a more self-reliant, happy and healthy community. Investing locally ignites vibrant communities. When firms and other businesses grow larger and larger, they go beyond human scale and beyond humane scale and diminish community life both in rural and urban communities. Mainstories in national brands are like invasive species, smothering indigenous local businesses. But we can reimagine growth and grow in the way that nature grows, deeper in place. Local business networks, including impact hubs, can function like healthy ecosystems, sharing, cooperating, using each other's waste, growing deeper in place to become diverse, more complex and more adaptive to the needs of our community. Growing deeper in our places ignites vibrant communities. It is not about belongings, but our sense of belonging that brings us happiness and security. When we know who grows our food, who makes our bread, who makes our clothes, who builds our furniture, who brews our bill, who distills our gin, we build and increase the community and increase our happiness. When we overcome separation and reconnect producers and consumers, borrowers and lenders, work life and community life and make decisions to maximize relationships rather than maximize profits, we build vibrant communities. Building a new economy begins in the heart of the entrepreneur and the heart of the investor and consumer as well. We understand that life is interconnected and we are able to feel our connection to the struggling farmers, to the suffering pigs, to the polluted waterways and dying fish. When we love our places and take responsibility for them, when we open our hearts and lead with love, we build vibrant communities. The ultimate vibrant community is our earth community, the web of life that includes and supports all life. There is urgency in the work ahead to stop climate change and environmental decline before this vibrant community of life on earth is damaged beyond repair. We in the localist movement have seen what works in our communities and we are scaling up. We are pursuing small scale on a large scale and we hope you will join us. But strategy and tactics are of secondary importance. If we succeed in leaving a positive future for our children and for the children of all species, it will be because mankind has evolved to take our place in the vibrant community of love. Not as exploiters, but as lovers. Thank you.