What would happen if a clever band of Russian hackers crashed most of the United States’ electrical grid—and were able to keep it shut down for years? How well would your community fare?
In Cherish: Love in a Season of Loss, Mark Sommer explores how a hypothetical small rural town in Iowa responds. Yes, it must quickly become self-reliant on its own sources of food, energy, water, and other critical supplies, but more importantly, it must reorganize itself socially, redeploy neglected local assets, and grow new kinds of leaders. Mark’s book performs the kind of thought experiment every community that cares about resilience should run through. We’re pleased to interview Mark about his book in this issue, especially on the occasion of Independence Day and our 250th anniversary as a nation.
I’ve known Mark for nearly 40 years, and he’s one of the best writers you probably never heard of. He’s also a wise and deep thinker. If you are intrigued by his interview, please consider buying his book here.
You will also find in this issue our latest listings of local investment opportunities that can make your community just a little more resilient today.
- Michael H. Shuman, Publisher
Publication of The Main Street Journal depends on your support. If we can reach 600 subscribers by the end of this year, we can continue delivering The Main Street Journal in 2027. (Below is a chart of our progress toward this goal.) If you like what you’re reading, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today. Paid subscribers can attend our monthly “Mondays with Michael” and receive a free consult on their projects. Please join the blue line below!
Michael: You’ve just written a new book called Cherish: Love in a Season of Loss, about what happens to a small town in Iowa when cyberattacks take down the country’s electric grid. Unlike lots of other stories about life after another World War—I’m thinking about the Mad Max series—your book is decidedly upbeat. The characters manage to find new meaning in their lives as they rekindle their sense of community. What else would you add about the plot, without giving away too much?
Mark: The approach I’ve taken in Cherish is what I call “positive realism.” Our personal and collective lives contain equal parts good and ill fortune, as the yin-and-yang symbol graphically portrays. But our neural “negativity bias” and our evolutionary history make us far more alert to threats than to blessings. Our media—movies, future fiction, algorithms, and 24/7 news—and our politics all capitalize on our vulnerability to fear and dread, enabling those with power to extract profit and exert social control. We’ve been systematically programmed into believing the worst of human possibilities and mistrusting all more positive outcomes. Yet in our everyday lives, most of us treat one another decently, and sometimes with genuine consideration and kindness.
Cherish grounds itself in the world as we find it, not as we wish it would be, and then turns towards the equally realistic yet more positive dimensions of our behavior. History demonstrates that it is precisely in emergencies that we most often collectively rise to the occasion. We discover not only that we need each other to survive but that we behave best when we work together towards a common goal. And a large part of what enables us to thrive is a heartfelt appreciation for what each of us contributes to the whole.
Michael: Let’s lean a little more into the question of realism. How realistic do you think the danger of grid collapse is in our country today?
Mark: As “Cherish” describes, unlike World Wars I and II, World War III will most likely not be a matter of blowing things up but shutting them down. Cyberwar is not only possible but likely, and not in the distant future but in the next several years. In many respects, we’re already living with its severe early impacts since much of the disinformation and polarization from which we suffer is generated by surreptitious cyberattacks from adversarial nation-states, criminal gangs, moneyed interests within our own country, and pirate cyberhackers. Sophisticated cyber ops affiliated with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea have already deeply penetrated U.S. power grids, financial systems, supply chains, medical services, and transportation and communications networks. More than episodic penetration, cyber warriors have taken up residence in them, enabling them to attack and paralyze much of our infrastructure at times and targets of their choosing.
Meanwhile, inexplicably, the Trump regime has entirely dismantled our cyber defenses, choosing to depend instead on purely offensive capabilities. All the great powers are vulnerable to cyberattacks, but the U.S. is more vulnerable than its adversaries because it is more exposed than secretive authoritarian regimes and because the Trump administration has unilaterally disarmed our cyber defenses.
Michael: A central message of your book is the power of community, where people know and trust one another as they solve local problems. One of your characters, a scholar, reflects on nonviolent social movements and says: “Most importantly, [these movements] made sure their movements were about relationships, not just strategies. They deepened trust among participants….They reminded each other what they were fighting for, not just what they were fighting against. And most of all, they didn’t let the struggle define or consume them. They didn’t let the tyrants steal their joy.” By these criteria, how would you rate the social movements resisting tyranny and strengthening local economies today?
Mark: As a veteran of the 1960s anti-war movement, I’m keenly aware of how social movements can burn out by defining themselves solely by what they’re against. We largely failed to envision, design, and build the community and society we sought to create, not as utopias but as pragmatic, shared experiments. Instead, militant activists became increasingly alienated from mainstream society, repudiating their own culture and country. They repelled those with whom they most needed to connect.
Today’s social movements are less self-righteous, less ideological, less impatient with the slow pace of deep change, and more ready to listen to those with divergent perspectives. They’re also better grounded in their own communities and prefer buying local when practical and affordable. Much of what still works in an era of alienation and anonymity is rebuilding trust in one another in face-to-face relationships with strangers as well as friends. We’re also finding that the best way to bridge divides is to shift from the inescapably conflictual realm of politics to the cooperative realm of collective problem-solving. We drop our opinions at the door and sharpen our pencils and minds to engage in a hands-on exercise to design and build the tangible components of a resilient community, be it in small towns or urban neighborhoods. Instead of butting heads across the table, we move to the same side, shoulder-to-shoulder, and face the challenges together. We thus turn an intractable argument into a shared challenge that activates our innate capacity for cooperation.
Michael: Mark, I’ve known you for many years, since the 1980s, when you wrote an excellent book about the work of the Exploratory Project on the Conditions of Peace (EXPRO). We used to think that war—nuclear war—would destroy us, and now you’re thinking about how we creatively survive, regroup, and rebuild. Do you find it strange that now, four decades later, you’re finding optimism in the conditions, not of peace, but of war?
Mark: We live in both the worst and best of times, as Dickens said of his era, and this apparent contradiction isn’t accidental. The more precarious life is, the more precious it becomes to us. The more cruel the barbarians occupying the commanding heights, the kinder many of us choose to be towards one another. I wouldn’t say I’m an optimist, but I’m a visionary pragmatist. Some regimes are so bad they’re almost good for us. The attempted destruction of democracy might become the catastrophe that triggers the reinvention of a locally based practice of direct democracy we’ve never yet experienced. This isn’t a prediction but a possibility if we choose to make it so. Extreme inequality will likely deepen our dysfunction and decline as a nation.
At this point, our best opportunity to revive democracy and community is to “Go local or go loco,” turning away from the tyrants and towards one another. Cherish delineates specific strategies and techniques through which rural communities and urban neighborhoods with a strong sense of themselves can strengthen their collective resilience, resourcefulness, and solidarity when they can no longer rely on rescue from above. War is a horrific way to make desperately needed change, but sometimes catastrophe is the mother of reinvention.
Michael: The main character, Ben, says toward the end of the book: “This past year has been one of the best I’ve ever known. There’s a terrible war going on over our heads, and all around us, and yet personally, I’m more at peace now than I’ve ever been.” Is that how you’re feeling now about your life as an American?
Mark: As a first-generation American, I’ve never taken my identity for granted. When I was a young man, I explored Canada as an alternative homeland during the Vietnam War and applied for landed immigrant status. Though my father was deeply critical of U.S. foreign policies, he urged me not to give up my citizenship. “You’ll never feel fully at home anywhere else, and if you want to make change, you need to be in the belly of the beast.” In May 1968, I traveled to Hanoi at a time when few Americans visited North Vietnam, our designated enemy.
I expected my Vietnamese guides to hand me instructions for how best to undermine U.S. war plans. But my lead guide told me that being ashamed of my country was self-defeating. “That’s your first mistake,” he said. “You can’t change your own people till you first learn to love them.”
I’ve spent the succeeding six decades attempting to do just that, not primarily through politics but through personal contact, one heart to another, affirming whatever values we still share as fellow pilgrims finding our way together in an endlessly uncertain world. I don’t see this as a uniquely American mission, nor do I view this country as an anointed “City on the Hill.” One of the greatest challenges we face in the coming years will be to come to terms with the vast damage to our stature and the world’s trust in American leadership being wrought by this administration. Regrowing community and democracy from its roots at the local level is our most promising means of renewing the best qualities of Americans, and for that matter, everyone who happens to live here.
Michael: In the novel’s Afterword, you note that you wrote the book partially as personal therapy. You’ve been struggling with a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma (which killed one of my grandfathers, by the way), and you found writing as a way to reduce the pain. Tell us more about that, and how are you doing?
Mark: When I was first diagnosed with blood cancer, I was in paralyzing pain. But I picked up the thread of a story I had begun to write as a film treatment, but had set aside a few years earlier. Channeling my positive imagination, I was so drawn into the drama that spontaneously emerged that I ceased feeling pain. As the Buddhists say, “Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is optional.” I now view my cancer as something of a gift, in that responding to it with resilience, resourcefulness, and cherishing all that remains to love has made this my most precious time of life. On my eightieth birthday, I realized that I had a choice in the time remaining to me—to rust in decline, rot in regret, or ripen into fullness as all plants do in their final phase of life, when they blossom and scatter seeds. In this last lap, I feel a serene urgency to complete my life’s work, which is to encourage us to be here for one another when and where we’re most needed and to live joyful, wholehearted lives in a heartbroken world.
Michael: You also share in the Afterword that you and your wife have spent much of your lives living off the grid in northern California, growing your own food, generating your own energy, and being as self-reliant as possible. You write, “We aren’t survivalists but communitarians.” If the rest of the country were as self-reliant as you’ve tried to be, would the calamities discussed in your book be less likely? Is personal and neighborhood resilience our best defense against war and tyranny?
Mark: In the 1970s, as part of the back-to-the-land movement, my wife and I seceded from the mainstream culture and modern world. Instead, we built a self-reliant homestead seven miles off the grid, growing most of our own food, raising goats for milk and cheese, ducks for eggs, and bees for honey. Living simply and largely independently turned out to be a complicated affair, but it was also immensely rewarding. After twenty years, we moved two hours north to a seaside village. There, we built a new home and planted extensive gardens looking south and west across the Pacific.
Alas, the semi-independent lives we fashioned for ourselves would never be possible for masses of people to adopt, nor would they be willing to sacrifice conveniences to which they’re accustomed. But we need not go to such extremes to live rewarding lives and be here for one another. Resilience, self-reliance, and mutual aid can be cultivated in a wide range of circumstances, including urban neighborhoods.
The setting of Cherish is not some countercultural utopia; most of those eventually collapse under the burden of their unrealistic expectations. Cherish describes a pragmatic response to a prolonged emergency in a “left-behind” rural heartland community with no grand vision of its destiny but a strong sense of place and rootedness. Residents of Acton, Iowa, discover, improvise, and invent the elements of a shared life from their highly imperfect circumstances, doing what works and discarding what doesn’t. In the process, they come to cherish one another and appreciate what they’ve created together.
Michael: As you know, I’ve recently prepared an analysis for the Mayor of Irvine, California, laying out how that city could save tens of billions of dollars in the next twenty years by solarizing every building and becoming energy self-reliant. One thing I like about your book is that it adds political and social reasons for communities to defect from the electrical grid. Would you agree that our current system of utility monopolies and a nationally interconnected grid is obsolete?
Mark: Your study of Irvine’s potential for energy independence is a crucial roadmap in the decades-long development of both the transformative technologies and democratizing potential of a decentralized grid. For reasons both good and bad, the utility grids will remain the primary energy source for the majority of customers. But even utilities are coming to recognize that partnering rather than competing with distributed energy sources, primarily solar + batteries, better serves both. At the same time, safeguarding electric power at the local level to meet critical services is becoming ever more essential as cyberattacks and overstretched utility grids reveal their innate fragility. Here too, going local for these essential needs is strategically smart as a means to strengthen resilience.
In addition, if locally built, financed, owned, and operated, community and municipal microgrids could generate substantial income to fund services that currently languish for lack of financial support. The best single source for techniques and strategies that are rapidly expanding distributed power at local levels is Elisa Wood’s Energy Changemakers.
Michael: Another theme of your book is the importance of what cityfolk call “the countryside.” During COVID-19, many Americans left the cities and resettled in rural counties. Your book suggests that to survive disasters ahead, strong communities will need the capacity to grow their own food. Do you see the possibility of a Rural Renaissance ahead?
Mark: Yes, I do. Even the limited supply chain disruptions and fertilizer spikes triggered by the Iran War have raised food prices beyond the reach of many consumers in this country and still more worldwide. And they are just a foretaste of what’s to come as wars proliferate, economies become more unstable, crops fail, and climate catastrophes intensify (with extreme heat, drought, floods, famines, climate refugees, hurricanes, and typhoons). Growing your own, not just for yourself but with and for your community or neighborhood, will become not just a hobby but a crucial survival strategy.
Here is where “left-behind” communities possess an initial advantage over superstar cities. They’ve been growing food for the rest of us for generations and have developed a cultural ethos of hard work, self-reliance, mutual aid, and closeness to the land. But even they will need to relearn how to grow diverse crops in place of the few monocrop commodities (wheat, corn, soybeans) that agribusiness has driven them into. I know from experience that you don’t learn how to grow food overnight. It takes a lot of patience and persistence, so now is the time to start learning. Still more importantly, we need to support the rapid expansion of small-scale, diverse, regenerative agriculture in our own neighborhoods and communities—and we need to be prepared to spend more for its better quality and more local genesis.
For these and many other reasons, I do indeed foresee a net migration to smaller cities and communities in more affordable regions like the Midwest. It’s already happening and could revitalize some who have long felt neglected and disrespected. But we don’t have much time. Having to learn how to grow food, work together, and build locally governed institutions where they have long atrophied on the fly, as the characters in Cherish must do, makes the transition that much more challenging. At the same time, we humans often don’t make major changes in our ways of doing and thinking till circumstances force us to change. Cherish is part novel, part roadmap for building community resilience in advance of probable collapse. It includes resource and discussion guides to help communities and neighborhoods design and implement their own locally adapted resilience strategies.
Michael: Finally, I know you share my view that a key shift in our behavior to make our world more resilient is local investment. How have you sought to invest in your community in recent years?
Mark: For most of the past three decades, I’ve lived life in two very different worlds, partly in the back of beyond and partly in cosmopolitan capitals. I’ve been something of a country mouse/city mouse. I had to live this double life in large part because I needed to earn a living from elsewhere, across the country, and around the world. But I was also drawn to both nature in the raw and human culture at its most rarefied. I founded and ran locally based public media organizations that reached out to the wider world, placing fresh, better-informed voices on the airwaves, produced and hosted a nationally syndicated radio program, and wrote a globally syndicated column on world affairs.
With the onset of cancer, I’ve chosen to reground myself full-time in my own local community on the far north coast of California. I’ve reinvested myself in all things local while retaining and deepening connections with friends and colleagues from elsewhere whom I haven’t seen in person in half a century. I shop locally whenever I can. I cherish walking into a local organic supermarket (and there are many hereabouts) or strolling through the Saturday farmers market, greeting farmers, friends old and new, and buying veggies I don’t grow myself. I’m finally home, and there is no sweeter feeling on earth.
SPONSOR CORNER
The National Coalition for Community Capital (NC3) is dedicated to educating, advocating, and activating community capital and serves as MSJ’s fiscal sponsor. Thank you for being a part of a growing movement! Contact NC3 for support in integrating local investing in your work: info@nc3now.org.
NEW INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Below is our list of recently posted investment opportunities across the United States. Please note that our listing of these opportunities does not constitute an endorsement. Remember that all investments carry risk. Click on the hyperlinks and read the details carefully before investing.
Use the map below to help you find an investment opportunity near you. Each issue, we’ll highlight about a half dozen active campaigns.
COMPREHENSIVE LISTINGS
Click the images below to view our comprehensive list of investment opportunities, organized by theme or region.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES
INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES BY KEY THEMES
✔️ Energy 💡
✔️ Food & Farming 🌱
✔️ Housing 🏡
INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES BY REGION
✔️ Great Lakes
✔️ Mid-Atlantic
✔️ Midwest
✔️ New England
✔️ Rocky Mountains
✔️ South
✔️ Southwest
✔️ West
FUNDS OPEN TO GRASSROOTS INVESTORS
The following is our first draft of funds that invest in local businesses and are open to non-accredited investors. Please help us add to this list!
MSJ & PARTNER EVENTS
July 7: A New Model for Reparations Finance - Virtual Event
July 9: Securing What You Built - Employee Ownership for Chicago’s North Side - Virtual Event
July 13: Mondays with Michael - Virtual Event
July 15: What Does a Good Housing “Impact Investment” Look Like? - Virtual Event
July 23: Fueling Local Clean Energy: ILSR’s Energy Democracy Initiative - Virtual Event
August 11 - 13: Funders on Farms: Investing in a Resilient Food System - In-Person Event (Ancram, NY)
JOBS BOARD
American Sustainable Business Network: Communications Coordinator
Mid Hudson Energy Transition: Program Director, Lending and Community Capital
BECOME A MAIN STREET CHAMPION
Whatever your interest or ambition, we invite you to “go public” to help others in your region find you, scheme with you, and start a local investment movement in your community. We aim to identify dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of Main Street Champions like you in every corner of the globe. Together, we can move our hard-earned savings from Wall Street to Main Street, putting them to work in our own communities. Fill out the intake survey below to join this growing cohort!
About The Main Street Journal
The Main Street Journal aims to catalyze the movement of $50 trillion from Wall Street to Main Street, facilitating economic development and economic justice. It’s sponsored by the National Coalition for Community Capital. We welcome feedback on all aspects, from our design to our content. Please send your ideas to Jen Risley at jen@main-street-journal.com.
If you would like to support our work, please use the button below. Thank you!
Our Team:
Michael Shuman – MSJ Publisher
Paul Spinrad - Decent Tuesdays Writer & Editor
Jen Risley - MSJ Editor
Wendy Wasserman - Strategic Advisor
PARTNERS
Abrams+Angell | American Independent Business Alliance | Candide Group | Capital for Change | Capital Institute | Community-Vision Solutions | Cordata Capital | Council Fire | Crowdfund Better | Crowdfund Capital Advisors | Democracy Collaborative | Eleanor LeCain | Exit to Community Collective | Fair Food Network | Garlic and Roses | Impact Finance Center | ImpactPHL | Initiative for Local Capital | Institute for Local Self-Reliance | The Kassan Group | Longfellow Health Clubs | Mission Driven Finance | National Coalition for Community Capital | Natural Investments | Neighborhood Associates | Neighborhood Economics | New Majority Capital | Next Egg | Nonprofit Quarterly | Ownership America | Ownership Capital Lab | Ownership Matters | Partnership for Southern Equity | PathLight Law | Project Equity | Project for Public Spaces | Prospera Partners | Raise Green | Revalue | Rising Tide Capital | Schumacher Center for a New Economics | Shelterforce | Slow Money | SOCAP | Sun Valley Institute for Resilience | The Super Crowd Inc. | Sustainable Business Network of MA | Transform Finance | Uwharrie Bank | Village Well | Zebras Unite
We welcome any nonprofit or for-profit entity committed to local investment as a partner. If your organization is interested, please contact Jen Risley at jen@main-street-journal.com.