Santa Fe Time Bank Where the Common Currency Is Community
BY GERSHON SIEGEL
1980
when
Edgar
Such is our “freedom”: that we
Cahn lay in a hospi-
citizens have long indulged our
tal bed recovering from
maverick-like behaviors to such
a heart attack, horrified
an extent that we have become a
at how dependent he’d
population of loners. Many of us
become on paid caregivers, an
now find ourselves isolated from
epiphany hit him: The market-
any real community that offers
place demands that the health care industry treat patients as mere commodities. Focusing on social justice issues is nothing new to Cahn. He became
any real help the way real neighborhoods once did. Cahn recognized the need for a creative way to reweave community. This recogni-
co-founder of the Antioch School of Law, dedicated
tion led him to conceive of what he called a “time
to producing public service attorneys, after witness-
bank.” A rather simple concept of trading time for
ing first-hand that Great Society era funds—once
services rendered, time banks differ from a barter sys-
allocated for social services to eliminate poverty and
tem because time cannot be taxed (at least not yet).
racial injustice—were drying up.
Time bank members accept that the other members
It is not just that America lacks the political will
have services of value to offer and that everyone’s
to help its underserved citizenry. Whatever social
time is of equal value. When members give their
infrastructure we once had to enable that help has
offered services, they earn units of time, or “time dol-
been eroded by a government now more concerned
lars,” which are recorded by the time bank. Rather
with padding its military budget and the corpora-
than by gold or silver, time dollars are backed by the
tions that feed on it than serving its own population.
services members offer.
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