| Fire in the Lake by Ko Imani [email protected] Gay Brownies? Creating Change Through Queer Social Entrepreneurism Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, just north of New York City, is a $5Million business. Its ovens have raised cakes and tarts that fed Presidents and First Ladies. A special cake made last year for Lincoln Center fed some 8,300 party guests. Over 2million pounds of brownies a year travel from Greyston Bakery to Ben & Jerry�s, enriching their Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream and Chocolate Fudge Brownie Yogurt, as well as their Half Baked, Jerry�s Jubilee and Blondies are a Swirls Best Friend. Maya Lin, the gifted artist/architect of the Vietnam Memorial, is designing Greyston�s new facility. I�d say that Greyston Bakery is doing okay. Greyston Bakery is a charity. In 1982, one-time aerospace engineer and Zen Buddhist teacher Roshi Bernie Glassman (�Roshi� is a formal title for high level Zen teachers) and his students borrowed $300,000 to open a small storefront bakery in the Bronx that they hoped would become profitable enough to free up its members from their 9 to 5 jobs. They would earn their own daily bread by turning out muffins, scones, and cakes for the neighborhood and for upscale restaurants in Manhattan. As the Bakery grew, Glassman and his wife, Greyston co-founder Sensei Sandra Jishu Holmes, expanded its mission to include providing jobs to residents of the neighboring inner city area. These individuals were deemed "hard to employ" due to a lack of education and skills, and histories of homelessness, drug addiction and incarceration. From this social mission, the Greyston Foundation evolved, a Yonkers-based community-development organization serving the economically disenfranchised. Mostly using Greyston Bakery�s profits, Greyston Foundation has built 140 housing units for the homeless, the elderly and low-income families; opened the largest AIDS treatment program in Westchester county; offered a child-care facility for working families and families moving from welfare to work; and created interfaith forums for spirituality, whether it's a council meeting for the community to share openly or pastoral counseling for people with HIV/AIDS. Now imagine for a moment if the queer community used entrepreneurship in the same way, to solve some of our problems and reduce the reliance of our nonprofits on external sources of funding. Take The Ruth Ellis Center in Detroit, Michigan, as one important example of an agency that could be supported by a for-profit endeavor. The Ruth Ellis Center provides support services and temporary housing, a "transitional living facility" for queer youth abandoned by their parents because of their sexual orientation, and also operates a street outreach center in Highland Park. Except for their same-gender-loving orientation and fluidity of gender identity, the population that The Ruth Ellis Center serves is similar to Greyston�s: economically disenfranchised; skill-less or hard-to-employ; frequently runaway or homeless; ostracized and suffering. Let�s call the Ruth Ellis kind of client-base �Population Q� as opposed to �Population A,� the middle- and upper- class queers that many of our nonprofit agencies primarily serve. There�s no obvious reason that the model that has worked so well for Roshi Glassman and Greyston couldn�t work for The Ruth Ellis Center and its Population Q. Wouldn�t it be wonderful if an enterprising queer person decided to start a supportive business connected to The Ruth Ellis Center? Criteria for the business would be that it should: 1. Do no harm; 2. Become a vehicle for training and personal growth; 3. Holistically support a growing Population Q; 4. Build community between queers and straights; 5. Be accessible to those without a background in the field; 6. Create jobs for many people; 7. Become a venture in which they could excel; and, 8. Combine engagement, a commitment to social action, and environmental and economic sustainability. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Ally investors could ensure the health and growth of the queer youth Center by investing their money in a business, the profits from which would support the Center. Some examples of businesses that could be appropriate vehicles to train, employ and empower Population Q, and at the same time finance The Ruth Ellis Center�s drop-in center, support services and transitional living facility, include: Landscaping and Brownfield Reclamation; Catering; Graphic, Advertising or Website Design; Marketing Research and, of course, a Bakery. This kind of empowerment program is organized to break cyclical poverty and homelessness. It could provide long-term solutions to the immediate challenges that queer youth face on the streets and keep many from turning to survival sex to afford housing and food. A holistic program that could address not only Population Q�s immediate psychological, social and emotional needs but their long term housing and economic needs as well might be the determining factor between death and life, suffering and joy, despair and hope. "Our culture doesn't just throw out things," Glassman writes, "we throw out people as well. But just because someone is homeless, or because someone has AIDS, or is mentally handicapped or gay or black or white or old or whatever, doesn't mean the person is garbage. We all have something to offer." Dr. Kofi Adoma, The Ruth Ellis Center, 16525 Woodward Ave., Suite 19, Highland Park, Mich., 48293, or by phone at (313) 867-6936 Julius Walls, Jr., CEO, Greyston Bakery Inc., 114 Woodworth Avenue, Yonkers, NY 10701-2509, or call Toll Free: 1-800-BUY-CAKE, Phone: 914-375-1510, Fax: 914-375-1514 Information about Greyston Bakery and Greyston Foundation in this suggestion came from Bernie Glassman�s highly-recommended books, Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life that Matters and Bearing Witness: A Zen Master�s Lessons in Making Peace, as well as a feature article in the July 2001 issue of Shambhala Sun magazine by Samuel Fromartz and websites associated with Greyston: www.greystonbakery.com www.greyston.org Other recommended reading: Robin Hood was Right: A Guide to Giving Your Money for Social Change by Chuck Collins, et. al., and Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart [Return to LGBT Archive] |