As we near our milestone of 10 tons of reusable wood and glass saved from landfills, women of the Old Window Workshop are celebrating our skills, knowing that our work can save our environment while we provide for our families.   

And this is our challenge:  Educate all who would replace our environment with concrete, fake wood, shiny vinyl and triple plate glass that the true energy savings is in preserving and re-using what already exists.   

This is our calling:  “As we work for a more sustainable environment, we will create a more just economy.”

Now, please take time to read the article in YES Magazine by Penn Loh about the new economy of cooperation and watch the “Real to Reel” TV coverage of the OId Window Workshop.

I want this blog to be useful to people who create jobs that build opportunities starting at the bottom rung of our economic system.  It is here that good jobs can create a more sustainable environment and simultaneously, a more just economy.

This letter is one that I wrote to thank the people who have supported me and the idea of Old Windows New Jobs during this first four years. 

Dear Ann, Ken, Rexene and Melinda, Jade Mortimer, Karen Ribeiro, Karen N., Jack G. and Fred Rose:

First of all, Happy 2013!  I hope your holidays were filled with joy, satisfying food and blessings deeply shared with family.

A new year is a good thing.  We all begin these with hope and determination—at least I do.  I feel wiser at the beginning of a new year than I do in the middle of it.  A new year is good for gleaning nuggets of wisdom based on things I tried to do the year, or years before.  January and February are like standing on a peak.  Everything is clear and the views are long.  I can see the path we’ve been walking on and I can see the next peak ahead although the terrain is not visible.

For me, the path we’ve shared started out in November of 2008 when, with the help of architect, Carole Vincze, I presented a paper at the International Greenbuild Conference in Boston, called “Global Warming and the Concentration of Poverty.”   7,000 people attended the conference.  Standing in front of 150 awake people from all over the country at 8:00 in the morning was terrifying.  The response I got during the Q & A was a turning point for me after years in construction.

You all, my trusted advisors, are the connection between heart and action. Jade, you introduced me to the integrity of natural materials and work by hand.  In my mind you set the standard for faithful historic preservation of windows.  When I began to think about the Roosevelt CCC idea that jobs could save the environment and decrease people’s suffering from poverty, Melinda Pellerin-Duck encouraged me first by connecting job training for inner-city women. Thank you for letting me know that educational institutions could be called upon.  Ann Lentini, my mentor, picked up, as you always do, when a good idea seems to be faultering for lack of know-how.  Thank you for leading the first public grant and recognition in Westfield.  Karen Ribeiro, you provided the impetus for the idea as a viable business prospect for women.  Thank you for making it real. Ken White, you perceived it and acted quickly in tangible ways to support the vision and helped me realize the idea for job creation had real currency.  Thank you for believing in it.  Rexene Picard, thank you for seeing the potential for creating jobs and for lending your workforce development perspective to those initial organizational efforts.  Karen N., you provided the example of re-purposing and heritage crafts as contemporary livelihood.  Thank you for cranking out the financials for Common Capital.  Jack, I thank you for your artist’s keen vision, your craftsman’s practicality and your critical insights.  Fred, thank you for telling me that I had a good story.  The concept of job creation as political action is empowering.

Some great things have happened since 2009.  Karen Ribeiro, her husband, Paul, Karen and Jack drew the outline of a production operation at the Westfield Energy Efficiency Trades Center.  When Sullivan Transportation needed their space back, I was prepared to relocate to a workshop space in Springfield in the heart of one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country—also rich in workforce history.

During the past two years, I’ve been inspired by women who fight daily to claim their place in a harsh economy.  {Women} have taught me that the idea of self-employment or cooperative worker-ownership is all well and good, but if there is no regular and adequate income, there is nothing.  The Trades Center first and then the Old Window Workshop have been a gift to introduce me to these great women.  I’m lucky to have had a year working with my hands and simple tools, with the heartwood of very old trees and with reflections of light surprising me from mouth-blown glass.

Every year flashes another beam of light on the path ahead. I feel like we have seen the child, the adolescent and now the young adult of this seed I think of as “old-windows-for-a-just-economy.”   Maturity will come when decision-makers see old buildings in “gateway cities” as a deep reservoir of natural resources to create jobs, save energy and save the planet by reducing, re-using and recycling.  We need to rely on what already exists, not create new things that cannot be repaired.  Economically, the goal of manufacturing is to “increase worker-productivity,” in other words, reduce labor costs.  Economically, the goal of preservation is to rely solely on labor.  We already have the materials.

Thank you.  Thank you. Thank you for sharing this with me.  I am forever indebted to you.

I would like to dedicate my next blog post to you using this letter.