The videographer David Faltskog recently put together a video of Scott and Lisa Carrino, co-owners of the Round House Cafe, and I wanted to share it with you. Many of you contributed to the Carrino’s gofundme campaign to help them buy the cafe building, which their landlord has put up for sale.
This is a story about community, and so many of you – I think we are a community here – related to that and responded to it. Scott and Lisa have raised more than $31,000 in less than two weeks, I thought it be valuable for you to hear them talk about community in their own words. They will have more than a fighting chance to buy their cafe building or find a new location.
Scott and Lisa have devoted their lives to the idea of community, and the community is responding. People come into the cafe every day with checks and $5 and $10 bills. Here, we are fighting for community.
For the past half century, the governing political and agricultural doctrine has been in economist and government offices, in universities and corporate suites has been that there are too many people on the farm and too few people in rural America to function efficiently in the new global economy.
This idea has helped to spark one of the great migrations in human history – tens of millions of people moving from rural communities to the city.
It has devastated towns and villages and cities all across America,and left them struggling to keep community, more desperately needed than ever.
Today, with thousands of farm families and countless rural workers losing their farms and jobs every week, the economists and politicians still maintain, as they have always maintained, that these people are to blame, they deserve to fail for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because they are the least efficient producers, and that the country as a whole is better off for their suffering and failure.
And then, the politicians and the reporters and the economists are stunned to learn that people are hurt and angry.
Scott and Lisa Carrino stand for something else, something better and hopeful. They are not lamenting the loss of community, they are seeking to return it to us. Thanks for supporting them in the selfless way that you have. I thought you might like to hear from them directly. They speak from the heart, and in their own words.