Introduction to Joelw99

Hello. My name is Joel Williamson. I grew up in Spokane Washington and also currently live there. My interest in studying sustainable business at BGI stems from a life unfulfilled by the current structure of our society. My great grandfather came to the US in the early 1900's trained as a master gardener. He ended up settling down in Spokane and founding a flower growing greenhouse business called Jacobson's Greenhouses in 1917. The business was passed through the generations and my brother and I were born on the family land with my father and mother the primary partners. It was a fantastic childhood! We had a wonderful place to live and play with family members and life-long employees always watching out for us.

Then, in the early 1990's times really started to get tough. I saw my father become more and more stressed as he tried everything to keep our entire livelihood together. By 1998, on the brink of bankruptcy, we had to close the family business and lay off all of our employees. This destroyed our family in many ways which I still deal with today.

It was not until much later in life that I realized the larger economic context within which our struggle played out. I began to learn about the conglomeration of various firms in all industries. Grocery stores were the ones that had an effect on us. As they got bigger and out-competed the local stores, they also stopped buying local products. This really effected our business as our biggest buyers vanished from our community. Then in 1994 and 1995, NAFTA and CAFTA hit, changing the game completely. Now the rose industry in the US could not compete with the tariff free imports, and four years later, we were out of business.

Through all of this continuous conglomeration of industries and outsourcing of jobs, the wealthy make more money and the rest of us make less and less, if we have a job at all. So, I have enrolled at BGI to learn as much as I can so that I can build a local, resilient and equitable economy in Spokane.

 Rob Krassowski, 13, and Andy Loomer, 12, members of Boy Scout Troop 333, help clean up greenhouse glass broken during a severe hail storm at Jacobsen’s in July 1995 in the Moran Prarie area of Spokane.