But there was no sense of menace or threat, and we were clearly expected. I heaved the screen through the front door, past the painted breeze-block walls and into what was evidently the ‘community room’. It was the kind of green-painted, fluorescent-lighted, orange-curtained, lino-covered hole you would expect in a block like this, with piles of elderly plastic chairs covered with specks of whitewash, some folded tables and a small framed copy of Leonardo’s Last Supper which looked as though it had come out of an old calendar. A notice informed us that ‘handwashing prevents infection’ and a small digital clock told us that the time was 3.52 – which it wasn’t.
Fourteen or so black women meandered into the room, with children attached and a faint air of having better things to do. Apart from the time dollar promoters and what seemed liked a whole coachload of housing rights activists, there was only one man. It wasn’t quite clear why he was there: he was in his seventies and evidently had not lived in Arthur M. Capper for some years.
‘Where’s the free food?’ said one child near me. His mother in an elderly T-shirt flapped a hand at him, but began looking quietly round the room herself.
‘It’s not actually free. Nothing in this life is free,’ said one of the housing activists glumly. ‘We know that.’
By the time Clarence rose to speak, explaining that time dollars were a ‘mechanism that brings people together’, the room was extremely noisy. Babies were banging the table, mothers were disciplining their charges, and the air of a 5 p.m. maths lesson pervaded the room. ‘You folks are in a state of dependency, dependent on the government to provide food stamps and shelter,’ he said. ‘But we don’t want to be in this business any more. We are trying to figure out how to get a little piece of money that you can save.’
As a method of introducing new kinds of money, it was curiously crablike. The mothers were shifting in their seats, eyeing the door for signs of the free supper. As one of only three whites in the room, I took on a studied air of absence. The meeting clearly wasn’t going terribly well. Then it was Edgar’s turn. I wondered how a white Jewish law professor would go down in a place like south-east Washington, especially in his habitual white polo-necked shirt. But I need not have worried. He spoke calmly and very simply, and he worked his audience like an old-fashioned politician.
‘My message is simply that we all need each other,’ he said. The women stilled for a second. His directness seemed to carry a little weight. ‘Everybody in this room knows what it’s like having to be in at least two places at one time. If you only had somebody you could turn to, it would be better – but you don’t want to ask for charity and you don’t want to be indebted.’ People had stopped shifting in their seats. Edgar’s approach was having some effect.
‘Some years ago I began to think: why can’t we create our own kind of money – a kind of money just between ourselves? A little bit like a blood bank. Why can’t we create some kind of time bank?’
And then a risk, but a calculated political one. ‘I was married to a black woman, and when we were first married, I knew what it meant for neighbours to help out neighbours. This is what neighbours have always done for neighbours. And you never had to declare that to the authorities. We can rebuild that sense of community we used to have.’
It was quietly spoken, mild and modest – but a bravura piece of politics for all that.
‘It is a kind of bank where you deposit care and giving,’ said Edgar, quoting Ralph Nader. ‘When you need care and giving you can withdraw it. In thirty-eight states where people have been doing this, nobody has been ripped off and nobody has been mugged. I can’t tell you that they are all angels, but I can tell you that people don’t mess with the people they have to live with.’
I wasn’t so sure about this, but the women carried on listening. Their range of dangling green, pink, blue and yellow earrings were uncharacteristically still. Even the children were a little quieter.
‘Nowadays all the rewards are for doing bad, and there are very few rewards for just being a decent neighbour,’ he said. ‘I know they say you can go to heaven, but I want you to get those rewards before that.’
It was convincing, inspiring even, but also perhaps a little confusing out of context.
‘What’s this got to do with setting up our food bank?’ asked one of the audience. Edgar had reckoned without ‘Miss Mary’, the tough-minded residents’ council chair, who had her own very clear political sense. She knew what she could sell, and she didn’t think she could sell her committee the idea of their new food bank being conditional on earning time dollars.
‘We wanted to be able to give the food away free,’ she said. Other voices followed, as they began to see the snag.
‘What happens if some people are dishonest?’ asked one.
‘Some of us got our food stamps five days late this month, and we need to be able to use the food bank.’
‘Yeah, I ain’t got mine yet!’ As in all public meetings about new ideas, all the questions were directly relevant, but jumbled up. So were the answers.
Clarence weighed in: ‘This time bank idea is something where people can begin to do things for each other in a very positive way. There are different activities which need doing which we can help do for each other – or get our friends to do it.’
‘I don’t have no friends,’ said one of the more obstreperous women. ‘I don’t need no friends.’
This was the signal for an enormous argument about something completely different. The woman with no friends stormed that her mother was in hospital and was losing her flat and nobody was helping. The rest of the audience ignored her. It was impossible to follow exactly what was happening. Mary braved her denunciations and said she would help tomorrow. The woman with no friends stalked out of the room in tears, knocking over a few of the plastic chairs as she went.
There was silence for a moment, but it was clear the meeting was over. Large boxes of chicken and coleslaw from the Roy Rogers chain had arrived and the children were queuing up. Here was the free food. Then in the corner of the room, as everybody else began to clear away, the real negotiations were beginning. Edgar, Clarence, Tina from Ohio and Mary huddled together looking serious. Mary’s big bunch of keys jangled at her wrist, while her small son Michael wandered about in an Old Navy T-shirt at her feet.
‘The question is, can people with time dollars get anything extra from the food bank in return for being good neighbours?’ said Edgar, setting out his case.
‘No,’ said Mary. It just wouldn’t work. It would be favouritism. She wouldn’t dare.
‘What do you think about the idea?’ said Tina sensibly, and immediately the atmosphere lightened.
‘I love it, but –’ said Mary. ‘But I wouldn’t dare.’
There was going to be no movement. Edgar signed the papers anyway, so that the Time Dollar Network would sponsor the food bank at Arthur M. Capper. He would return to the issue later.
III
There is a problem about all this, isn’t there? Old people may want lifts to the doctor or supportive phone calls. Parents may want nappies or groceries. But the last thing you want as a sixteen-year-old is children’s clothes or a lift to the local supermarket. If Edgar Cahn suddenly wanted to pioneer the idea of providing time dollars to America’s disaffected youth, in return for so-called altruistic behaviour, he needed to pump-prime his new economy with something different. Somehow the sixteen-year-olds would have to be persuaded that this was new money worth having.
The