“I learned about your cafe from Jon and Maria who are my FB friends. Their postings help sustain me, and your cafe helps sustain them. Isn’t the web of life beautiful? Best wishes (from 2500 miles away).” Deborah.

That message had Scott in tears and I got a bit sniffly myself.

Thank you Deborah,  the web of life is beautiful. You can not know what that means to both of us, and to Maria as well. And thanks to the hundreds of people who have read this and answered the call for community.

You can read the story of the Round House Cafe on the gofundme site. It is, for me,  an important cause, part of a much larger issue, the devastating loss of community in rural cities and towns all over America. One can see the anger and hurt in the political campaign, and see it also in the outpouring of $5 and $10 donations coming to the Round House from all over America.

I’m sure there are people scratching their heads in this new fund-raising world and wondering why they should send their hard-earned money to a cafe in upstate New York.

A good and fair question. I believe there are good and powerful reasons. You have to make up your own mind, many have.

 The struggle to save the Round House is much bigger than the cafe itself, or our wonderful small town. We are making a stand for community.

To those of us who celebrate and uphold the traditions and values that influenced the shaping our country and our society, and the founding of our democracy, it is heartbreaking to witness how politicians and economists have enshrined the principle of profit. Greed is the ultimate justifier, rationalizer and explainer of the destruction of the daily lives of so many  good and trusting people.

As countless thousands of small farms and local businesses in rural America of all kinds fall under the onslaught of the new economics – corporatism, box stores, the new global economy – what is called progress and growth – the economists sit in their academic offices and the politicians in their plush capitol, telling us for years that this is all for the better, we will all eventually bask in the rain of money and prosperity.

But all around me, the lives of the people waiting for their good jobs are winding down, running out. For them, there is no relief in sight.

We forget to ask: what are people for? We know what profits are for, we know where they go. They do not come to our town, or to yours either, most likely. Is anything in America as important as profits and more profits?

We know know that for rural America, this promise of success had been one of the great lies of modern times. A lot of people are richer than ever, but you will find very of few of them in the devastated towns and communities between the coasts. They have been left behind in the new prosperity.

Here, those who fall are not statistics and data in the flood of studies and reports, they are our friends, neighbors, children of God, people whose families have worked their farms for generations,  small businesses that have served their communities for centuries, the trusting citizens of our country. This is not an abstract idea for me, I see the casualties every day, so does everyone who lives in what we used to call the country.

When the farms fail, and as communities lose their institutions and economic support, as callings become part-time jobs in fast food franchises and giant warehouses, as people fall farther and farther behind and lead lives of struggle and fear, as the children are forced to leave their families and migrate to big cities for lousy jobs working for people who care nothing for them, as all of rural America now sits condemned in the shadow of free markets and the new economy, the media report from their big-city studios that there will be some winners and some losers.

Tsk, tsk, say the politicians. Progress is never free or easy, the world is changing.

  Out the country, where America was built and conceived, they are still looking for the winners.

You cannot see these people from a lobbyist’s office in Washington, or an academic’s perch in New York, or a talk show panel in Washington. Nobody there seems to have noticed that they are out there.

These people have deferred for years to their leaders and assumed the experts and politicians and academics knew what they were talking about and were telling them the truth. They believed the promises made to them.  And today, everyone is stunned at their anger and disappointment. They have lost so much, in my town,  they do not mean to lose their cafe.

The Round House Cafe is our remaining place to find community, connection, good and warm food, much love and warmth.

People need those things.

For many, in my town and elsewhere, the Round House has become a symbol of the rape of community that has to stop.  We have a Subway, and if the Round House goes away, that will be our community gathering place.

Enough is enough. We have lost our hospital, many of our mills and factories, our pharmacy. We have lost enough.  The economists don’t come to the farms, to the small towns. We are determined not to lose our cafe as well, the last stand against the box stores and food franchises that gobble up community and spit it out. Communities bleed.

Thanks so much for helping in this fight,  Scott and Lisa Carrino have earned almost about a third of their goal in a week. This money matters, $5 and $10 contributions are just as important as bigger ones.  People are independent here, but this small town can’t do it alone.

If you can and so desire, you can help save the Round House Cafe here.