The power that finance holds over the quality and direction of our lives cannot be overstated. It is the muscular heart whose every beat directly or indirectly pumps essential nourishment—money—into every one of society’s organs, be they private businesses, not-for-profit organizations or government departments performing essential services. Look at the organizations of people around us. Without investment, what moves? What works?

You might reason that a function so critical to our common welfare would be administered in the public interest by democratically accountable public authorities. In the United States, you would be wrong! Our system of banks, credit and money and the power to decide which human needs and desires receive precious investment and which do not is effectively controlled by unelected elites in the form of private banks. Their headquarters is Wall Street, not Washington, D.C. We need only consider the crumbling storefronts, sidewalks and roads in our towns or those nearby to grasp the ruinous consequences.

There is an alternative way of organizing our system of finance to meet the needs of our communities. A decentralized network of state-, county- and city-owned banks would scatter from sea to shining sea the God-like power currently monopolized by Wall Street, granting communities and the state and local governments that are supposed to support them the independent power to create the investment they need to build and maintain the infrastructure and industries that are essential to civilized life. This is finance operated as a supportive public utility, not a private, profit-making enterprise.

It’s not just a nice idea. Governments own and operate some 25 percent of banks worldwide. Economists credit these institutions with helping enable the dramatic economic successes in recent decades of capitalist countries like China, Brazil, Russia and India. Just one publicly-owned depository bank exists in the United States, however. After briefly taking power in the 1910s, the socialist Nonpartisan League established the Bank of North Dakota in that state to make affordable credit available to farmers who couldn’t afford the usurious interest rates charged by out-of-state banks. Conservatives preserved the state bank when they retook power years later and have used it to support the state’s economy ever since.

With the state’s tax revenue as its deposit base, the Bank of North Dakota works with privately-owned community banks to provide low-interest loans to people looking to start businesses, buy homes or attend college, as well as government agencies undertaking public projects, including disaster relief. The interest earned on these loans returns to the state as new, non-tax revenue that is available to support the public budget or increase the bank’s lending power. Rather than displace community banks, the Bank of North Dakota partners with them to increase their security and ability to lend, filling the gaps that otherwise would exist in the state’s financial infrastructure.

The Bank of North Dakota also acts to stabilize the state’s economy in the event of a national or international financial crash. During the Great Recession, North Dakota suffered no bank failures. It ran budget surpluses and maintained one of the nation’s lowest home foreclosure and unemployment rates. The cheap credit provided by the bank is ballast that keeps the state’s economy upright in a storm. And public money is protected from the stock market casino gambling that destroys economies, communities and lives.

Legal experts suggest that Dutchess County, the City of Poughkeepsie and other Hudson Valley governments could quickly establish their own banks. In many cases we would simply transfer taxpayer funds from Wall Street to our shiny new public financial institutions. Once there, our money can be put to work financing essential public goods, such as social housing and a transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy well ahead of targets set by New York State, all while creating jobs and generating wealth for our communities.

Banks situated within our communities and controlled by us can serve our needs and interests in ways that banks headquartered far away do not and cannot. If there is a future worth having, public banking will be part of it.

A version of this piece appeared in The Hudson Valley News

For two weeks in the seventh grade I was a football player in the making. Joining the team seemed like a natural step from the schoolyard scrimmages I enjoyed. As it turned out, I did not enjoy vomiting through a face mask in the late summer heat or being screamed at by a man I was doing all I could to please. When the players were exhausted and needed to rest, we were allowed only to kneel, never to sit on the ground; after all, we were being conditioned for violence. Shortly after I stopped attending practice, a friend who remained on the team informed me that the coach explained my absence to the other boys by calling me a “quitter”.

Trials of torture—physical and psychological—mark the American boy’s passage into manhood. Our heroes are supposed to be those who can endure the most pain. Though I largely escaped torment by organized athletics, I was not untouched by this madness. “The strongest among us at some point had to become the weakest,” I carved into my bedroom wall at least one year before I could carry a driver’s license. Many years later, when the chair of a humanities department at a prestigious New York university invited me to apply to his graduate studies program, his first selling point was that the experience would make me intellectually “tough”. For all kinds of American males, suffering is not just an unavoidable fact of life; it is an essential means of becoming.

Is it any wonder that women are wary of us? We emerge from these crucibles hardened not only to life’s adversities, but to the vulnerability of others, which makes it exceedingly difficult to form healthy relationships. If not corrected, the resulting isolation leaves us susceptible to the embrace of our culture’s casual sexism. In a minority of cases, factors combine to produce highly resentful, anti-social types who seek the gratification of dominance—or what a psychologist friend of mine simply calls “bigness”—through aggression or violence. These boys become bullies, rapists, neo-Nazis or mass shooters.

I never lost myself in violence, but the confidence, joie de vivre and easy fellowship I enjoyed during childhood turned bitter around age 20, when my family fell precipitously into medical and financial ruin and it became clear that no government, corporation or community would come to our rescue. I stalked the earth in a cloud of bitterness and fear, ready to explode and dress down with language any person who was unfortunate enough to fail my tests of decency or proper opinion. During this period, people I knew freely and intimately stopped coming around, including, of course, women whose friendships I cherished.

My deliverance from this evil was not guaranteed. By good fortune I met and was helped by a wise elder whose sensitive handling of the condition in which he found me commanded the respect and cooperation that my one-time football coach sought, briefly possessed and threw into the trash when he reduced my fellows and me to the status of base metals to be hammered into crude weapons; male objects shaped to feel little, hit hard and perhaps—in another time and place, as the dead poets of the first World War beg us to recognize—die if it serves the interests of our elders.

A few evenings ago I stopped by a friend’s home for conversation and a glass of wine. Her two-year-old son cried and cried when I appeared in the doorway. He knew the hour had come when his mother would abandon him to the darkness of his nursery. I was glad at his cries; they are appropriate to times of trouble. When he grows silent in years to come I will be concerned.

A version of this piece appeared in The Hudson Valley News

Elvin Earley is beaming, his eyelashes spread like palms open wide around the good news he is sharing. It’s a damp day in early December in rural northwest Ireland and the 41-year-old father and husband is telling of how a stint at the local Men’s Shed helped him recover the confidence he lost after becoming unemployed.

“It was a big boost to go from losing my job and being very depressed to learning carpentry, which I never knew before,” he says. “The lads here showed me how to put down wooden floors at home, which came out brilliant. Now when the missus says, ‘Elvin, we need to get someone to put up a shelf,’ I can say, ‘No we don’t. I can do that!’”

My friend Doris, who was hosting me on a working vacation on her farm, brought me to the Men’s Shed in the town of Boyle after hearing me talk about tool libraries, makerspaces and hackerspaces. With lifestyles increasingly organized around consumption, these places provide access to special equipment and a chance to become proficient in crafts that range from the practical to the artisanal. In English-speaking countries around the world, thousands of Men’s Sheds combine a similar mission with concern for the mental health and overall wellbeing of males who feel socially isolated or restless. In 2013, just before the Boyle shed opened, The Guardian newspaper described the groups as “lifesavers.” I’m interested in them because I think motivated people could bring their benefits to Hudson Valley communities.

“It’s a mix of people who are used to working and are now sitting at home with nothing to do, on social welfare or retired,” Elvin says of the group’s members. “The biggest part of depression and suicide is that people are on their own, with no one to talk to. But there’s nothing to be embarrassed about here. You can walk through that door, sit down for a cup of tea and a chat, learn something new and go home happy.”

“It’s a safe place for us, really,” he adds. “There’s no pressure.”

Tony Byrne, chairperson of the Boyle shed, showed us some of the goods the group produces for the community. “Something was said long ago by someone in a Men’s Shed,” he says in his office. “Men don’t talk face to face, but they do talk shoulder to shoulder.” Tony’s voice is soft and his multiple sclerosis means that almost every physical thing he does involves a slow effort. He shows us wooden flower boxes, pens and wine bottle holders; shelters for birds, bats and bees; picnic tables that cleverly fold into multiple configurations and “buddy benches” where children and adults can sit to signal to others that they’d like someone to talk to.

As a non-profit, the few dozen people who use the Men’s Shed meet the necessary expenses—for heat, electricity and “a drop of milk”—with donations and very modest charges on some of the goods they create. Nearly everything is donated by locals: couches and chairs; drills, a wood lathe and the makeup of a small recording studio; hardwood and nails; and a row of computers where elderly people learn to use Skype and other programs to stay in touch with far-off relatives.

The group’s youngest member is Sam Benfield, a 15-year-old boy whose single mother homeschools him miles out of town. “He was so quiet when he came here,” says Elvin. “He never really mixed with anyone. Now he’s outgoing and involved with everything and can help his mom around the house. She’s so proud of him. It gives him a bit of confidence.”

Are women allowed in the Men’s Shed? “Oh, absolutely,” Elvin says. “It’s not like we’re closed just because it’s called the Men’s Shed. It’s welcome to women, men, people of any race, culture or age; it doesn’t matter where you come from. And that’s the way Men’s Sheds should be all the time, wherever you go. Everyone’s welcome.”

A version of this piece appeared in the Hudson Valley News.

Elvis Ramos doesn’t sleep well. Some nights he dreams that he is permanently separated from his children, who are seven, eight and 10 years old. In other dreams he cannot find the employment he needs to support them, or they become casualties of Mexico’s drug war, which has killed or “disappeared” tens of thousands of people over the past 12 years.

Elvis is one of several thousand mid-Hudson Valley residents whose ability to continue living in the community that long ago became their home is threatened by President Trump’s decision to eliminate a federal program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Until late last year, the policy allowed some people who entered the country without authorization as minors to temporarily continue living and working in the United States.

What does Elvis see when he tries to imagine the future? “I don’t know,” he told me in early February through an uncomfortable smile. We were in the Newburgh office of Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson, a grassroots organization that works in mid-Hudson Valley communities to secure rights for working class people who face discrimination based on the color of their skin. “I’ve had my current job for eight years. It felt like I had some freedom. Now all seven members of my family and I could be sent to Mexico, where the only person I know is my grandmother.”

If he is deported, Elvis assumes he will have to find work as a farmer, a trade in which he has limited experience and no skills. He fears that if he and his children join his grandmother in the town of Matamoros, Puebla then they could be kidnapped for ransom and killed, as occasionally happens there. “Where would I get money to protect us?” he wonders. If his ex-wife is also forced to leave the United States, then their children may live with her, away from him, in another part of the country. “I don’t like to think about it,” he said.

Elvis’s parents, who are not U.S. citizens, brought his two brothers and him from Tijuana to the City of Newburgh 18 years ago when he was 11 years old. “My dad used to make cars,” he explained, “but there were no jobs down there anymore.” After graduating from high school Elvis spent a semester studying graphic design at Orange County Community College before deciding to drop out because of the financial burden it placed upon his parents. His unofficial residency meant that he had to pay expensive out-of-state tuition and his part-time job did not cover his expenses. In the years that followed he worked as a landscaper, a painter and a driver.

President Trump has suggested that he will not deport non-citizens whom the government previously protected and who are not charged with crimes. But Elvis is not comforted. “We applied to the program, so they have our information,” he said. “Where we live and where we work; they know how to find us. They said they wouldn’t use it to deport us, but everything can change.”

I asked him what he thought of the answer some people give when they are asked to explain why the United States should spend scarce public resources tearing apart families and disrupting the lives of peaceful people—that “we are a nation of laws” and “laws must be enforced.”

“I hear that a lot too,” he replied. “Yes, we’re a nation of laws, but we change our laws to meet the needs of justice.”

Near the end of our conversation I asked Elvis if anything gives him relief from the nightmares. After a quiet moment, he said: “When people who are not Hispanic reach out and try to help us, when I see them at rallies, it helps me feel less alone.”

A version of this piece appeared in the Hudson Valley News.

Like many who enter law enforcement, Jeff Kaufman joined the New York Police Department in 1980 because he wanted to serve his community. He left six years later because the state’s drug laws made that impossible.

“As cops we need to develop trust with the community to get to people who need our help and protect the public from violence,” Kaufman told me in late January. “We depend on the community to do our jobs, and the War on Drugs created an incredible source of distrust and corruption that made these problems impossible to fight.”

Since 2004 Kaufman has worked with the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, an international group of more than 1,000 current and former police officers, judges, prosecutors and other law enforcement professionals who advocate the legalization and control of all drugs as a means to justice and public safety.

Kaufman’s varied 40-year career gave him extensive experience with the problems of the poor. As a prosecutor with the N.Y.P.D.’s Legal Bureau in the mid-1980s, he helped the department seize the property of people who sold or used drugs. “We couldn’t catch the guys with the big bucks, so we went after little people,” he said. “We took their property, anything of value they had, and turned it into police resources.”

When he saw that he was harming people he intended to protect, he left the department to legally defend people accused of drug-related crime. In the mid-1990s he began to teach law to mostly black- and brown-skinned youths facing life sentences at Rikers Island, New York City’s main jail complex. Since the mid-2000s he has taught in public high schools.

“I don’t advocate drug use,” said Kaufman, anticipating his critics. “Some drug counselors think I’m insane. They ask how I could allow these things to be unleashed on our children.”

Those people have it backwards, Kaufman insists. Drugs today are far more dangerous than they need to be. And prohibition unleashed them upon children.

“Cigarettes and alcohol are legal and they are equally or more destructive than many drugs,” Kaufman explained. “Over the years we reduced cigarette use through a major public education campaign. We outlawed it in public buildings and other areas. In a world without prohibition, these regulations would clearly be in place, but in our current uncontrolled market, anyone who uses drugs is exposed to highly concentrated forms that are mixed with dangerous unknown substances. Some of these substances, such as fentanyl, can cause death.”

“Most of my students who use drugs don’t get them from their parents, relatives or friends, but from people who sell them. Now, a small supplier can’t compete in a regulated market. We don’t have people illegally selling alcohol or manufacturing cigarettes in mass quantities, do we? When the conditions that support a black market disappear, who is going to sell these drugs to children? A legal and fully-regulated market would ensure that clean substances are dispensed to informed adults.”

Kaufman says that controlled legalization would make communities less violent and more stable.

“You don’t need to go too far back in history to see that we reversed alcohol prohibition because of the problems it created,” he said. “People who were merely providing substances to people who sought them became criminals who turned to violence to maintain territories in markets. It tore society apart in absolutely awful ways.”

“Today, an incredibly large number of people who did no harm to others have criminal records merely because they used or sold drugs. The law prohibits these people from getting licenses and responsible jobs, so they become very difficult for society to deal with. Drug prohibition creates a cycle in which criminalized people who are excluded from the mainstream economy are pressured to turn to violence to support themselves. It destroys lives and cripples communities.”

Instead, Kaufman said “police should be taking care of bad guys and making neighborhoods habitable. Drugs are a medical problem. Our experience over the decades has shown that the criminal justice method has done nothing to control their supply or widespread use. And because this method diverts scarce department resources, police have fewer means to solve real crimes. Consider, for example, that New York City has a tremendous backlog of untested ‘rape kits’—collections of physical evidence gathered after an alleged sexual assault. If police spent anywhere near as much time investigating rape as they spend investigating drug crimes, many more rapists would be behind bars.”

“In a democracy, police serve the important function of representing the policy of elected government in community problems. But for a whole range of problems officers can’t do that because people are afraid they’ll be arrested for drugs. In the 75th Precinct, people in trouble would refuse to call for help because they didn’t trust us. After I left the department, I struggled thinking about encounters in which I could have been much more helpful to people.”

A version of this piece appeared in the Hudson Valley News.