Buy Nothing Day reports — London x2, Norwich, Wrexham, Liverpool & Manchester

“Take your clothes off! Swap them with your friends for FREE!” was the mes­sage from the Space Hijack­ers http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/welcome.html, who decid­ed to set up their clothes swap — “the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year” — on the low­er ground floor of TOPSHOP at Oxford Cir­cus (Lon­don). The idea was to demon­strate that “we don’t need to spend mon­ey we don’t have on things we don’t need.”

The action, designed as it was to sub­vert one of the icon­ic tem­ples of con­sumerism seemed to baf­fle police and did­n’t amuse the secu­ri­ty staff, who stopped me tak­ing pic­tures there. One oth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er was man­han­dled out of the store, but I was treat­ed very polite­ly, with sev­er­al secu­ri­ty men stand­ing between me and the action and telling me that pho­to­graph was not allowed. On of the store man­agers even offered to per­son­al­ly help me find any clothes I might wish to buy else­where in the store, a pos­si­bil­i­ty I found most unlike­ly.

I left the store (with a rather large escort until I left the premis­es) and walked around to the side exit where I expect­ed the clothes swap­pers to be eject­ed, arriv­ing just before they emerged, and was able to pho­to­graph them con­tin­u­ing to swap clothes on the pave­ment in Regent Street. Here one police­man did attempt to pre­vent me from tak­ing pic­tures, claim­ing I was caus­ing an obstruc­tion (which clear­ly I was­n’t) and as usu­al I moved back a cou­ple of feet before return­ing to take pic­tures when he moved away.

Things did threat­en to get out of hand when a rather elder­ly police offi­cer (at my age all police­men are sup­posed to look young), helped by a ‘Red Cap’ (rather sin­is­ter pri­vate secu­ri­ty war­dens employed by the ‘New West End Com­pa­ny’ to ensure shop­pers don’t step out of line) start­ed to push peo­ple around, but most­ly oth­er offi­cers took a more sen­si­ble approach, some even talk­ing and jok­ing with the swap­pers as they con­tin­ued to exchange items of cloth­ing on the pave­ment.

Some shop­pers pass­ing by stopped to watch, and a few took a leaflet, but there was no evi­dence of any Dam­a­scene con­ver­sions, most hur­ry­ing on clutch­ing their loaded shop­ping bags, des­per­ate to spend more mon­ey.

One of those tak­ing part was held by the police for a while as they had decid­ed he was the ring­leader. He got a big cheer when he was released, wav­ing his pink ‘Get out of TOPSHOP Jail Free’ Chance Card and the Anti-social Behav­iour Act Notice for the Dis­per­sal of Groups (see http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2003/ukpga_20030038_en_5 ) which the Met had issued. This required him to leave the Oxford St/Regent St area for the next 24 hours. For­tu­nate­ly the map pro­vid­ed did­n’t include the Red Lion, where he announced his inten­tion of going — and at this point I also left as I was already late for a meet­ing with friends in Streatham. Some of the oth­ers looked as if they were going to con­tin­ue their fun along Oxford Street.

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All in all, I think it was a good action.

around 30–40 peo­ple turned up and swapped clothes, hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out on oxford street before the action, and when it did hap­pen, Top­Shop had a shop full of Police, PCSO’s and secu­ri­ty, they closed the entrance to the shop and removed the ‘red phone box’ meet­ing point dis­play.

Lots of lit­er­a­ture was hand­ed out, and plen­ty of pret­ty activist flesh, (oh my).

two arrests hap­pened, one for refus­ing to give a name and address (sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act) appar­ent­ly it was anti-social behav­iour. On the con­trary I thought it was incred­i­bly social behav­iour show by the hijack­ers. Both arrests were released with­out charge fair­ly swift­ly. Although one was dri­ven to Trafal­gar square and dropped off there for no appar­ent rea­son?

Lat­er on the actions con­tin­ued with a street par­ty in King­ly Court shop­ping cen­tre, and then a road blo­cade at Sev­en Dials with plen­ty of danc­ing.

thanks to all of the non-shop swap­pers and to the love­ly peo­ple who swapped their clothes with mine for the great new out­fit I have.

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Buy noth­ing day — brix­ton report

“Buy noth­ing day” is an inter­na­tion­al anti-con­sumerist day. Put sim­ply : peo­ple are encour­aged to stop shop­ing for one day. In Brix­ton, activist set up a stall to give away free food and oth­er free items.

Activists met at 11am at Library House to pick up veg­eta­bles and part of the con­tent of the Library House­’s freeshop. The items were brought to Brix­ton, and were giv­en out for free in front of the super­mar­ket next to the tube sta­tion.

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To mark Buy Noth­ing Day, activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide held a Rat Race in the Nor­wich city cen­tre.

The busiest high street in Nor­wich was today full of rats. The rats were equipped with plac­ards read­ing Work Hard­er, Earn More Mon­ey, Buy More Things, Keep Going, and leaflets telling peo­ple to join the con­sump­tion Rat Race. The reverse of the leaflet, revealed the spoof and informed peo­ple that today was buy noth­ing day and per­haps they should con­sid­er the envi­ron­men­tal and social con­se­quences of exces­sive con­sump­tion.

600 leaflets were hand­ed out in total (see below), and many passers-by expressed their sup­port, although one by pass­er was heard to call “Get a job” to which one of the rat (a teacher) shout­ed back, “It’s a Sat­ur­day you toss­er!” – the crowd of shop­pers that had gath­ered around the rats all laughed.

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“Free Socks!” “Why? Who’s hold­ing him?”
29.11.2008
In Wrex­ham town cen­tre this morn­ing, the local Freecon­o­my group held a Sock (FREE) Shop — that’s socks for free, not a shop free of socks or even free­ing Sock. Hun­dreds of pairs of warm socks were dis­trib­uted in sub­ze­ro tem­per­a­tures to peo­ple with cold feet — and hands — along with leaflets explain­ing what Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham does and invit­ing peo­ple to get involved in the hap­py world of giv­ing and shar­ing.

There was a great deal of puz­zle­ment about a stall offer­ing free socks in the town cen­tre on a busy Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

One pass­ing shop­per came over to find out more about our cam­paign to free the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Socks’ from his cap­tor. More com­mon­ly, peo­ple just could­n’t seem to believe that the socks were for free:

Free? What’s the catch? You don’t get any­thing for free… do you?

But of course you do. Or, at least, some­one does.…

Loads of stuff hap­pens for free all the time. Cap­i­tal­ism has only sur­vived this long because of the free labour which is pro­vid­ed by any­one whose work helps some­one else to get rich­er. Marx had some­thing to say about this. Land and resources stolen from the peo­ple — our own Eagles Mead­ow includ­ed — are used by busi­ness­es to gen­er­ate prof­it, and trashed in the process. We nur­ture our chil­dren for free because we love them, but all that free care and atten­tion is what brings the next gen­er­a­tion of work­ers into being — a free gift to cap­i­tal­ism. Much of the free stuff we do as par­ents, car­ers, part­ners, friends, ‘good neigh­bours’ and so on is large­ly invis­i­ble to the econ­o­my, although with­out it the econ­o­my as it is could­n’t func­tion at all.

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is just doing a bit to raise the pro­file of free giv­ing and encour­age peo­ple to spread their free gifts around rather than trash­ing them, which is what hap­pens when good stuff ends up at the tip, for exam­ple. We hand­ed out socks and leaflets for about 3 hours, by which time even mul­ti­ple lay­ers of our free socks could­n’t keep our feet and hands from freez­ing, so we called it a day.

LEAFLET TEXT

FREECONOMY WREXHAM… Bring and Take… Free for All…

What’s it all about?

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is:
for every­one; envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly; shar­ing; giv­ing; fun!; re-using stuff; com­plete­ly free; sus­tain­able.

Turn over to find out more…

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is about gift and shar­ing, show­ing that it is pos­si­ble to make things work with­out pay­ment or finan­cial prof­it. In a world where every­thing seems to have a price — often more than we can afford — it can be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a com­plete­ly free event. But all the goods on our stalls and at our events are there for the tak­ing. Every­one is invit­ed to come and help them­selves.

Bring and Take is made pos­si­ble by every­one who gives their time and ener­gy to help out, who donates goods to be giv­en away, who loans a venue for free or lets us use a van or bakes a cake, and — most impor­tant­ly — every­one who takes away all the things that are donat­ed!

Re-use for the plan­et. Before you throw any­thing away, think about whether some­one else could use it. Nat­ur­al resources, time and skills were need­ed to make that item. If it’s binned, all those things are lost. By shar­ing and re-using, we can keep wealth in our com­mu­ni­ties, help each oth­er, cre­ate good­will and hap­pi­ness, and do a lit­tle bit to save the plan­et.

freeconomywrexham[at]yahoo.co.uk

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What, No Prices?

More than 150 peo­ple came to Next To Nowhere’s Free Shop on Sat­ur­day in Liv­er­pool. This was a one-off event to mark Buy Noth­ing Day. The organ­is­ers encour­aged peo­ple to come in by offer­ing free tea and toast and free mistle­toe on the street out­side.

Real­ly, it’s free

Buy Noth­ing Day orig­i­nat­ed in the USA in 1992. It was intend­ed to make a state­ment about over-con­sump­tion and the amount of waste this gen­er­ates, and encour­age peo­ple to re-think their lifestyles. It gen­er­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy, and still does, if the com­ments to the pre­vi­ous post­ing about Buy Noth­ing Day are any­thing to go by! Some peo­ple think con­sump­tion by itself is not the issue, oth­ers think the event is patro­n­is­ing to peo­ple who can’t afford to buy much any­way.
But none of the peo­ple who wan­dered into the free shop last Sat­ur­day seemed to feel patro­n­ised. Some, who had come to town to do Christ­mas shop­ping, looked in out of curi­ousi­ty, and found they pre­ferred doing some “non-shop­ping”, and get­ting some refresh­ments at the free cafe. Peo­ple with lit­tle mon­ey were hap­py to take away free items they need­ed, and for the peo­ple who had donat­ed things, it was sat­is­fy­ing to see goods they don’t need any more being tak­en for re-use. Not every­body who came had heard of Buy Noth­ing Day, and had to be reas­sured that every­thing real­ly was free!
What­ev­er the gen­er­al crit­i­cisms, this par­tic­u­lar free shop worked as a co-oper­a­tive event, it intro­duced peo­ple to the social cen­tre who had nev­er been there before, and it gave peo­ple a taste of how lib­er­at­ing it is to do with­out cur­ren­cy for once.

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Buy Noth­ing Day Man­ches­ter: Pri­mark Feels the Wrath of Santa’s Lit­tle Work­ers!

On Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber sev­en stu­dents braved Manchester’s heav­ing Mar­ket Street in sup­port of Buy Noth­ing Day 2008. In fes­tive dress and armed with some thought-pro­vok­ing cloth­ing labels of their own, the aim was to raise aware­ness about unnec­es­sary con­sumerism over Christ­mas, and to reveal the true cost of high street fash­ion to Sat­ur­day shop­pers.

The action began incog­ni­to, as the pro­tes­tors secret­ly deliv­ered mes­sages ques­tion­ing con­sumer greed and the uneth­i­cal sourc­ing of cheap fash­ion into the pock­ets, zips, and cuffs of cloth­ing in Pri­mark. Mes­sages such as “I won­der if the per­son who made this gar­ment is hap­py?”, and “Do you real­ly need anoth­er one of these?” were soon dot­ted around the bustling store and secu­ri­ty quick­ly react­ed, call­ing all clean­ers to the ground floor to remove the labels. The pro­test­ers escaped unscathed, mer­ry in the knowl­edge that the chances of hunt­ing out all the labels would be pret­ty slim.

After a quick change of clothes the pro­tes­tors took to the street, antlers and all. With a splen­did ban­ner and leaflets a‑plenty they approached the swarms of passers-by and announced that they need not spend mon­ey this Christ­mas to be hap­py. Some engag­ing debates ensued con­cern­ing con­sumerism and sweat­shops. It was felt by some that only the finan­cial­ly priv­i­leged could afford to have a con­science, and that out­lets such as Pri­mark offered those with a low­er income the chance to look (and there­fore feel) good. Oth­ers had been so far unaware of shops like Primark’s asso­ci­a­tion with fac­to­ries in India, and were gen­uine­ly shocked at some of the sto­ries the pro­tes­tors relayed about under­paid and mis­treat­ed work­ers. Whilst not every­body agreed, the val­ue of live­ly pub­lic debate can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. Talk­ing about some­thing is the first step to chang­ing it and per­haps now a few peo­ple will think twice before buy­ing some­thing just because it is cheap. It’s real cost is inhu­mane­ly high.