I recently discovered this movement thru this article, there’s also a page on Wikipedia.
It seems very interesting to me since it’s basically decentralized proactive anti-capialism mutual-aid. I really think in-real-world decentralized projects like this may be the single most efficient “weapon” we have today.
Do you have any experience with this? I feel like RRFMs are more suitable in big cities and not in little ones, but happy to be wrong about it.
I have participated in holding about ten, and when it moved indoors to become a freeshop, I have volunteered a dozen times.
Unless local climate favours you - if you hold it outdoors, your biggest concern will be weather prediction. You’ll want people to exchange their goods, but not a truckload of abandoned goods damaged by rain. Avoid rainy dates, avoid announcing too far ahead (when the error margins are big), if risk of rain becomes likely, have a large quantity of plastic sheet available to cover goods. If possible, avoid changing dates - information travels slowly. If you have to cancel, announce the cancellation well, visit the site and put up a sign saying the market’s canceled.
Your market will have a “surplus”. Some people will bring more goods than others take. You will need to make a compromise between warehousing and discarding goods. We used the local autonomous social center for warehousing goods between markets. We lacked a good plan for offloading surplus to others who might distribute them to people, since we were the first local phenomenon of this sort.
Transporting goods to warehouse will likely require a car. I used a heavy electric bike with a towed cart first, but that quickly became insufficient. My car had no towing hook, so it was full of goods up to the ceiling. As the warehousing situation becomes more dire, be prepared to inform people about capacity limits. As a last resort, ask “unsold” goods to be taken back. Some will ignore this, but you can handle a few.
If you observe hoarding behaviour, set reasonable limits (e.g. “as much as you can lift with one hand”). I have observed serious hoarding only once.
Our market typically offered some easily prepared vegan snacks and drinks. It is always good style to display a list of ingredients and potential allergens.
This can wear you out. Never do this alone, we had at least 8 bored people on our team and also used the opportunity to spread anarchism.
Hey, thank you very much for the report!