POINT OF DEPARTURE
FREE MARKET Buy Nothing New Haven offers an alternative to the market economy and a lifeline during the pandemic. BY KAYLEE WALSH Looking around my room, I find it is full of things I don’t need anymore: the shoes I recently bought online that are just a little too tight, the stack of books I’ve read and probably will never pick-up again, the hair accessories that don’t mesh well with my new haircut. Some of these items certainly might be more useful to someone else. But where is the best place that they could go? For many New Haven residents, the answer to this question is simple. The Buy Nothing New Haven group on Facebook, with over a thousand members, offers community members an opportunity to give away items they no longer need. Members can also ask for items or services that they want—a plant-sitter, dog food, children’s clothes. The group, run by admins Rai Darwinsdottir and Catherine McGuinness, is a part of a global project, with chapters across the United States and beyond.
door in a few days—this group aims to prove that there are other, more sustainable ways to give and receive. And unlike thrift stores or online markets like Facebook Marketplace, no one involved in Buy Nothing makes any money. In the words of Alexa Carey, a Buy Nothing Global Team Member, the gift-exchanging project is “revolutionary.”
“Gratitude is really the antidote to that. It tells us that we have enough. And that we have to give.” The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has both limited
Buy Nothing’s in-person gift exchanges and provoked a greater need for those gifts. “We really didn’t know how to respond,” Carey told me. She called the Buy Nothing group a “lifeline” for people struggling financially. “Because [Buy Nothing groups] are gift economies, they were essential to people,” she said. In a statement on the Buy Nothing Project website from March 2020, co-founders Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller required that all local groups adhere to the government guidelines in their area. When gift giving was not possible, they encouraged more “gifts of self,” like checking in on fellow group members, especially those who might live alone, over the phone or video chat. “We know
At the core of the project is a push to prevent people from purchasing new items or throwing away unwanted, but still functional, ones. In a world where people tend to over-consume— with websites like Amazon whereone can purchase almost anything and expect it at their 6
T HE NEW JOUR NAL
