Really Really Free Market! Info & history… here & elsewhere!

Every 2nd Sunday of the month! ¡Tianguis Realmente Gratuito! Todo es gratis - Really Really Free Market (RRFM) - 11am-2pm. No money. No trades. Everything is free. At SubRosa / the Hub - 703 Pacific Ave- Santa Cruz, CA 

This gathering is not about the "stuff" we give and take, but more about how we can freely give and receive from each other.

¡Todo gratis! No intercambio de dinero, no negocios, no trueques. Trae lo que gustes, toma lo que necesites. Este mercado gratuito es basado en una economía de regalar. 

More info about the Santa Cruz RRFM  - https://instagram.com/rrfm_sc 

This page is intended to give a wide range of information about Really Really Free Markets - with specific focus on the Santa Cruz Really Really Free Market. Here’s a list of contents on this page for what follows (With a scattering of graphics mixed in!):

-The Santa Cruz Really Really Free Market - notes on “how” (with some “why” baked in) // a work in progress 

-A selection of articles written by others about the Santa Cruz Really Really Free Market 

-An article from Crimethinc about RRFM where they are located and some general information and perspectives 

@@@@@@@@@

The Santa Cruz Really Really Free Market - notes on “how” (with some “why” baked in) // a work in progress 

So how do we do it? Other questions like when-did-we-start? Well, that’s a longer story which will be elaborated upon another time … but in short, one of us was stuck in the mid-west in a legal battle with “the-state” and became a part of the radical community there - who put on Really Really Free Markets (RRFM)! And when friend came back home to Santa Cruz around 2010, they proposed hosting a RRFM at SubRosa (anarchist community space where a number of us are collective members and where RRFM still takes place!). RRFM was a part of the Free Skool Santa Cruz project (and RRFM still listed and ongoing over 10 years later- FSSC did have a 6 year break though). Great example of sharing inspiring ideas-and-practices across communities and regions.

Back to our current process (early 2023) - note: this has changed over time depending on who is involved and circumstances. Usually a week or so before scheduled RRFM (now, every 2nd Sunday of the month) one of us will send a text on our signal group (which is a text group that those of us regularly involved in putting on RRFM are in - 10 of us are in the group, and we reach out to 3 other people that don’t want to be in RRFM signal group but who are part of crew each month). The text goes something like this… “Hi all! Next free market coming up! Who is around? And when available to staff? Who would like to make a flyer?” 

To elaborate: who is around and when available to staff? - RRFM goes 11am-2pm. Set up around an hour before (sometimes little more time if we have lots of collected items to put out - generally we don’t have space to store stuff for RRFM and people bring things day-of). Set up involves cleaning courtyard (sweeping etc) / setting out tables / preparing welcoming table (more on that later!). We divide “shifts” into fluid time frames (but we all choose when we can come and go and there’s no set schedule so we overlap each other and there’s no one “manager” of the RRFM crew - we’re all working together! Usually time frames are set-up & beginning / middle / latter portion & clean up (and couple of us taking left-over items away). And we all do what we can, when we can. Sometimes we’ll reach out to other friends for special staffing support if not a lot of us are available.  And often one of us will make a graphic to publicize the RRFM on social media (on various IG pages in particular - like SubRosa / Free Skool Santa Cruz / the Santa Cruz Hub / and RRFM’s IG) - or we adapt and reuse an old graphic. 

We’ve had ambitions to send public service announcements to local radio or local weeklies - although we haven’t done that lots of folk show up! Social media and word of mouth for a regularly scheduled event helps. We’ve been joined by local college radio station KZSC where they bring records and c.d.s to give away, and they bring a Dj to play music (which adds a nice festive energy!). KZSC will help with publicity and the RRFM has been listed in the weekly paper even though we didn’t submit the info (mysterious!). The RRFM has continued to be part of the Free Skool Santa Cruz project (which has it’s own reach for spreading the word).

Here is our current description of the RRFM: “¡Tianguis Realmente Gratuito! Todo es gratis. Really Really Free Market - 11am-2pm. No money. No trades. Everything is free. This gathering is not about the "stuff" we give and take, but more about how we can freely give and receive from each other. ¡Todo gratis! No intercambio de dinero, no negocios, no trueques. Trae lo que gustes, toma lo que necesites. Este mercado gratuito es basado en una economía de regalar.” - we have had discussions amongst about how to make the event more accessible to members of our community where Spanish is their first (or primary) language - having bilingual publicity is part of achieving that. And usually someone is staffing that has at least a rudimentary ability to speak Spanish. We also reach out to friends each month that are more connected to Latinx communities here in Santa Cruz to also share information about the RRFM (and those friends also regularly attend and participate in the RRFM - bringing and taking things is an important part in the event! And these few efforts have had positive results (and there’s more we want to do).

One of the many wonderful aspects of the RRFM is the eclectic mix of people that come! Kids and elders and people in between! People driving up in nice cars to drop off material for the free market and then browse about, and people that have all their earthly possessions in a shopping cart. All are welcome. During winter months we’ve collected “survival gear” for houseless members of our community, and a local mutual aid group has helped distribute. 

Part of nurturing a welcoming atmosphere at the RRFM involves having folk that greet people when they arrive. The courtyard space at SubRosa has a main gate and just inside that we set up a welcoming table. This serves various purposes: when people come to a RRFM for the first time we give them a brief introduction (or more elaborate if they have questions). This can vary but here’s one example of an intro: “Welcome to the Really Really Free Market. No money. No trades. Everything is free. This gathering is not about the "stuff" we give and take, but more about how we can freely give and receive from each other. This is a form of anti-capitalist mutual aid where everyone is invited to participate and share care.” At the welcoming table we also receive people’s contributions and help them distribute around the free market (and for large items we get people’s contact info and ask them to take away at end of RRFM if item still present). We also require people wear masks and have masks available (we’re still in pandemic-to-endemic times and thinking about “community care”). We also have info available about the Santa Cruz Hub Community Center (where RRFM takes place) - which is a constellation of projects that support skill-sharing, appropriate re/use of resources, and interconnected, creative communities. And the Santa Cruz Hub, among other things, is where the free market magic happens.

What is free market magic? When someone at the free market exclaims “This is EXACTLY what I was looking for!” So often folk find items that they would have otherwise spent money on (sometimes money they didn’t have) or things that make their lives easier or more enjoyable or that make a great gift for someone they care about. And this can be such a lovely experience for the person who contributed the item - to know what they brought is being appreciated. This is the “care” aspect of the RRFM - with the awareness that we don’t intend this event to be just another consumer feeding frenzy… and so we nurture the space with a collaborative approach that includes all that participate - and we try to communicate that in how we relate and sometimes with graphics and text posted around the courtyard.

And more to come!!!

Here is a selection of articles written by others about the Santa Cruz Really Really Free Market 

-Article from City on a Hill press, student run news source at UCSC from 2016 

https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2016/01/21/sharing-trinkets-and-fighting-capitalism/

-Article in local paper about the Really Really Free Market from 2018

https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2018/01/06/visitors-rally-at-really-really-free-market-in-downtown-santa-cruz/

-And another brief article from local news from 2018

 https://kion546.com/news/2018/01/11/really-free-market-held-each-month-in-santa-cruz/ 

@@@@@@@@@

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch under capitalism—for anarchists, there’s no other kind.” - lots of great information about hosting your own RRFM - at link to article below from Crimethinc.

Disambiguation: According to the capitalist lexicon, the “Free Market” is the economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses. Any sensible person can recognize immediately that neither human beings nor resources are free in such a system; hence, a “Really Really Free Market” is a market that operates according to gift economics, in which nothing is for sale and the only rule is share and share alike. 

https://crimethinc.com/2007/10/27/the-really-really-free-market-instituting-the-gift-economy  

***The Really Really Free Market happens at SubRosa: a community space, 703 Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz, Ca. - which is a part of the Hub Community Center. SubRosa is a space to meet people, share resources and ideas, challenge our assumptions and act on our passions. Let’s create together the world(s) we want to live in now! http://www.subrosaproject.org/ and https://www.facebook.com/subrosaproject and https://instagram.com/subrosa_space

The Santa Cruz Hub for Sustainable Living includes a constellation of projects that support skill-sharing, appropriate re/use of resources, and interconnected, creative communities - since 1994! More about The Hub at http://www.santacruzhub.org/  and https://www.instagram.com/santacruzhub/ 

Located in downtown Santa Cruz, CA, which is the ancestral territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma. More information http://amahmutsun.org/foundation //  

https://www.amahmutsunlandtrust.org // http://www.protectjuristac.org