Gainesville Free Store is an all-volunteer, grassroots organization that holds monthly “pop-up” resource-sharing events where people can give and receive clothing, household goods, toiletries, small appliances, knickknacks and other items, all for free. This month’s pop-up free store will be only the second the group has held indoors at the CMC since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Masks will be required, and free masks and hand sanitizer will be available at both entrances to the Center during Free Store hours. The free store was originally organized by volunteers and staff at Wild Iris Books, Gainesville’s former feminist and queer bookstore. It was initially conceived as a way to provide material support to struggling members of the local transgender community, particularly transwomen of color. Tapping into the movement of “free stores” and “really really free markets” put on by grassroots groups in diverse communities around the world since the 1960s, the Wild Iris organizers named their event the Gainesville Free Store. As word of mouth spread and more and more people showed up with more and more stuff to share, the free store quickly outgrew Wild Iris’s space. The monthly pop-ups were hosted by both M.A.M.A.’s Club and the Civic Media Center for a few years, before Wild Iris went out of business in December of 2017. In the spring of 2018, organizers including a transwoman who had volunteered with and directly benefited from the free store asked former Wild Iris staff and volunteers for permission to revive the Gainesville Free Store at the CMC. After showing that they were committed and serious about doing so, they were granted use of the logo, contacts, and other resources that the Wild Iris crew had accumulated. Gainesville Free Store was re-launched in May of 2018 as a project of the Gainesville branch of Redneck Revolt, a nationwide network of anti-racist activists organizing poor and working class white people and others to resist the rising tide of Trumpism and the Alt Right. The network promoted survival programs, such as free stores and food shares, as part of its political platform. Eventually the local organizers decided to carry on Gainesville Free Store as a stand-alone project, with support from the Tranquility Gainesville transgender community group. In doing so, we carry on in the spirit of the Wild Iris Books and Redneck Revolt mission of “solidarity, not charity!”
We are not rich people slumming it to give crumbs to the poor, we are working class people sharing our time, energy, and resources, in combination with others like ourselves, to help each other out and to lift up our community together. The original organizers were poor and working class transgender people and their allies who banded together for mutual aid. We honor their vision and center the needs of queer and transgender people, even as we say, “Free Store is for everyone!”
