Before you throw out your old working toaster for a spiffy new model, consider donating it to the
Brooklyn Free Store, the brainchild of the organization,
A New World In Our Hearts.
Founded in 2005, New World is an activist collective that strives to reach members of the community in need, offering
free meals twice each month (first and third Sundays at 7PM), free film screenings (Thursday nights at 8PM), and since July, the Brooklyn Free Store. The idea with the free store is that people can come and drop off donated goods and then take something home that they might need, sort of an alternative to the American culture of constant buying. Even the food for the twice-monthly "Grub" meetings is donated or salvaged from area restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, and other businesses. (Most meals are vegan/vegetarian.)
The anti-capitalist idea of a free store dates at least back to the 1960s, with groups such as the
Diggers, a radical theatrical group based in San Francisco. In 1967 there was a free store on the Lower East Side, visited and advocated by none other than the late
Abbie Hoffman, poster child of the
Yippee Movement.
Hey, haven't you heard? Working together is the New World Order. At last, as the radical ideas of the 1960s converge with today's DIY movement, the push for "greener," more responsible lifestyles, citizen activism, and access to unbelievable technology, it is possible to create an alternative to the unsustainably of mega-consumerism.
