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. In the interest of not taxing the reader’s patience, a single apostrophe stands in for the two “Really”s throughout this text.

It’s easy to organize a Really Really Free Market. Every town should have one; big cities should have one for every district.The ’Free Market model has several virtues to recommend it for anarchists hoping to build local infrastructures and momentum. First, like Critical Mass or Food Not Bombs, it lends itself to a decentralized approach: so long as the idea is well-distributed, neither hierarchy nor central coordination is necessary to organize a ’Free Market. This makes the ’Free Market model helpful for those hoping to cultivate personal responsibility and autonomous initiative in their communities; it also means that, should the ’Free Market in your town run into trouble with the authorities, they won’t be able to shut it down by simply targeting the leaders.

[edit] Steps

Spot a potential space for the market to take place. Many of the best spaces must be rented. It doesn’t make sense to pay to hold a free event, but it probably won’t do to hold your ’Free Market in somebody’s back yard, either.
Advertise the event by posting fliers, sending out emails to every listserv you can possibly think of, take handbills around and give them out at bus stops, public events, in neighborhoods and apartment complexes; you should also see if local radio stations will run Public Service Announcements for you, or if local papers can run a listing or even a story on your event.
Brainstorm all the possible sources of things to give away. The more you bring to the ’Free Market yourself, the more excited others will be about the event, and the more they will expect from themselves as participants.
- Go through your closets, and encourage everyone you know to do the same. Of course you can dumpster bread and vegetables—but is it possible employees might slip you a little on the side, too?
- Visit colleges at the end of each semester, corporations that are going out of business, and wealthy neighborhoods where they leave perfectly good items sitting out on the curb.
- Get all your friends together the night before to cook a nutritious meal and a few hundred delicious cookies.
Don’t stop at gathering objects — a good ’Free Market is about people interacting with each other, not just taking and leaving things. Organize games, musical improvisations, and other participatory activities that can incorporate chance passers-by. Set up displays and dioramas for the shy but inquisitive.
Make sure you have a plan for what to do with the leftovers! The local thrift shop or goodwill may be thrilled to get a big shipment in from you, or it may not be what they want at all, in which case you’ll have to either have a place to store it all for the next ’Free Market or a means of disposing of it. Clean up the site of your ’Free Market meticulously; you’ll benefit from having a reputation for being responsible in this regard.
Organise an horizontal leadership to prevent problems with authorities. Amorphous, informal networks are a tremendous advantage when they enter into conflict with formal, hierarchical groups. All of the power the government may bring to bear against you depends on there being specific representatives for them to target, and to a lesser extent on public disinterest. In maintaining horizontal structures and public anonymity while mobilizing massive grassroots support, you will be able to outmaneuver them in every instance.

[edit] Tips

Your ’Free Market should take place on neutral ground—that is, in an area everyone feels an equal claim to or ownership of—so no one will feel more or less comfortable than anyone else. For similar reasons, your location should be a central, visible area. If you can use a space where major public events happen or where a wide range of people are already accustomed to gathering, it will dramatically increase your chances of success.
If you come into conflict with city officials or anyone else, treat it as another opportunity to solicit media coverage. Take the yard signs produced by politicians and real estate agencies and paint over them, then redistribute them throughout town; hang banners by major intersections a week in advance. Don't do the latter on town property, you'll get in a spat with a petty official over it; put the same banners a few feet away, on private property owned by sympathetic locals or in places town employees are too lazy to reach.
Make all your fliers, signs, and announcements bilingual, or else produce them in different languages for different contexts. At every ’Free Market, put out a sign-up list so people who want to receive news of the next one or coordinate with other organizers can leave their contact information.
Solicit participants person by person. As a rule of thumb, one personal invitation is worth a hundred fliers. Invite an accomplished storyteller, a hairstylist, a popular folk musician, a collective of spoken word artists, a specialist in therapeutic massage, a portrait painter, a bicycle mechanic, an automobile mechanic, and everyone else can you think of or run into. Offer to help provide whatever resources they need.
Consider what services others at the ’Market may need, as well. You could have someone with a truck available to make deliveries, or someone organizing children’s activities in case a lot of overburdened parents show up. In some situations, you should have a team designated in advance to deal with police, media, or other troublemakers.
Coordinate with other groups to broaden the scope of your ’Free Market. A dance troupe is coming to your town for the weekend; can they put in an appearance? How about a barbershop quartet, a team of champion skateboarders, a holistic health care provider, a symphony orchestra? You’re not just keeping old clothes and stale bagels in circulation, you’re introducing an entirely different economic system that can provide as much diversity as capitalism, if not more! Make sure that comes across at every ’Free Market.
Once your ’Free Markets have taken off, you can move on to other Really Really Free programs: free movie showings and other entertainment events, free education projects, free housing occupations! The sky’s the limit once people have a taste of real freedom.

[edit] Warnings

Don’t stop at approaching the official representatives of a group—talk to the rank and file so your outreach efforts don’t depend on authority figures but extend directly to the people you want to invite. Forget about government officials—they’re too tied up in red tape to think about your event as anything but a headache—but do contact the workers at homeless shelters, interfaith councils, and other social support institutions: they’re probably so overwhelmed and under-equipped that they’ll be thrilled to direct people to your ’Free Market for additional resources.
Don’t expect to draw thousands if your ’Markets happen randomly every year or so. Consistency is one of the most important elements of a successful ’Free Market. A sporadic schedule inevitably means that attendance will be limited to those immediately connected to the networks through which promotion takes place; a regular event can eventually attract quite a lot of people, as word spreads outside the circles from which the idea originated. On the other hand, your ’Markets should not occur more frequently than you can replenish energy and resources. Each one should be a unique event, with enough effort invested in it to make it something unprecedented. That way people will always show up to see what happens, and will take them seriously enough to contribute energy themselves.