Correction: It came to our attention that the days on which the market are held may be unclear. RRFM is held every Friday as well as the last Saturday of the month. We apologize for any confusion.
The Corvallis Really Really Free Market — initially started by local activists Johnny Calderon and Dylan De Honor — has, for the last several months, been gaining traction within the city as an entirely reciprocal, community-led and -centered space where resources are freely given and shared with others. In the form of material goods, these include clothes, shoes, hygiene products, toiletries, tampons and pads, boxed and canned food, paper towels, books (including children’s books), toys, and more. Recent gifts have even included emergency supplies like insulin syringes and a bin to dispose of used needles and other biohazardous waste.
Thanks to the ideas and efforts of additional organizers and growing support from the community, the RRFM is — in addition to the last Saturday of the month — now available every Friday at Central Park from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. In addition to establishing a more frequent presence within the city, organizers have been actively putting their heads together on the kind of community space the RRFM could become: one where art is created and shared, skills and knowledge are distributed, curiosity is nourished, queerness is celebrated, and everyone is valued and cared for by each other — freely, accessibly, and openly.
Monthly RRFMs were often set up in locations that were meant to be easiest for poor and/or unhoused people to access, which have varied as unhoused people have been forcibly removed and scattered throughout Corvallis by city sweeps. The last Saturday of October, RRFM organizers joined forces with the Corvallis sweepminers — who have been providing weekly dinners near places where unhoused people have been camping — to help distribute more hot meals and requested material goods.
Two organizers, in particular, have played key roles in helping to transition the RRFM from a weekly to a monthly event as they have become more involved in its activities and visions: Emmet Ritter, an OSU student and active member of the sweepminers, and Julian Clarke, an OSU student and employee at the Pride Center.
“It’s been really great, and I’ve been weaving it into every facet of my life,” said Clarke. “It’s about the community too, and bringing people together in their art or in their words or in what they do or can provide — or in what they can’t provide that can be replenished by the community.”
Workshops, Zines, and a Monthly Magazine
Ritter and Calderon agree that great things can arise from the RRFM beyond meeting material needs, and have been creatively combining efforts with others in the community to help make this a reality.
Recently, free liberation parkour classes — led by Albert Kong — have been taught in tandem with the RRFMs that are held the last Saturday of each month. One of Kong’s intentions has been to leverage this as an opportunity for participants to understand and cultivate solidarity with people who are having to navigate and survive off of spaces where they risk being evicted by the city.
“While I acknowledge an element of privilege to being able to practice parkour freely, and we are not under threat of displacement, we operate under a similar threat: parkour and overnight camping are disallowed because of restrictions on the use of space, even when we are taking responsibility for our own safety, and that is enforced by the threat of state use of force,” wrote Kong in an Oct. 29 entry for the parkour listserv. “This is not to equate the threats we face, but rather to indicate that we share common goals, and we should work in solidarity with people in our community to allow more [possibilities] in how we can move, sleep, and live in this world.”
Organizers have also been encouraging people to share their knowledge and skills with the community in the form of free workshops or skill shares that they can host at RRFMs.
Already, a couple of people have expressed interest in leading workshops on how to tie different kinds of knots and how to create your own rocket stove. Organizers are also hoping to see workshops that teach de-escalation tactics for when people are experiencing a mental or behavioral health crisis.
“I’m excited to see where the workshops go, because one of the things that I don’t want to bar people from joining us is [just because] they don’t have physical donations,” Ritter said. “They can bring their knowledge and their skill sets and their time — things that can help people build things or educate people about things.”
One of Ritter’s hopes is to help bring more of a zine scene to Corvallis through the RRFM — one that focuses mainly on political education, grassroots organizing, and collective liberation. Additional zines that will be available at upcoming RRFMs delve into topics like mutual aid, navigating trauma, small town organizing, how to give first aid at protests and demonstrations, and the RRFM movement itself.
“This was something I did by bringing zines that I had gotten from a book fair up in Portland to distribute knowledge and ideas,” said Ritter, “ideas that I know other people will learn from.”
Organizers have also begun the process of creating a monthly magazine by and for people in the community, copies of which will be freely distributed at the last RRFM of each month. The magazine will include anything from opinion pieces to articles, short stories, poetry, photography, art, collages, comics, etc., which can be submitted by anyone — including those who are unhoused.
The content of the magazine can be about anything, though an emphasis on highlighting positive changes contributors would like to see in Corvallis or beyond are sought in particular. According to Calderon, another potential feature of the magazine would be local political education, offering well-researched analyses that inform readers about specific bills, policies, or regulations the city has in place, is in the process of passing, or has put out for a vote. It will also include advertisements for upcoming events in town or at OSU.
While submissions for this month’s issue of the magazine are now closed, they will be open again in the coming months. For anyone who is interested in creating something to have featured in future issues but who may have trouble accessing writing materials, a typewriter, notepads, and pens and pencils will be available at all upcoming RRFMs; physical submissions will later be digitized by organizers.
Keeping Up Human Conversations
While Ritter acknowledged that many churches in Corvallis have done a lot to help the unhoused community, they said they’ve noticed that many people affiliated with these churches have tended to maintain a sort of interpersonal distance between themselves and those they’re trying to help.
“I don’t know that I would say that they’re dehumanizing [unhoused people], but they’re not interested in being involved and not really curious about their struggles,” said Ritter. “They kind of just helped to say that they helped. And something I’ve really found in activists in the free market and the folks who do the weekly dinners is that there’s more of a human conversation, where we exchange names and we talk about and acknowledge how painful and difficult it is to be living on the streets.”
Kong also touched on this in his listserv, writing that one of the intentions of the RRFM is to be organized in a way that “puts people who have extra stuff in the same space as people who need it, rather than being a site of dumping charity with no relationship to the recipients.”
“There’s a phrase among a lot of mutual aid groups and really, really free markets that I follow across the United States, that being, ‘Solidarity, Not Charity,’” said Calderon. “There’s this big power dynamic in charity where people think of themselves as having fortune and fall into this mindset of, ‘I’m going to help you the way that I want to help,’ instead of actively asking people what they need.”
One of the zines that will be featured at this week’s RRFM — titled “Let’s Talk Mutual Aid” — describes the practice as “the breaking of the binary of the ‘Haves and have nots’ with the intention to re-allocate for equitable access to resources, education, and needs.” It is a long-term rather than temporary commitment to the community that “must be carried into the world beyond times of panic, emergency, or pandemic.”
“Corvallis is a very charitable place, and that’s not necessarily a good thing,” said Calderon. “I think charity is for you to feel better about yourself, and that’s not what we’re about or for.”
What Would Be Helpful
In addition to enabling the purchase of resources that are in high demand among unhoused and low-income community members, monetary donations help organizers raise funds to eventually have their own storefront downtown where, ideally, the RRFM can permanently reside.
“We hope to have a fixed physical place where the free market can be every day, and then at the end of every month we would continue what we’re doing now, [which is moving to] an outdoors environment to assist those who can’t come down to our daily location,” said Calderon.
“While we’re working on getting our own space, being indoors is going to be so useful,” said Clarke. “So if anyone has a spot slotted out, or a venue that’s available to function with the free market inside of it, that would be very helpful for the coming months.”
It Takes a Village
“What I want is to get to the point where all organizations in Corvallis can work together to combat these issues and actively solve problems instead of trying to come up with temporary solutions that [the city] has made, such as the sweeps,” said Calderon. “We would actually actively give resources and work on building a [space] that isn’t commodifying basic human needs.”
Despite what some may think, Calderon said that these aren’t big ideas. They are very much possible — if only the community helps.
“I feel like once we get a physical location, we can get started on really pushing for all of this, but in order to get that, we need community support,” said Calderon. “We need people who come to as many free markets as they can, supporting and just staying and talking to us and telling other people.”
Monetary donations can be sent to the RRFM’s Venmo account, @rrfm_corvallis; cash is accepted at the in-person markets. Those who are interested in collaborating or submitting pieces for the December issue of the RRFM’s monthly magazine can do so by sending an email to unitedsocialistnews@gmail.com or by simply showing up to the weekly RRFMs.
The next end-of-the-month RRFM will be held on Saturday, Nov. 27 at the Pioneer Park meadows from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Also intended to serve as a community potluck, people can go to this Doodle Poll to sign up for store-bought or homemade foods to bring. Follow the RRFM’s Instagram page to learn more about and keep up to date with ongoing efforts and events.
By: Emilie Ratcliff
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