SO! This weekend will be interesting. The
Buffalo Really Really Free Market will be held at Bidwell and Elmwood tomorrow, Saturday, September 11! Come on down--bring what you would like to give away, and take what you'd like to take! No strings attached either way. Leftover stuff will be donated to various people/agencies in need.
Also, have you checked the rest of
Buffalo Indymedia lately? The upcoming
actions against Jimmy John's sub shop chain, which is looking to establish itself here (why? we have so many nice bodegas that make super cheap subs and are family owned and operated...try West Market@West and Auburn, for instance--we at WTF highly recommend the Philly Turkey...) should be interesting, and if successful, may prove to be a harbinger of further unionization, as it is the notoriously tenacious
Wobblies (IWW) doing the organizing. Something to watch, in any case, perhaps in which to participate?
C'mon, we've all been there. Didn't you ever want to tell your shit-eating corporate boss to give you what you were worth or take that job and shove it? The owners make almost 300 grand a year in profit alone and can't raise wages above minimum? Silly. I wonder if owners will ever figure out that with living wages come labor stability and quality output--the keys to building a lasting and well-loved business. Of course, in today's throw-away age, high school laborers are a dime a dozen, so it will take diligence to change Jimmy John's policies. Perhaps Buffalo ought to pass a
living wage ordinance that extends beyond its public sector...
Now, there is another option: learn to live with minimal participation in the monetary system. If one has little or no documented income, one cannot be taxed from and otherwise coerced via that income. If one builds, as we freeholders on the West Side are building, a community of like-minded individuals in a sufficiently dense matrix (both physically, i.e., living close to one another, and socially, i.e., talking and interacting often with one another), individuals can sidestep the authoritarian thrusts of the larger society to a great extent. Property taxes aside, which amount to mere fractions of total yearly rents, one can live comfortably in the suburbs of the monetary system.
Suburbs without stupid. Who'd-a thunk it?
And the best part is that this is a lifestyle--it's not a club, a rigid structure, something one must maintain with dues, rules, roles, rolls, and other silliness. It's a state of being between free individuals that can be achieved without most of the wasteful politics that precede and exist within formal organization. In a word, it's anarchic (without heirarchy, a horizontal approach, rather like a peer-to-peer file sharing system, except in a broader human context).
If this sounds a bit masturbatory or preachy, that's because it is. We want you to know that out there, in Buffalo, right now, exists just such a community. Talk to us. We know lots of good people here at WTF, and maybe we can help each other out!
We, The Free, do this because we love you, Buffalo.
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