The idea is simple: give away donated coats to people who need them, while at the same time challenging the consumerism that marks Black Friday, an annual sales frenzy fomented by big box and mall retailers the day after Thanksgiving. The Buy Nothing Day Coat Exchange, set up on the lawn of the State House, acts as a conscience and counterpoint to the sales driven capitalism inside the Providence Place Mall.
Greg Gerritt, who has been organizing the annual Buy Nothing Day Coat Exchange for 18 years, told me that I had missed the big rush at the 8am opening when I arrived at 9am. Hundreds of people had preceded me and received free coats and winter wear. Dozens of volunteers had arrived to organize the chaos as best they could. When I showed up at 9am, it still seemed pretty busy, but Gerritt assured me that the pace was settling down and that the rest of the day would be much easier.
As I was preparing to leave, a woman arrived with a bag of donations and her teenagers in tow. “We’re here to volunteer,” said the woman. The teenagers were smiling. That’s the kind of holiday spirit even an atheist appreciates.
Was there anything I should tell the public about the event I asked, given that by the time this piece hits the Internet, it will be all over?
“Yeah,” says Gerritt, smiling, “Tell them they should have been here.”
Members of Occupy Providence, supported by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, along with representatives from a wide range of progressive groups such as DARE, the Progressive Democrats of Rhode Island and others, gathered at the entrance to the Walmart on 51 Silver Spring St in Providence to demand living wages for workers and to encourage customers to shop locally. The protest was held in consort with 1,500 similar protests across the United States.
Over 800,000 Walmart “associates” work for wages that keep them well below the poverty line. Walmart, like many other national retail and fast food corporations, encourages their employees to make up their wage gap by applying for public assistance, meaning that taxpayers to help subsidize these corporations through SNAP and other government assistance programs. The money Walmart saves in underpaying their employees is used, as part of a vicious cycle, to directly lobby Congress to pass laws that benefit Walmart, at the expense of everyone else.
When Greg Gerritt first started giving away free winter coats to the needy on the mall side of the Rhode Island State House, he was hoping to hand it off to someone else for year two, but when no one stepped up, he found himself running it again, and again. Now seventeen years later, Gerritt seems to have accepted the fact that this has become a regular gig. “Still,” he says, if someone wants to step up…”
As I prepare to leave, one of the volunteers calls out to me. “Homeless helping the homeless,” he says, “That’s the story here. I’m homeless, but I’m volunteering to help the homeless. It’s all about the heart.”
