America Magazine Benedict XVI weighs in on "Redistribution"

 Striking at Bourgeois Values with "Free Stuff" 

Why is it that in middle class neighborhoods no one would think anything of it if you are having a "yard sale"  or a "moving sale", spending your entire day selling your possessions at pennies on the dollar, a tenth of what you could get on E-Bay, making less than the federal minimum wage for your efforts, but they would shrink in horror from a "free stuff pile".  What is the world coming from that  they place so little value on material possessions that they would give it away for nothing.  Someone will surely complain that you are doing "illegal dumping", even if you tend the pile and fold things back up. 

Fortunately for me, I live in a neighborhood with a heavy student population, north of Seattle's University of Washington campus, and such a pile is welcome.  Having purged the house of unneeded things that aren't worth my time trying to sell (unlike my art, which I will find a way to sell) I see young people steadily going through the pile.  I came up behind one young lady with her head buried in the big "free stuff" box and said "Dig deep, the best stuff is on the bottom. 

We live in a materialistic culture that values possessions more than the labor  or the well being of those who made or sold to us the possessions.  As I pointed out, even when those items will not bring us the return to make a yard sale worthwhile, to the affluent, it' would seem improper to simply give them away. 

But there are signs that this attitude towards our possessions is beginning to change.  Not only and I not the only one to put things out on the sidewalk marked free in our neighborhood, but down the street and a few blocks from there again there is a "free little library". The "free little libraries" are small privately run libraries people put up on their parking strips. 

It's the world's largest book sharing movement and it's growing rapidly.  People build a small shelter for the books, like is show above and supply some of the books, people come along and take what they want, returning when they can.  Others leave more books and the sharing continues.  Here is the homepage for that effort:  
https://littlefreelibrary.org/

There is also a more formal way of sharing your unwanted possessions than a "free stuff pile".  if you have items worth the effort of someone to come pick them up, there are "Buy Nothing" groups sprouting up all over the place.  If you live in a big city, likely there is one in your neighborhood.  People post what they have to give away on their buy nothing group page.  Someone can then contact the donor about picking it up.  Here is the homepage for that effort:
https://buynothingproject.org/

Also a lot of resource and possession sharing is done by "mutual aid groups".  These are voluntary organizations where people come together to help each other, often organizing clothing and food distributions, direct aid to the homeless, sharing of furniture, help to the venerable.  While these groups are about more than "free stuff" they  do distribute things without charge to those in need.  The movement is too decentralized to give you a single go to website, but here is the Wikipedia page about such groups:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_aid_(organization_theory)