Hey Fellow Eco-jammers, friends, and family -

Our Buy Nothing Day here in Cville turned out to be quite a reasonable success, although it definitely did not turn out as planned.

We started out in front of the Old Navy at Barracks Rd. shopping mall, one of the biggest in Charlottesville. Actually there weren't very many people at first. Only seven of us in front of the store.

After arriving we unrolled the big banner I had created which said Buy Nothing Day! and over that a quote from Elizabeth Seton- "Live simply so that others may simply live!" George [Loper] then photographed us with the banner. Most folks that had said they were coming weren't even there yet - particularily Brandi, who had the majority of the posters and such. All we had was the big banner and flyers. (most of which weren't even fully folded yet...)

So we'd only been there for about 10 minutes when wouldn't you know it a large van with shaded windows pulled up to the curb. Out popped a smartly dressed woman wearing shades and her bodyguard. They asked us to please leave as this was private property, owned by Barracks Road. I balked, telling her about a case in the '80s I had heard about. The case, which I had read in an email, basically said that you were allowed to protest on private property such as malls. The woman said she had never heard of it and that she was going to call the police. We told her that we were leaving and that we would not return.

After we all conferred, talked,and tried to get in touch with lawyers who would know about this case, we finally decided to just go ahead to the sidewalk beside the highway and protest there. Sidewalks, intersections and such was public property so we had a right to protest there.

So, we gathered our posters and walked towards the highway intersection along the parking lot for the shopping mall. Then things started getting bizarre. As we walked, a young police officer on a bike stopped me and said that we needed to have a chat with them. Out of no where about 3-6 police cars, and the van with the woman pulled up and cornered us in a corner of the parking lot.

They told us that we basically had to get off of Barracks' road property NOW or get arrested. The woman told us that she wanted to make sure "we understood that we had no right to protest on private property." They said that we had to move our cars also "because we weren't shopping." This last request I didn't find out about till later and bothers me the most. Countless people park their cars in seemingly public parking lots in shopping malls and don't buy anything! It was all very intimidating.

Frustrated, confused, bewildered, we surrendered our rights to protest there (as we had earlier) since it was their private property and we were technically "trespassing" there.

As soon as the police left, a couple more people showed up to help protest (including Brandi with all the signs and such).Our little party swelled to about 10-15 people or so. After some quick explaining, we paraded down Emmett St to the big intersection with Barracks Rd. and Route 29 - the biggest commercial highway in Charlottesville (lots of shopping malls, strip malls, a kmart, wal-mart etc.)

There, we passed out flyers to motorists waiting at the red light, yelled "human need not consumer greed", yelled "today is Buy Nothing Day etc., shook signs, banners, talked to people waiting at red lights, got yelled at by people waiting at red lights. Some of the insults were: "if you can't buy
anything where'd you get yer clothes!" "what about the economy" "don't you guys have anything better to do?" (what??) Some people who criticized we talked to and changed their minds. Others just told us to f___ off..

After a little while of this some folks decided to go get some sheets from the thrift store and make big signs to hang over the highway bridge/overpasses. They never showed up later so I don't know what happened to them.. (Ginny- what happened to y'all?) We continued our shouting and gesticulating and flyering and our "did you know that today is Buy Nothing Day's" until I came up with the idea of making a sign that read: HONK if you didn't buy anything today!

This proved to be a positive way of putting things instead of talking down to people as if we were telling them what to do. We got some wild honks, enthusiastic thumbs ups and brilliant smiles. Some people even stopped and talked with us told us we were doing a great job. Others just drove by in SUV's packed with shopping bags and honked for the heck of it. In any case it was fun and it least it added some excitement to some motorists car rides.

All in all I would say Buy Nothing Day was a brilliant success, although it definitely was not anticipated to turn out the way it did. I think our biggest failing was not researching enough about the case on protesting in shopping malls. Although we may not have reached the hoards of frenzied and fried consumers at Barracks road, at least we reached some potential shoppers and perhaps changed the minds of those that were contemplating turning into Old Navy and unleashing their credit cards. I hope we did anyways and if not, or if others had shopped already, perhaps we brought about some awareness of how their actions effected the rest of the world.

Seasons greetings and happy holidays

-alex- (Alex Davis, electronic mail, November 25, 2000).