Local Buy Nothing Day Events in Grand Rapids

For years now there has been an international effort to address to the push towards more consumption by organizing Buy Nothing Day. Buy Nothing Day traditionally happens on the day after Thanksgiving, or what marketers call Black Friday.

This year the Buy Nothing campaign has been expanded for a whole week and there are numerous groups around the world who are organizing a variety of activities to draw attention to the human and ecological disasters connected to over-consumption.

The Bloom Collective is hosting an opportunity for people in West Michigan to both discuss and opt out of the hyper-marketing frenzy of holiday shopping. On Saturday, November 27^th the Bloom Collective will be hosting a Really, Really Free Market from 1 – 5pm at the Bloom space at 671 Davis on the northwest side of Grand Rapids.

The really, Really Free Market is an opportunity for people to give away items they no longer need and to get items they might need. It is an exchange of goods that does not require the corporate market and it fosters a greater sense of community and inter-dependence than relying on corporations to provide us with “goods.”

Then at 3pm the Bloom Collective will be hosting a potluck discuss after watching the documentary Shop Til You Drop: The Crisis of Consumerism. Shop ‘Til You Drop challenges us to confront the questions: Are we too materialistic? Are we willfully trashing the planet in our pursuit of things? And what’s the source of all this frenetic consumer energy and desire anyway?

Saturday, November 27

1 – 5pm            Really, Really Free Market

3 – 5pm             Film and potluck discussion

Bloom Collective

671 Davis NW