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Buy Nothing, gain everything: Austinites leaned on local gift economies during the winter storm

Lisa Buenaventura Rice, a member of a South Austin Buy Nothing Facebook group, set up a charging station outside her home last week for neighbors without power.
Like most of the residents in her East Austin neighborhood, Charlotte Colis lost power and cell service last week as a result of a historic winter storm. When she arrived at her dad's place on Tuesday evening, she had access to both for the first time in two days and used it to check Facebook, where she found a flood of activity.
Colis is a co-administrator of the private Buy Nothing East Riverside-Oltorf/Montopolis group, one of 60 hyperlocal groups active in the Austin area. She quickly began responding to dozens of requests from Facebook users who wanted to join and reading posts from existing members, who had offered hot showers, phone charging, rides and food to people in need. "It was absolutely one of the best, most heartwarming things I've ever seen," she told Austonia.
The Buy Nothing Project began as a social experiment on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, in 2013. Friends Rebecca Rockefeller and Liesl Clark wanted to create a hyper-local gift economy, where neighbors could post about items or services they had to offer or needed themselves. Market economy activities—buying and selling, trading and bartering—were off limits. Since then, the project has spread to at least 25 countries and includes more than a million members.
Linzy Foster, who lives in the Dawson neighborhood in South Austin, joined her local Buy Nothing group three years ago. Her first interaction was to request help with a clogged drain. Another member offered to lend her an unclogging tool. "I went and got it off her front porch," she said, and watched a short YouTube video about how to use it. "I think that was when I was hooked."
Now Foster is an admin and has witnessed firsthand how the group has helped others feel a similar sense of self-sufficiency and community connection. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, she noticed a shift as members grew more intentional about helping others who were struggling due to job loss or other pressures, whether by setting up a weekly food drive or offering to pick up items and deliver them. "Honestly there are a lot of days where I want to get off of Facebook," she said. "But Buy Nothing has honestly been the bright light for me."
The Buy Nothing light has perhaps never shined brighter than during the statewide super crisis last week. Lisa Buenaventura Rice, a member of the Buy Nothing Bouldin/Travis Heights/St. Edward's/Dawson Facebook group, set up a charging station outside her home, which mostly had power last week, and offered it up to fellow members. She also made a fire, put out chairs and blankets and set up hot drinks and ginger snaps.
Another member, Becky Bullard, facilitated the distribution of over 300 donated diapers to six families in need. Chris Chiarchiaro shared a photo of a drawing she had made with an ink pen she was gifted through the group. "Keeping sane in these times with arts and crafts," she wrote last Tuesday.
In Foster's eyes, this is the fundamental purpose of Buy Nothing groups. "We should be able to fulfill all needs within our community from our little community," she said.
It is also core to the Buy Nothing mission. Project co-founder Clark was first exposed to the workings of a gift economy while working on archeological projects in the Himalayas, where residents were far from market economies and instead relied on each other for their basic needs. "That really was a life lesson for me in seeing how you're really only as good as your weakest member, in a sense, in village life," she said.
Seeing the Buy Nothing philosophy take off has been exciting, she said. But ultimately, the goal is that such groups will become obsolete because their members will communicate directly—rather than over social media.
During last week's crisis, Clark heard from admins of Austin Buy Nothing groups, who were able to lean on relationships forged online despite not having access to the internet because of power outages or internet service interruptions. "That just makes me so happy and feels like, 'Okay, mission accomplished,'" she said.
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(Bob Daemmrich)
Hours following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, on Friday, about 1,000 people gathered in Republic Square with signs calling for change.
The rally, organized by the group Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights Texas, started at the federal courthouse on Republic Square on Friday at 5 p.m. before the crowd marched to the Texas Capitol. More protests are expected to ensue over the weekend.
People showed up with all types of signs like Mindy Moffa holding up, "Keep your filthy laws off my silky drawers."
Austin joined cities across the country that saw protests for a women's right to an abortion after the ruling.
According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
Sabrina Talghade and Sofia Pellegrini held up signs directed at Texas laws. A Texas trigger law will ban all abortions from the moment of fertilization, starting 30 days after the ruling. When state legislators passed the trigger law last summer, it also passed laws for more protection of firearms, including the right to open carry without a permit.
Lili Enthal of Austin yells as around 1,000 Texans marched to the Texas Capitol.
From the Texas Capitol, Zoe Webb lets her voice be heard against the Supreme Court ruling.
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(Paxton Smith/Instagram)
Paxton Smith’s 2021 valedictory speech at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas wasn’t the same speech she had previously shared with school administrators. She dropped the approved speech and made a case for women’s reproductive rights after lawmakers passed the Texas "Heartbeat Bill.”
Her advocacy made news on NPR, YouTubeTV and in The Guardian. Just over a year later, the “war on (women’s) rights” she forewarned has come to a head as the U.S. Supreme Court voted Friday morning to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortion access.
“It is up to the people to show up and show the courts and the politicians that we won’t sit back and let this happen,” Smith told Austonia Friday morning. “We will show up, we will fight back. Before, we were scared of them, now they should be scared of us.”
Now a University of Texas sophomore and abortion rights activist, 19-year-old Smith said she wanted to give the same speech in the “the most public way possible” to reach “as many people as possible who don't agree that I deserve this right.”
However, she says the response was “actually overwhelmingly positive” and supportive of her cause. According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
The speech opened up further opportunities for activism: she advocated for reproductive rights at the International Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, interviewed with Variety magazine and spoke to tens of thousands at Austin’s Bans Off Our Bodies protest at the Texas Capitol in May.
Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national nonprofit organization that helps fund abortions or medication abortion—like Plan C pills—in all 50 states. Most recently, Smith has been attending protests in Washington, D.C. leading up to the ruling.
“This is land of the free. This is where you get to choose how you live your life,” Smith said. “Overturning Roe v. Wade violates everything that we have come to believe about what it means to live in this country. I think a lot of people aren't willing to accept that this is a human right that is most likely just going to be gone for over half of the country within the next couple of weeks.”
Bracing for the next steps, Smith gave some tips for supporters:
- Find a protest to attend.
- “I would say invite somebody to go to those protests with you, invite a couple of friends, invite people into the movement,” Smith said.
- Talk about the issue on social media—use the platform you have.
- “Have these kinds of conversations where people can just talk about their fears and then find ways to go and advocate for yourself,” Smith said.
- Volunteer at a nonprofit near you.
“I feel like a lot of the reason things have gotten as bad as they have within the abortion rights world is that people are not making a scene, not protesting, not putting the effort into ensuring that the government doesn't take away this right,” Smith said. “I want to emphasize that if you're not doing anything, don't expect the best scenario, expect the worst because that's the direction that we're going in.”
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