Rethink Resale - Chicago

Andersonville Brown Elephant - Chicago, IL - August 2009

Salvation Army resale shops are not an option for donating or thrifting. It's sort of like Wal-Mart. But as a private non-profit the fundamentalist Christian organization can be blatant about their discrimination. The EEOC sued Salvy's in 2007 over their English-only policy when two Latinas were fired in Boston for speaking Spanish on the job. 

  And salvationarmy.org has the organizations positional statements outlining their conservative standpoints on everything from social drinks to "same-sex relationships that are genitally expressed" (a description that is hands down the best synonym for homosexuality I've ever heard). If you're wondering the answer is no, you are not invited to be a gay soldier in the Salvation Army. So it's more like Wal-Mar meets The Boy Scouts. 

I know. The glory of a day spent in musky warehouse thrift aisles is as sweet as a sunset. It doesn't get much better than dropping five bucks on fifty records or finding the perfect dinette for your first dinner party. But the sad truth is that most of these goldmines benefit right-wing organizations with radical Christian priorities. So what to do when in need of fingertips dirtied from too  many dirty flannels?

If you're in Chicago shop The Brown Elephant! It's one of those places that makes the world a better place. The kind of spot you leave feeling great not just because you donated a couple lamps and a broken turntable, but because you copped some free neon condoms on your way out. The three Brown Elephant locations (Andersonville, Lakeview and Oak Park) benefit Howard Brown Health Center one of the country's largest LGBT organizations. They provide free HIV testing, hospice care, cancer screening for lesbians, job placement for homeless teens and a slew of other needed services. 

The resale shops offer pick up services to make donating easy as pie and because hip progressives make the effort to drop cast-offs there the selection is stellar. We're talking shelves and shelves of wicked books sold for a buck fifty a piece, bins of Granny-somebody's ill jewelry, and of course, row after row of faded tees worthy of your next fit. Get there.

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