How tool libraries can seed a new economic system and build community resilience
Sharing key to the solidarity economy
This article originally appeared in Truthout.
By Ella Fasler
As a handy person, Devon Curtin spends a lot of time helping people enrich their living spaces. Recently, while working with a friend to remodel their floor, Curtin noticed that the cost of do-it-yourself projects is already rising because of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“The cost of mahogany was the same as Douglas fir, which is kind of wild, but the cost of oak was double. And I was like, ‘Oh, we’re probably getting oak boards from Canada, and so the tariff cost on that is going to skyrocket,’” said Curtin. “And so all of a sudden, this project of building an oak countertop doubles in price because the tariffs are there.”
With the price of materials climbing (or set to), many DIY projects have become more difficult to finance overnight. But what if Curtin’s friend didn’t also have to purchase pricey tools to complete the project? What if he borrowed them all from neighbors instead, and returned them when he was finished? And what if those neighbors helped him through the project each step of the way?
This is more or less how tool-lending libraries work. Curtin, who is a volunteer and steering committee member of the nonprofit Rhode Island tool library PVD Things, connects people with the tools and know-how to make daunting do-it-yourself projects more accessible. For a sliding scale fee, members of the cooperatively-run library have access to a catalogue of about 1,630 items that have been amassed over the past four or so years through donations. Tools like the power washers, hammers, drills, cameras, lawn mowers, pet carriers, grills and pop-up tents can be borrowed for one to two weeks.
But PVD Things is about much more than just the things. Volunteers get to know their neighbors and their stories, and provide guidance if they need help. Those volunteers told me about a local poet who borrows pop-up tents and tables to speed-write poems for passersby, and a surfer who borrowed palm sanders and dust extractors to build a fiberglass surfboard from scratch. Another member built out a camper van with their power tools. Several weeks ago, 30 gardeners borrowed rakes, shovels and pruners en masse for a big clean up party at a community garden that had been overgrown for years.
During open hours, I saw volunteers celebrating a member’s upcoming 10K when she came in to borrow a GoPro to document the run. The space was warm and welcoming, with a wall of free things, a whiteboard full of local event flyers near a seed library, and power tools impeccably organized on curvy psychedelic shelves that were designed and made by a program that works with Providence youth.“It’s not really like a Home Depot where you just go in, you don’t talk to anybody, you pick a tool up and leave,” said volunteer and board member Erica Bello. “A lot of times we’re having really in-depth conversations with what these people are doing and their projects and all that stuff. And some people just come and hang out.”
Tool libraries such as these have surged in popularity since the Great Recession. Public library systems house many of them, as in Oakland and Berkeley, California; Grosse Pointe, Michigan; and in Providence, Rhode Island, through a partnership with PVD Things. Independent nonprofit tool libraries are flourishing across the country too. Hubs in Denver, Chicagoand Buffalo all offer thousands of things and workshops; another in New York City’s Flatbush neighborhood offers free membership to all Brooklyn residents. A longstanding library in Baltimore heavily influenced the organizational structure of PVD Things.
Tool libraries are typically hyperlocal projects sustained primarily by donations and volunteers, making them relatively insulated from the whims of far-away neo-fascists and tech billionaires. As the Chicago Tool Library recently put it, “There are no tariffs on sharing. The more we share, the more we have.”
They aren’t insulated from politics entirely. “This is a not-for-profit, and we are directly benefited by a lot of the programs and grants that kind of extend from what’s available in the state or in the city, or federally,” Curtin said. “That gives us the opportunity to grow.”
The use of such grants and programs can also be a vulnerability. Last month, the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a government agency that funds one-third to one-half of state library agencies’ annual budgets, was gutted by the federal government. IMLS had provided grantsto fund at least two tool libraries in California. Berkeley’s tool lending program — one of the first in the public library system — was originally funded by a federal grant in 1979.
PVD Things has secured a couple of grants, including one that led to the hiring of their first part-time employee, Manuela Hincapie Vidal, as a workshop programmer and volunteer coordinator. Born in Colombia, Hincapie Vidal moved to Rhode Island at age 11, where she was exposed to squatting culture and the Zapatistas at a community space in Providence shortly after graduating from high school. She first learned about tool libraries after enrolling at Berea College in Kentucky — a tuition-free college for low-income students — from an inspiring professor who also taught the class about back-to-the-land movements, timebanking and municipal internet.
Hincapie Vidal said her Latina roots inspire her to ensure PVD Things’ workshops are accessible to their mostly Latinx neighbors. She has helped organize three Spanish-speaking workshops, spreading the word through Latina organizations and ditching Google docs — which seemed more friendly for English-speakers — in favor of email and text sign-ups. All three workshops quickly reached maximum capacity.
“Workshops help people feel a sense of belonging and ownership of the space,” said Hincapie Vidal, “and bring people in that feel compelled to be volunteers.”
Through workshops, locals have learned the basics of power tools, electrical work, plumbing, machine sewing, hand sewing, wood working, little free library building, sign making and more. With these new skills, people are better equipped to repair their belongings when they break, saving them money and keeping things out of landfills.
“We want people to realize their own self-reliance. You don’t have to be a consumer. You can be a repairer,” Bello said. “So many things are kind of built nowadays where you can’t fix it, and corporations want you to discard it. It’s planned obsolescence. We are trying to give empowerment back to the people.”
PVD Things aspires to host open shop hours where people can fix things and collaborate on other projects together. When I asked Curtin and Bello about their other utopian dreams, Curtin said he hopes for each public library to involve a tool-lending program. Bello envisions a world where the proliferation of tool libraries allows people to climb up the economic ladder, and Curtin chimed in that tool libraries can serve as an incubator for small businesses.
Later, Hincapie Vidal pulled me aside and said that she had dreams too. “Imagine a world where there are tool libraries in every neighborhood, and they’re third spaces for people to hang out without having to spend money,” she said. “There are potlucks to share food, and urban farms.” We talked about alternative economic systems, such as solidarity economies that weave together things like worker-owned cooperatives, community land trusts, popular assemblies and mutual aid networks to build a world that prioritizes people and planetary health over economic growth. “That would just be a disaster for capitalism,” she said cheerily.
Entire economies could even be organized around library concepts, as some have suggested: Under a system called “library socialism,” popularized by utopian comedy podcast “Srsly Wrong,” and further explored by YouTuber Andrewism, all kinds of goods and resources could be collectively catalogued and distributed to meet everyone’s basic needs and desires. Under library socialism, for example, apartments might be doled out by a collectively managed housing committee that is accountable to its local popular assembly. An affinity group might run a collective kitchen and return the space rental to the housing committee once it’s no longer being used. None of the concepts are necessarily new — solidarity economies and library socialism are modern spins on what many societies have been experimenting with since the dawn of humanity.
“It sounds utopian, but it’s not. We’ve been made to believe that capitalism is the only way, because it feels like it has existed forever and that there are no other alternatives,” said Hincapie Vidal. “But that’s not true. It’s pretty new. The history is there so we can bring it forward and learn and share it.”
Ella Fassler is an independent journalist based in New York City. Their work on community autonomy, labor, technology and the carceral system has been featured in Teen Vogue, The Boston Globe, The Nation, Vice, The Appeal, Slate, OneZero, Shadowproof, Mic, In These Times, The Counter and elsewhere. Twitter: @EllaFassler.
It seems to me, that also making our State independent from Federal monies, is VERY important. Because I respect your opinion, I ask, what you think of promoting a State Income Tax? Sales tax is rising and isn't fair for all.
Tool libraries. Where are they in Seattle - or more specifically, West Seattle? And how about an online tool library, with (youthful, of course) advisor on site?