Briarpatch responds to Pride Month naysayers

Co-op will donate money for every hateful comment received

When businesses are faced with customers who disagree with the modus operandi of the company, there are a number of ways the business can react.

For Briarpatch Food Co-op, they got creative when a number of customers and community members objected to the store's Pride Month related merchandise and representation.

“After a couple of days of denigrating, negative messages to our posts, I was laying in bed, frankly angry and stuck, feeling like we couldn't just delete and block these messages and users, put them in the closet—pun intended—and just ignore them,” said Briarpatch's Director of Marketing, Rebecca Torpie.

“That didn't seem right. This issue is plain and simple about equality, equity, and treating people with love and respect. We have to be

allies to these folks that we're supporting. So the idea of a `swear jar' came to me. We don't want to add fuel to their fire, but we could certainly use it to fuel and further our Pride family's causes. We wanted to make something good come out of something not so good.”

In response to the hateful messages, Briarpatch has pledged that for every negative comment they receive they will donate $10 per complaint to Lavender Library, a queer-positive book store and venue located in Sacramento.

Torpie explained: “(Lavender Library is) a volunteer-run LGBTQ+ library, archive and community space in Sacramento dedicated to queer books, films, archives, `zines and more. They host book clubs, support groups, craft markets and other community events. We wanted to support an organization that was a safe space where LGBTQ+ folks can go and where their stories will be shared and treasured.”

As far as Torpie knows, the Lavender Library is unaware of Briarpatch's initiative, which began Tuesday. So far, she said, the co-op has raised $180 toward the effort, but another $50 was being added Wednesday. That equals 23 people who have expressed their outrage over the store's decision to honor LGBTQ+ community members.

“This year we saw a huge uptick in the vitriol against Pride Month,” said Torpie. “More so than we've ever seen before. It made us sad, but we couldn't stand by and allow our social media platforms to turn into an unsafe, hurtful place.

“We got such a positive response from our online community doing this (initiative), though we'd love to think that we won't need to do it again in the future,” Torpie said. “It was great to see how many people were proud that we were taking action and advocating. It made us feel really good, like we are making a difference, and our co-op and our whole co-op community should feel that way too. They are a part of this and the reason why we did it.”