A man was approaching people with a newspaper. He had a few bags of papers with him. I spotted the title: DOPE Magazine.
I wondered if it was about drugs, but was pleased to discover DOPE is a street sheet. It belongs to the venerable tradition of radical street papers.
Reading through it, I couldn’t help but think London has become too upmarket for its own good. It’s a city for the rich now. And it’s very expensive to be poor.
Styled as ‘The Anarchist Big Issue’, DOPE vendors keep 100% of the proceeds of their sales thanks to its innovative cooperative model.
The magazine has a familiar aesthetic to readers of Adbusters, the famous Canadian culture-jamming media. This is no coincidence.
DOPE’s original publisher was Dog Section Press, which has close ties to the anti-advertising movement and ‘subvertising’, where activists replace ads with works of anticapitalist satire.
DOPE‘s politics match its subversive aesthetics. Every quarterly issue features a host of radical writers who match the anarchism of the editorial line. Satirical adverts and digital artwork by provocateur Krime complement long-form journalism.
At the same time, DOPE has been lucky to secure contributions from well-known artists such as Sleaford Mods singer Jason Williamson and the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah.
Past editions of DOPE have included articles by Jeremy Corbyn, alongside essays taking apart the Corbyn project and raising difficult questions for the Labour left. DOPE isn’t a mouthpiece for any political party, certainly not Labour.
It’s a rare thing: an independent left-wing magazine. How it sustains itself is a crucial part of the magazine’s story.
DOPE Model Economy
First published in 2018, DOPE had an initial print run of just 1,000 copies. By March 2020, however, it had sold over 20,000 copies, making at least £60,000 for the people selling it on street corners and outside train stations.
Today, DOPE has a print run of 35,000, and its narrow distribution stretches across the UK from Brighton to Dundee. This translates into at least £105,000 to street vendors – which is £420,000 yearly.
All subscriptions and donations go straight towards production costs. So, the more money is raised, the more editions can be produced and distributed by vendors. This allows the person selling the magazine to keep everything they make.
You can subscribe for anything from £1 to £20 a month through Patreon. The minimum subscription pays for 200 print copies, which translates into at least £600 in sales, while £20 pays for 3,400 copies and makes over £10,000 for vendors.
This is in stark contrast to The Big Issue’s approach, which is very much a social enterprise. Homeless people have to buy their stock, so vendors keep 50% of everything they sell.
This means it can take several sales for a vendor to make an hour’s living wage. The same may be true with DOPE, but it’s easier when you keep 100% of your earnings, and you’re not paying to get started.
The vendors flogging The Big Issue must carry ID cards and red jackets as a uniform. This is one way of creating a brand image, but it’s also a way of instilling “trust” among readers.
These vendors are supposed to be on the way to becoming respectable citizens. “Working, not begging” and “a hand up, not a handout” are the two mottos which sum up The Big Issue’s ethos.
Compare those slogans to DOPE’s motto: “Solidarity, not charity.” This is prefigurative politics, an attempt at a different kind of economy, not a kinder, more creative capitalism.
Some DOPE vendors have begun wearing themed jackets produced by the coop. The jackets are not a mandatory uniform, nor do they impose any behavioural obligations on the individuals making sales.
This means DOPE has fewer barriers to entry for new vendors, which helps explain why the magazine has experienced such rapid growth in circulation. However, the British housing crisis has also created a substantial pool of potential hawkers.
But it’s not just about housing. It’s the whole UK economy, which no longer has a functioning growth model but is sustained by cheap labour and blighted by low productivity.
It’s not just homeless people selling the paper, either. Every year, it gets harder to survive in cities like London, and a growing number of people working low-income jobs need to find ways to make extra cash.
Radical Street Papers
Once you’re living on the streets, it’s extremely difficult to get off them. The law is not on the side of rough sleepers, but a street magazine like DOPE offers a lifeline in these terrible circumstances.
Begging and rough sleeping are technically illegal in the UK and have been since the Vagrancy Act of 1824. This legislation means the homeless can be ‘moved on’ by the police wherever they find themselves.
Fortunately, since the English Civil War, the law has allowed hawkers to sell newspapers in public spaces without a license or any other requirements.
It’s obvious why DOPE has spread so widely and quickly. It’s a magazine that speaks to Britain’s Brexit economy ideologically and commercially.
Publishing DOPE was taken over by the Solidarity Economy Association last year. This Brighton-based group has its work cut out for it, as the struggle for housing rights is not getting any easier under Labour.
Hundreds of thousands of people are either homeless or stuck in precarious housing situations. Millions struggle to put food on the table and pay their energy bills.
For as long as it’s difficult to live a decent life in this country, DOPE has a raison d’être, and its survival will help thousands survive.
Though its existence is predicated on crisis, the sheer ingenuity of the publication makes it worthwhile. Think of it as a Financial Times for the poor, putting cash in readers’ pockets.
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Screenshot courtesy of DOPE Magazine. All rights reserved.
