( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Is there a tradition any more backward or disgusting practiced across America today than that of Black Friday? Hordes of consumers mob stores for great deals on useless “goods” like new TVs or Playstations or clothes manufactured by Southeast Asian or Central American children in sweatshops.
We’re in a pretty messed up place politically and environmentally. Multinational corporations and financial firms pretty much own the government. Global warming is not only a real and present danger, but rapidly accelerating. There is a plastic “raft” in the Pacific Ocean bigger than Texas. And as people we’re constantly being taken advantage of to make this situation last longer so that corporate profits and bonuses can climb even higher than they are now.
The strong link between these two things – our society’s consumerism and the terrible political, social, environmental, and economic situations we’re in – demands action. By buying things from these corporations and feeding into this model of an economy, we only encourage it. So I’m asking you: please join me in buying nothing tomorrow.
I can’t say it better than the people who came up with this themselves:
So this November 27 (November 28 in Europe and overseas), we’re calling for a Wildcat General Strike. We’re asking tens of millions of people around the world to bring the capitalist consumption machine to a grinding – if only momentary – halt.
We want you to not only stop buying for 24 hours, but to shut off your lights, televisions and other nonessential appliances. We want you to park your car, turn off your phones and log off of your computer for the day.
We’re calling for a Ramadan-like fast. From sunrise to sunset we’ll abstain en masse, not only from holiday shopping, but from all the temptations of our five-planet lifestyles.
Take the Plunge:
You know what they say: a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. You feel that things are falling apart – the temperature rising, the oceans churning, the global economy heaving – why not do something? Take just one small step toward a more just and sustainable future. Make a pact with yourself: go on a consumer fast. Lock up your credit cards, put away your cash and opt out of the capitalist spectacle. You may find that it’s harder than you think, that the impulse to buy is more ingrained in you than you ever realized. But you will persist and you will transcend – perhaps reaching the kind of epiphany that can change the world.
Ideally, everyone will shut off their electricity for the day and just enjoy some time with their family or friends or both. If you can’t do that, at least refrain from the Black Friday madness. Don’t go to a store for some kind of deal. Don’t shop at the big box stores – in fact, don’t shop anywhere. Just take a break for one day.
Some might criticize me for publicizing this idea at such a tough economic time. “We need people to consume in order to drive the economy!” To that I say this: it’s not good if we need people to buy useless crap in order to maintain our economy. That needs to shift. And the only way to shift it is to stop buying useless crap.
So will you join me? Will you take the plunge and break the chord from your normal consumerist ways?
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thanks rossl.
Although I have to admit, its not exactly much of a deviation from my usual.
on Black Friday? Not on your life. I don’t even shop on line tomorrow.
I got a consulting gig tomorrow. A lady is having trouble with her printer.
Other than that I shall sit on my fat Brooklyn ass and eat pumpkin pie.
Mind you, I had no problem descending yesterday, sword in hand, into the psychotic consumerism at the Entenmann’s Outlet to obtain said pie. Entenmanns pumpkin pie is a sacrament in Chez Coles.
…. they were talking about this over on GOS and I wanted to crack a joke about how it figures the Admin thought we wouldn’t want to go to the mall on friday, but for all the wrong reasons, but I didn’t want to get smacked down by all the people writing diaries about how much they hate Thanksgiving because to their minds it commemorates a genocide. Which they are entitled to think, if they wish. But…. there are so many other cultures which hate it just as much !
I am too simplistic. I like it, it’s a day off, the food is yummy, the weather may not suck too much yet…
… and my kitchen is too small and my oven is… way too small. Every year we debate on whether to just chuck trying to do The Meal on Thursday, and sometimes we don’t, because it’s a pain the a$$ with this kitchen. What the hell were they thinking when they put this in, I’ve lived in one bedroom apartments with bigger kitchens.
Here’s a link about Native American Heritage Day – look at the top google website I found it on, which makes it even more hilarious. ISRIA= “International Security Research and Intelligence Agency” some news source with a foreign policy/national security tilt.
I soooo want to satirize this.
No, it’s not and a simple Google of climategate would tell you that. The “movement” has been hijacked, morphed into a 30 second soundbyte religion about don’t burn stuff.
Hell I might even have to re-evaluate who is the bigger asshole Dick Cheney or Al “I invented the internet” Gore.
Parasitic douchebaggery knows no limits in the suppression of technologies and information gained from real scientists in multiple fields. www.projectcamelot.org simply wipes Al’s carbon scamming ass as does this corbett report.
http://www.corbettreport.com/a…
It is simply fucking amazing that the only rational reporting anywhere has to come from outside the continental United States. They know something we don’t, they had the wisdom to escape.
Run, don’t walk you have to get your swine flu vaccine now, right now, today.
But I’m getting on my computer because I have work to do.
but will they miss me? I don’t buy at big boxes and try like hell to find and buy local from food to toys. Black Friday is a revolting orgy made more repulsive as it is hooked up to a religious holiday whose founder asked us all to consider the lilies of the field. I used to work at Macy’s in SF and at this time of the year the building inside all decked out always reminded me of a temple, a temple to capitalism and consuming as a act of religion.
I think I’ll transplant my lilies instead of participating. The freaky weather were having makes it still possible to plant. Stimulate your own economy, the one you live in the one where people need work. Each day is a thank you if you appreciate where your bounty comes from, and it’s sure as hell not ‘the creators of wealth’ we all are asked to pay tributes to.
but other than that? You’d have to be out of your fucking MIND to go to any kind of retail store tomorrow. Unless you really are interested in seeing “mob mentality” at work.
I hate shopping even when it’s easy.
Being pretty much broke, I can’t afford to buy anything beyond basic necessities anyway – and even then, my ability to pay for those is increasingly limited. Such is the lot of a chronically unemployed American reduced to subsisting on small bouts of financial aid from college.
I bought six #6 x 1-1/4″ machine screws and a wallbox extender today, I didn’t have a choice. But I tried. Total purchase was $2.88, so not too bad.