I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving today and eats well since know I will be this year. The girlfriend and I will be going to her brother’s and we are going all out this year since with the economy going the way it is next year we may only be able to afford to feast on cold cereal.
Now, most people will get up early tomorrow and try to take advantage of good deals and shop all day. I think people who get in line at 11 PM the day before stores open are not buying for other people but mostly for themselves. I have never felt the need to battle with the crowds on the day after Thanksgiving so would never buy anything myself. Little did I know what I did informally was being done by social activists for years in protest of our over consumption and called it Buy Nothing Day.
It’s now an international event but was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave in 1992 and subsequently promoted by the CanadianAdbusters magazine. The event is held in North America every year the day after Thanksgiving or Black Friday. The point is not that buying nothing on one day will make a difference but that we think about how our consumption effects everything everyday.
Last year Adbusters created a commercial to make the public aware of the cause and to buy nothing. Oddly in our free society of ideas the big corporations would not take their money to air the ad on any of their TV channels. Apparently the concept of taking a day to buy nothing and think about our consumption habits is controversial. CNN did end up airing the ad at the last minute which you can view in this video…
Many of you know that the Shadow Democracy blog (link still works but not for much longer) which I was involved in as the webmaster and as a infrequent contributor come to an end a couple of months ago. This happened because my good friend Matthew Podoba, the blog owner needed to take a break because of family issues. The good news is Matt will be starting a new blog and there will be announcement in regards to this very soon!
I decided to import my key posts from Shadow Democracy into this blog to archive and for your reading and comment pleasure…
This post originally appeared in the Shadow Democracy blog which is a old project I was part of but no longer exists.
The big showdown has been brewing for weeks after the Berkeley city council voted to ask the Marines Corp. to close the recruiting station downtown near the UC Berkeley campus because they are “unwelcome intruders”. The issue has been the city not wanting the Marines to recruit their young people for the Iraq War that is not supported by the majority of the people in the city.
Hundreds of people from anti-war groups like Code Pink will be met by support-the-troops groups that is sure to be interesting.
This post originally appeared in the Shadow Democracy blog which is a old project I was part of but no longer exists.
“Click” on image to enlarge
OK…I do say ‘FUCK BUSH’ all the time, but the publishing credit for the “Taser this” tag line goes to David McSwane. He is the editor-in-chief of The Rocky Mountain Collegian, the Colorado State University’s student newspaper. The CSU Board of Student Communications did admonish but not fire McSwane. You can read all about that at CNN – so they do understand First Amendment rights and that the student newspaper is not a professional publication. Unfortunately, the college Republicans failed to understand that and tried to have McSwane fired by circulating a petition.
You can read student comments about the editorial at the The Collegian online. Please read on down the page… Many of the comments are very scary like the gentlemen who would like to see McSwane jailed for three years to “teach” him a lesson. He is a real friend of the free press, as you can see. Shocked at the comments from current and former military personal who, for some odd reason, equate criticizing Bush with dissing the military. Guys, George led us into a war soaked in lies, that we are stuck in for the foreseeable future, then proceeds to cut veteran aid. He is the most pathetic supporter of the troops I have ever seen.
Not to worry – enlightened CSU students did a good job of countering those arguments. However, I would like to touch upon some of the comments regarding the showing of respect for the Commender-in-Chief.
In my opinion, the mainstream media and common people in general, have been showing to much respect for George. If the press and more people had spoke up earlier, we would not be trapped in Iraq, having to endure four more years of Bush, while watching him try to block health care for kids for God’s sake! I have said more than once on our radio show that besides impeachment, Bush should stand trial for war crimes and I will never back away from that position. If the Republicans had stopped and smelled the coffee they would not be looking at losing more seats in Congress, and the presidency next year.
When I was watching President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, speaking in NYC little over week ago, I couldn’t help but think he was a Bush clone! They both have the same mix of arrogance, ignorance, misleading ideology, and not to mention record of civil rights abuses, toward their own people. I know am not the only one who can see this. If only one of the many news commentators covering the speech had the guts to also make that comparison, maybe more people would pay a bit more attention to Bush’s destructive policies..
So people like McSwane, Andrew Meyer (the one who started “Don’t taser me“), Cindy Sheehan, myself, and countless others are going to have to speak up. Even the people who may be rude and crude about it. Maybe Mr. Bush and his few loyalists who are left will get the hint that we are not going to lay down anymore and just take it.
In my quest to become more personally involved in community activism I went to the Iraq War Anniversary Vigil held at the corner of Elmwood and West Ferry at 6:00pm today. This was organized by MoveOn.org of which I am on their mailing list and was part of the 1000′s of nationwide vigils held today for the war. Turn out was small, which was about 40 strong but could be expected because of the weather. While there was much support by cars passing by heard from the frequent horn blowing, the vigil never really got off the ground. Much of the problem was because the vigil was only scheduled to be half hour which seemed to short. But as it turns out the real event was inside the Unitarian Church at that corner.
Thanks to MoveOn.org you can get a free bumper sticker that expresses how you feel about the war in Iraq. Sure to be limited so order yours now like I did here.
