Thursday, November 11, 2010

Black Friday activism

Mohandas K. GandhiBUY NOTHING DAY + CARNIVALESQUE REBELLION
A few people start breaking their old patterns, embracing what they love (and in the process discovering what they hate), daydreaming, questioning, rebelling. What happens naturally then, according to the revolutionary past, is a groundswell of support for this new way of being, with more and more people empowered to perform new gestures unencumbered by history.
Think of it as an adventure, as therapy – a week of pieing and pranks, of talking back at your profs and speaking truth to power. Some of us will put up posters in our schools and neighborhoods and just break our daily routines for a week. Others will chant, spark mayhem in big box stores and provoke mass cognitive dissonance. Others still will engage in the most visceral kind of civil disobedience. And on November 26 from sunrise to sunset we will abstain en masse – not only from holiday shopping, but from all the temptations of our five-planet lifestyles.
What, you ask, is a five-planet lifestyle? That refers to the five planets we would need if everyone lived as we do in the U.S. So the mantra of living simply and reducing your footprint is perfect for the day after Thanksgiving.

For some ideas check out One Planet Lifestyle.

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