Buy Nothing Day

http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2008/11/27/the-church-of-stop-shopping/ Reverend Billy and Savitri D of the Church of Stop Shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. It’s known as Black Friday to many but to Rev. Billy and Savitri D, it’s Buy Nothing day. And with an economy in decline the Church of Consumption, where everything was a profit center, has taken a hit. What will replace it? Rev. Billy and Savitri D say that instead of looking to the corporations we can look to ourselves. Support your local economy. Give time not money. Hell, make something. Reverend Billy's Ten Commandments THOU SHALT 1) Forgive people, yourself and everybody else. We all shop too much. 2) Know your Devil. Shoppers are only dancing in the land of ten thousand ads. Consumerism is the system. Corporations are the agents of the system. 3) Respect the micro-gesture. Magicalize the foreground. Fore-go the plastic bag and grab that bare banana– Amen! 4) Practice asking for Sweat-free, Fairly-traded products. That's the rude that's cool. 5) Buy less and give more. Giving is forceful, the beginning of fantastic new economies. 6) Buy local and think global. Love Your Neighbor (buy at independent shops) and Love The Earth (walk to, bike to, mass transit to – the things you need.) 7) Citizens can buy or not buy, produce or not produce. We can change to a sustainable personal economy. Then corporations and governments will change. Envision the history of a product on a shelf. Workers and the earth made that thing. Resisting Consumerism is an act of imagination. 9) Complexify. Don't be so easy to figure out. Consumers tend to regularize. Shopping at big boxes and chains make us all the same. Viva la difference! 10) Respect the heroes of the resistance. A small band of neighborhood-defenders who staved off a super mall with years of protests? Beautiful. It's our turn now.