Buy Nothing Day (Bristol, Birmingham, Falmouth, Leeds, Lincoln, Sheffield…) — Steal Something Day (everywhere)

Bris­tol: To buy, or not to buy…

Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 28th is Buy Noth­ing Day (UK). It’s a day where you chal­lenge your­self, your fam­i­ly and friends to switch off from shop­ping and tune into life. The rules are sim­ple, for 24 hours you will detox from shop­ping and any­one can take part pro­vid­ed they spend a day with­out spend­ing!

Every­thing we buy has an impact on the envi­ron­ment. Buy Noth­ing Day high­lights the envi­ron­men­tal and eth­i­cal con­se­quences of shop­ping. The devel­oped coun­tries — only 20% of the world pop­u­la­tion are con­sum­ing over 80% of the earth­’s nat­ur­al resources, caus­ing a dis­pro­por­tion­ate lev­el of envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and an unfair dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth.

As con­sumers we need to ques­tion the prod­ucts we buy and chal­lenge the com­pa­nies who pro­duce them. What are the true risks to the envi­ron­ment and devel­op­ing coun­tries? The argu­ment is infi­nite — while it con­tin­ues we should be look­ing for sim­ple solu­tions and Buy Noth­ing Day is a good place to start.

As last year’s buy noth­ing day was a huge suc­cess in the city cen­tre, we will be doing the same event again — a free shop, where peo­ple can take away things for free. We will be right at the heart of the mad shop­ping world that is Broad­mead.

Help­ing peo­ple think about the mate­r­i­al world we live in, and mak­ing con­scious deci­sions in the way we exploit the world, its peo­ple and the nat­ur­al resources.

Bring musi­cal instru­ments, things to give away in the free shop, chalk, and your love­ly self!

Hope to see you there.

Hap­py 10th Buy Noth­ing Day!

Buy Noth­ing Day start­ed in North Amer­i­ca in the ear­ly 90’s and has grown to an inter­na­tion­al day cel­e­brat­ed in over 50 coun­tries. The Buy Noth­ing Day UK web­site went online in Jan­u­ary 2000. We’re not quite 10 years old, but on Novem­ber 28th Buy Noth­ing Day will be just 10 days young — anoth­er rea­son to cel­e­brate the fru­gal fes­ti­val.

http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/

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Birm­ing­ham: We are hold­ing our 8th annu­al San­ta Parade in Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre for Buy Noth­ing Day on 28th Novem­ber at 12:00 noon. Email: joe (at) birminghamfoe.org.uk. For last years parade click here.

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Fal­mouth:
Free Shop
Ker­now Action Now! a new direct action group in Corn­wall will be launch­ing what will become a reg­u­lar Freeshop on Buy Noth­ing Day. The Freeshop will be from 1pm out­side the old Wool­worths in Fal­mouth, Corn­wall.

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Leeds:

Buy Noth­ing Day is try­ing to make peo­ple think about the goods they buy — think before you shop!  We are NOT ask­ing you to go with­out milk if you run out. Instead, before you buy think about where things come from, how they got here, what resources were used to make them and: do you REALLY need them?

The idea is to encour­age peo­ple that instead of buy­ing some­thing for Christ­mas they could make some­thing (see our alter­na­tive Christ­mas gifts for ideas).  There is so much adver­tis­ing say­ing BUY THIS we thought that there should be some say­ing BUY NOTHING.

Last year we had Christ­mas Car­ols, a free shop, food and all for free in Brig­gate.  Lots of peo­ple inter­est­ed in the con­cept and lots of cups of tea.

Join us.

See web­site below for meet­ings or come to Brig­gate — 11am

http://www.greenactionleeds.org.uk/buy-nothing-day-09

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Lin­coln:

My Dads Strip Club out again on Buy-Noth­ing-Day-Release, this time three events in three days in the city of Lin­coln.

Thurs 26 Nov 2009 8–10pm Dog and Bone, St Johns St, Lin­coln.
BITE THE HAND feeds thoughts of break­ing con­di­tioned respons­es … sub­vert­ing sys­tems upon them­selves… inter­rupt­ing need­less con­sump­tion… and cut­ting off the pow­er. Enjoy an evening at the Dog and Bone with My Dads Strip Club as they demon­strate to you ‘the art of reclaim­ing space’. Putting embar­rass­ment aside, they will address the del­i­cate sub­ject of car­nal knowl­edge of Coke machines. The com­e­dy in the work runs very close to anger, and excites all kinds of stuff in on-look­ers.

Fri 27 Nov 2009 5.30–7.30 pm at the Healthy Hub cafe Beau­mont Fee
(after The 4pm Mini-Wave hap­pen­ing at the cathe­dral )
FROM DIRTY CASH TO CLEAN GREEN come watch us try to nav­i­gate our way out of the chaos of cli­mate change through draw­ing and per­for­mance cap­tur­ing the con­nec­tions between slag heaps and super­mod­els green-wash­ing and the titan­ic and our flood­ed out cum­bri­an towns. Sound by FLOTEL.

Sat 28 Nov 2009 at var­i­ous loca­tions in the city of Lin­coln.
GOOD SHIT DOESN’T HAVE TO COST THE EARTH Mak­ing our annu­al dis-func­tion­al attempt to relate to the shop­ping expe­ri­ence MDSC will try to coerce inno­cent shop­pers to break their addic­tion to mass pro­duced poor­ly made prod­ucts (cheap-shit) instead offer­ing for sale alter­na­tive organ­ic and sus­tain­able high-priced mer­chan­dise. Meet us for a report back at the Dog and Bone pub 1pm sharp.

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Lin­coln Mini Wave — meet Fri­day 4pm out­side Lin­coln Cathe­dral. The event is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with mobil­i­sa­tions around the UN con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen www.ecolincs.org
Buy Noth­ing Day — sab­o­tage the shop­ping
www.buynothingday.co.uk
www.dogandbonelincoln.co.uk — Best com­mu­ni­ty pub in Great Britain award 2009

http://www.mydadstripclub.com

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Con­sumer Virus Out­break, Sheffield

Meet by the stat­ue in the main Mead­owhall con­course at 1pm and do any­thing but shop!
We know that sweet tasty braaaains will be short sup­ply dur­ing the run up to Christ­mas, but let’s see what we can do … Zom­bies and out­break cleanup crew are all wel­come : bring friends, cos­tumes, signs and fake blood aplen­ty!!!
A face­book event page can be found here : www.facebook.com
FEEL FREE TO INVITE FRIENDS : ALL ARE WELCOME IN THE ZOMBIE HOARD!!!

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Steal Some­thing Day

“…Unlike Buy Noth­ing Day, when peo­ple are asked to “par­tic­i­pate by not par­tic­i­pat­ing,” Steal Some­thing Day demands that we “par­tic­i­pate by par­tic­i­pat­ing.” Instead of down­play­ing or ignor­ing the cap­i­tal­ists, CEOs, land­lords, small busi­ness tyrants, boss­es, PR hacks, yup­pies, media lap­dogs, cor­po­rate bureau­crats, politi­cians and cops who are pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for mis­ery and exploita­tion in this world, Steal Some­thing Day demands that we steal from them, with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion.…

…Unlike the mis­placed Buy Noth­ing Day notion of con­sumer empow­er­ment, Steal Some­thing Day pro­motes empow­er­ment by urg­ing us to col­lec­tive­ly iden­ti­fy the greedy bas­tards who are actu­al­ly respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing mis­ery and bore­dom in this world. Instead of ignor­ing them, Steal Some­thing Day encour­ages us to make their lives as uncom­fort­able as pos­si­ble.

As we like to say in Mon­tre­al: diranger les rich­es dans leurs nich­es!

And remem­ber, we’re talk­ing about steal­ing, not theft. Steal­ing is just. Theft is exploita­tive. Steal­ing is when you take a yup­pie’s BMW for a joyride, and crash into a parked Mer­cedes just for the hell of it. Theft is when you take can­dy from a baby’s mouth.

Steal­ing is the re-dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth from rich to poor Theft is mak­ing prof­its at the expense of the dis­ad­van­taged and the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. Steal­ing is an unwrit­ten a tax on the rich. Theft is tax­ing the poor to sub­si­dize the rich. Steal­ing is noth­ing more than a tax on the rich. There is sol­i­dar­i­ty in steal­ing, but prop­er­ty is noth­ing but theft.…”

For the full orig­i­nal text and call-out, go to http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/432