Consumer Culture Brought to Its Knees in Bradford — Buy Nothing/Steal Something Day

In one sweep­ing stroke the false con­scious­ness of con­sump­tion was served a mor­tal blow in the streets of Brad­ford today. As the world­wide rip­ples of Buy Noth­ing Day crashed upon the shore of BD1, multi­na­tion­al cap­i­tal trem­bled in it’s blood­stained boots.

The 26th of Novem­ber has been known by some as Buy Noth­ing Day for twen­ty years. A day to cel­e­brate the mad­ness of our self-con­sump­tion and to plead for the soul of our civil­i­sa­tion, Buy Noth­ing Day is about touch­ing peo­ple. Inspir­ing a thought, a doubt, a scrunched up brow, a gob of spit in the face maybe, but a reac­tion.
Today the hardy shop­pers of driz­z­ley Brad­ford met friend­ly faces, offer­ing a smile, a song, a book and a drink. No mon­ey accept­ed.
Shiv­er­ing souls warmed their long neglect­ed cock­les with some fine rebel cof­fee, lov­ing­ly grown by Zap­atista coop­er­a­tives in Mex­i­co.
Con­fu­sion reigned as peo­ple won­dered, “why is this stuff free?”. The answer: “why not?“
We can’t buy hap­pi­ness, even dodgy sci­ence has shown that pay­ing for expe­ri­ence rather than things is more sat­is­fy­ing. Our habits of pur­chas­ing anti­dotes to alien­ation are seem­ing­ly fur­ther­ing our descent into dis­s­ap­point­ment, and so we fill our lives with shiny things while we deplete our plan­et of nec­es­sary sur­vival items like air and water, and thus end­ing poten­tial for japes and jig­gery-pok­ery.
Luck­i­ly, a col­lec­tion of peo­ple put an end to this cycle of deprav­i­ty by hav­ing some stalls in the sog­gy streets. A free shop was erect­ed and peo­ple played songs, out­side a mon­u­ment to failed cap­i­tal­ism, an emp­ty shop. (The sweet irony of protest­ing against con­sump­tion in a half-vacat­ed city cen­tre was not lost). A wor­thy tar­get was found, and Star­bucks was pick­et­ed by free shop­pers and Zap­atista sup­port­ers, high­light­ing their bul­ly­ing tac­tics towards small farm­ers and their own work­ers. Their dubi­ous involve­ment with green­wash front Con­ser­va­tion Inter­na­tion­al was blown wide open (see this http://londonmexicosolidarity.org/content/chiapas-coffee-starbucks-and-conservation-international or http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/starbucks.cfm) and peo­ple com­plained that their inde­pen­dent cafes were being suf­fo­cat­ed by this silky sham sofa swarm­ing of ster­ile Star­bucks, with one inde­pen­dent observ­er com­ment­ing “I don’t know why peo­ple go there, their cof­fee’s shit.” The York­shire Zap­atis­tas were on hand to offer some free cof­fee, and a taste of auton­o­my to curi­ous peo­ple, and many fruit­ful dis­cus­sions were had.
So is this the end of the con­sumerist mod­el?

Maybe a Buy Noth­ing Christ­mas will ham­mer the final nails into the cof­fin.

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Back­ground:

No pur­chase nec­es­sary!

Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 26th 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 con­sumerism. 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.

Peo­ple around the UK will make a pact with them­selves to take a break from con­sump­tion as a per­son­al exper­i­ment or pub­lic state­ment and the best thing is — IT’S FREE!!!

For a quick start to Buy Noth­ing Day read the FAQ page. If you want to take part in more active­ly, which is far more fun, then you may want to organ­ise an event — take a look at the TOOLKIT for info and ideas and check the EVENTS page. If there are no events near you — organ­ise one! Get social and fol­low Buy Noth­ing Day UK on TWITTER and FACEBOOK

Of course, Buy Noth­ing Day isn’t about chang­ing your lifestyle for just one day — we want it to be a last­ing rela­tion­ship with you con­sumer con­science — maybe a life chang­ing expe­ri­ence? We want peo­ple to make a com­mit­ment to con­sum­ing less, recy­cling more and chal­leng­ing com­pa­nies to clean up and be fair. The super­mar­ket or shop­ping mall might offer great choice, but this should­n’t be at the cost of the envi­ron­ment or devel­op­ing coun­tries.

Around the world: Adbusters.org | Argenti­na | Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina | Croa­t­ia | Den­mark | Fin­land | France
Hong Kong | Intl. BND | Japan | Nether­lands | New Zealand | Roma­nia | Swe­den | Uruguay

Buy Noth­ing Day Web­site

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Steal Something Day, a shameless 24-hour stealing spree!

Cri­tique and call-out