When people refuse to buy something, or buy product B instead of product A for what they believe to be political purposes, they might affect the bottom line of a company. They might even provoke that company to make changes to their products or practices. That’s great! But what they’re also doing, and what is so dangerous about telling young people that “voting with your dollars” is the most important thing they can do, is leaving the bulk of the power in the hands of those companies. This limits our own power—our power to create and to innovate and to call for new opportunities and experiences—to the power to consume (or not consume). It takes all of our experiences and lives and wants and needs and desires and possibilities and puts them into a dollar, ultimately conceding that yes, the best we can do is give other people our money and hope for the best.


Telling people to “vote with their pocketbooks” reinforces the idea that money and power are irrevocably intertwined. We shouldn’t look to those among us who have the most disposable income or the biggest advertising budget or the largest market research team to be setting the tone of our cultural landscape. We should be setting that tone ourselves. Not all of us have money, but all of us have voices, and it would do us well to encourage young people to develop and strengthen their voices rather than wait until they have enough money to be counted (a day that, for many, will never come).

Why I Will Never Tell Anyone to “Vote With Your Dollars” (via sparkamovement)

Another reason why people need to stop acting like product (Red) or individual consumer choices can make substantive changes to greater structures of global power. It doesn’t make sense. They. Just. Want. Your. Money.

(via newwavefeminism)

When we vote with our dollars, those with the most dollars get the most votes.

(via greaterthanlapsed)

(via existentialcrisisfactory)

Source: sparkamovement

motherjones:

shortformblog:

Forget the pepper spray over Xboxes. This is a near-riot over $2 waffle-makers.

We can’t. Even. It looks like a frigging live-action Bruegel painting. This is okay, but sitting in a park protesting Wall Street is a threat to civilization, right?

Ugh… it’s so hard to write things about humans acting rationally in the context of the situation and then watch these videos. The truth is although I still believe what I said, I have to recognize that what we can become can be pretty dark.

Also, love the comments.

Source: mediaite.com

The Logic of Black Friday

We all know how creepy Black Friday is, even while we’re participating in it. Getting up ridiculously early to stand in line with hundreds of other people in usually freezing cold weather, pushing and shoving and possibly trampling and killing people, in order to get a discount on a television you don’t need is all very transparently silly.

It’s easy to blame people for being mindless rabid consumerists with a violent every-person-for-themself attitude. But it’s occurred to me this year that many of my closest and most brilliant friends will participate in this ritual year after year, regardless of my irritating, judgemental updates on Facebook. Reason being, participation makes perfect sense.

First, capitalism makes us want things. We are simply fuel to keep its own fire burning. As such, after a long day at our shitty job that makes us want nothing more than to escape into a screen, we are inundated with things to hate about ourselves, things to make us happy, ways to be a better person, ways to be better than the Joneses, and ways to make our loved ones happy - all of course involving purchasing something.

Second, capitalism makes us want to save money. We exist in a system where we die alone on the sidewalk if we can’t pay for our own survival. Anyone with a frugal bone in their body will jump on a chance to get a 50% discount on a television for the family, or a video game for their son, a refrigerator that works, a warm winter jacket.

Third, capitalism creates a culture of consumerism. Most people aren’t simply “doing what they think is right” - saying that implies some kind of ignorance or naivete. People are acting completely rationally in doing what will be seen as good  in the eyes of their community, family, and peers. Most people haven’t ever heard of Buy Nothing Day (let alone Adbusters), and have never considered the possibility of boycotting Black Friday.

It’s not us. It’s the system. We are behaving in ways that are rational within the context of the system in which we exist, of which we are all victims. Something is wrong with a system that keeps us struggling so much with money throughout our lives that people will literally trample other human beings once a year for the possibility of saving some money.

Humans are not inherently fucked up creatures. We adapt to our surroundings and become what we need to to survive and be happy (even if that means buying a gigantic television to escape into after long hours at that job you hate). Until we build a society where survival and happiness don’t depend on how much money one has, we will keep seeing this kind of behavior.

Lobbying firm's memo spells out plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street ( submission from vangard)

occupywallstreet:

“…CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead…”

This needs to be seen so we can be prepared.

NY Times: "School Lunch Proposals Set Off a Dispute"

emer:

Another reason, albeit a bit less obvious, to Occupy Wall Street - Agricultural corporations dictating the nutrition of our future generations:

“…the battle is shaping up as a contentious and complicated fight involving lawmakers from farm states and large low-income urban areas that rely on the program, which fed some 30 million children last year with free or subsidized meals. Food companies have spent more than $5.6 million so far lobbying against the proposed rules.”

The free/reduced cost school lunch program is a cornerstone of food insecurity prevention among children.  Corporations have been pushing their interest in producing cheap food with low nutritional quality for higher profits (something not discussed in the article but widely undisputed) for a long time now, and it’s clear that it’s directly impacting the health of economically disadvantaged children in this country.  I don’t think it’s a hard stretch to assume that the politicians arguing against changes to the school lunch program (including my state’s own Senator Collins) are those whose pockets are lined (and campaigns funded) by agricultural and food service corporate interests.

It’s no wonder that the economically disadvantaged are also those suffering from higher rates of chronic disease when the corporations dictate nutrition policy.  They’re put at a health disadvantage from the get-go.

And, believe me, as a public health worker (go us!), I’m fully aware that a myriad of reasons factor into health and chronic disease.  Just because those reasons exist doesn’t mean we can’t—and shouldn’t—push forward evidence-based policy and practice.  In many ways, the basis of public health IS about pushing back against corporate interests (to name a few: tobacco, pollution, tainted food, access to health care).

Bottom line?  We’re all in this together.  We have to be—our life(lives) depends on it.

Ted Talks x Austin - Robyn O’Brien on Food

“Robyn shares her personal story and how it inspired her current path as a “Real Food” evangelist. Grounded in a successful Wall Street career that was more interested in food as good business than good-for-you, this mother of four was shaken awake by the dangerous allergic reaction of one of her children to a “typical” breakfast. Her mission to unearth the cause revealed more about the food industry than she could stomach, and impelled her to share her findings with others. Informative and inspiring.”

This is the logic of Capitalism. I can’t say that Capitalism guarantees this kind of behavior in a society - because many/most/all other countries (depending on the situation) don’t make these kinds of decisions. But the incentive is there and I believe it exemplifies quite well the likely outcomes of valuing profit over people.

I can’t believe the things “we” have done to this planet, and to ourselves, just for robotically fulfilling incentives, or for greedily chasing fleeting comforts. The world is so much bigger than that.

Feminist Frequency - Toy Ads and Learning Gender

This episode shows some examples of how toy ads for kids perpetuate traditional gender roles. I’ve found that these roles, while intensely unhealthy for all genders, are still somewhat beneficial for the boys (“men must be strong” is an example of a gender expectation that’s both unhealthy and beneficial).

She does mention that there’s a lot of science behind decisions in advertising - in other words, they make what kids of each gender will react to, but I worry that this implies that girls are wired to want glitter and boys are wired to want to destroy things.

I’m not going to say that evolutionarily, we aren’t different, or that traditional gender roles don’t reflect something of our predispositions to be, for example, more competitive or more cooperative. But I will say that gendered ads certainly perpetuate the worst of gender stereotypes and as Fem Freq says, limit us in our capacity to BECOME MORE.