PARTICIPATE BY PARTICIPATING
CELEBRATE STEAL SOMETHING DAY
NOVEMBER 26 1999
For the past eight years, a few self-described "culture jammers" from
Adbusters Magazine have dubbed the last Friday in November "Buy Nothing Day".
From their stylish home base in Vancouver's upscale suburb of
Kitsilano, the
Adbusters' brain trust has encouraged conscientious citizens worldwide
to
"relish [their] power as a consumer to change the economic environment"
In
their words, Buy Nothing Day "[p]roves how empowering it is to step out of the consumption stream for even a day".
The geniuses at Adbusters have managed to create the perfect feel-good,
liberal, middle-class activist non-happening. A day when the more money
you
make, the more influence you have (like every other day). A day which,
by
definition, is insulting to the millions of people worldwide who are
too
poor or marginalised to be considered "consumers".
It's supposed to be a 24-hour moratorium on spending, but ends up being
a
moralistic false-debate about whether or not you should really buy that
loaf
of bread today or ... wait for it ... tomorrow!
Well, this year, while the Adbusters cult enjoys yet another Buy
Nothing
Day, accompanied by their fancy posters, stickers, TV and radio
advertisements and slick webpages, a few self-described
anarcho-situationists from Montreal's East End are inaugurating 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.
The Adbusters' intelligentsia tell us that they're neither "left nor right,"
and have proclaimed a non-ideological crusade against overconsumption.
Steal
Something Day, on the other hand, identifies with the historic and
contemporary resistance against the causes of capitalist exploitation,
not
its symptoms. If you think overconsumption is scary, wait until you
hear
about capitalism and imperialism.
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 they like to say in Montreal: deranger les riches dans leurs niches!
So, don't pay for that corporate newspaper, but steal all of them from
the
box. Get some friends together and go on a "shoplifting "spree at the
local
chain supermarket or upscale mall. With an even larger mob, get
together and
steal from the local chain book or record store. Pilfer purses and
wallets
from easily identified yuppies and business persons. Skip out on rent.
Get a
credit card under a fake name and don't pay. Keep what you can use, and
give
away everything else in the spirit of mutual aid that is the hallmark
of
Steal Something Day.
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