Fresh from Occupy impact, now Adbusters magazine is promoting a buy-nothing Christmas

Jan/Feb 2012 issue

Chuffed by its impact as the originator of the worldwide Occupy movement, Adbusters magazine is ramping up its annual Buy Nothing Day into a new campaign called "OccupyXmas". On its website, the Vancouver-based magazine is calling on consumers to buy nothing for Christmas this year. The campaign starts tomorrow -- so-called "Black Friday" in U.S. retailing, the day after U.S. Thanksgiving, and on Saturday in Canada and worldwide.

On its website, the magazine says:

Occupy gave the world a new way of thinking about the fat cats and financial pirates on Wall Street. Now lets give them a new way of thinking about the holidays, about our own consumption habits. Lets’ use the coming 20th annual Buy Nothing Day to launch an all-out offensive to unseat the corporate kings on the holiday throne.

In an interview with the Vancouver Sun, Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn said:

“We will have a big blast on those two days,” Kalle Lasn, Adbusters’ co-founder, said in an interview Tuesday. “But the big difference this year will be that the campaign will continue right through the whole Christmas season.”

People from the Occupy movement will engage in "pranks and shenanigans" he said, including mall sit-ins, flash mobs, credit card cut-ups and putting up posters.

With the momentum of the Occupy movement behind it, Buy Nothing Day can be a “much more powerful curve ball into consumer capitalism” than it has been in the past, he said.

Christmas, Lasn said, has been hijacked by commercial forces. “It’s been an empty, soulless kind of ritual that very, very few people enjoy. This is a chance for us occupiers to take Christmas back and have a bit of fun and remind people that Christmas can be a helluva lot more than just shopping and Black Fridays and maxing out on your credit card.”

BC coalition writes 100 times to Premier Campbell about arts cuts

B.C. premier Gordon Campbell is or will be receiving a batch of 100 letters from The Coalition for the Defence of Writing & Publishing in B.C. in support of restoring funding to the province’s literary arts groups. The premier should expect another batch in November.

The B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers (BCAMP), the Association of Book Publishers of B.C. and B.C. BookWorld formed the coalition in response to the elimination of provincial funding to the organizations by the arts & culture sector of the ministry of tourism, culture & the arts (Hon. Kevin Krueger).

A press release notes that Campbell is Canada's most literate publisher, judging by the fact that he is the only provincial leader who maintains a website to talk about the books he reads. The purpose of the 100 letters is to ask him what has happened to his resolve to be a champion of literacy and reading and to see BC as the most literate place in North America.

"We are asking him to take a personal stand on this provincial issue -- not for us, but on behalf of all British Columbians who want to continue to read and write and publish books and magazines about this province," said Rhona MacInnes, executive director of BCAMP.

The coalition is promoting a new slogan, “KEEP B.C. READING,” which will also be used to promote the stabilization of funding for the B.C. Arts Council, whose client arts groups, including writers and publishers, face further provincial cuts.

Related posts:

• Western Magazine Awards sees modest grant eliminated
  
• B.C. culture ministry cuts 100% of BCAMP funds as part of "literary clearcut"
• Federal minister Moore acknowledges "devastating" nature of BC arts cuts
•  BC magazine community dealing with quadruple funding whammy