In our consumerist society money is the best weapon you have against whatever it is you have chosen to fight. People tend not to use it because of the convenience. Who cares if Wal-Mart is exploiting its workers? As long as they have low prices, people will continue to shop there. Well, not I! In America your money is an extention of who you are. Marketing companies figured out years ago that what you buy says a lot about your lifestyle. What the majority of Americans haven't figured out yet is that where you shop is equally as important. If a corporation you give money to, even through purchases, supports a particular cause, you are giving money to that cause whether you agree with it or not. Unfortunately, many Americans are too lazy to research these companies and decide how comfortable they are about buying clothes that were made in a 3rd world sweat shop or food that has so many antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides in it that the flavor has to be replaced with artificial substances.
Even if you don't have the time or patience to only patronize establishments that support all of your pet causes, you CAN choose one or two that are most important. If you support domestic partnerships for homosexuals, don't buy gas from Exxon or contribute to the Salvation Army. If you are anti-Mormon, stay away from your local Albertsons or ACME, and keep your son home from Boy Scouts. If you support independent artists, step away from the Jessica Simpson CD and buy your music online. If you think not enough people are speaking up or speaking out, make sure you buy tickets to see political comics, buy books by authors who are trying to tell the truth, and get your news online.
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5 comments:
Here, Here! 5 years walmart free and going strong!
You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the shoes you wear. You are not the contents of your wallet...
CY,
But you are... The problem is that Americans have become so materialistic that the only weapon they have left to fight with is their money. Their ideals and their morals are all a farce. We are also anti-Wal-Mart. We don't shop at ACME - the northern equivilant of Albertson's, and we buy most of our groceries from Whole Fods. We do our best not to use petrolium products - plastics, lipstick, lotions, etc...
Great post, sometimes keeping it indie is sometimes hard but all the better for trying.
We have been convinced we are, we act like we are, but those are part of the big lie. There are those among us who measure each other by quanitites who consider climbing some sort of ladder a noble cause, to whom success is the ability to feed their greed. They are the agents of this lie. In reality we are slaves to our money and pocessions.
You could say, as Tyler Durden tells us...
Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need. We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're learning that fact. And we're very,very pissed-off.
At some point we are going to need to take all of our "shit" and throw it at those responsible for this mess.
Daniel,
It's nice to have you back! We listen to a radio station here that is mostly independent artists. We love it, and they have an hour each weekday for kid's music by indie artists. It's great. We listen to it every night weith our son even though he's not old enough to understand it yet, but we want to make it a routine.
CY,
I'm on your side in this one.
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