NEW YORK—As shoppers rev up for Black Friday deals, some groups plan Buy Nothing Day events.
In New York City, on Nov. 25, “freegans” will sweep into an as-of-yet-undisclosed big box store location and push empty shopping carts around in silent protest. A freegan is someone who is “dismayed by the social and ecological costs of an economic model where only profit is valued, at the expense of the environment, and human and animal rights,” according to the Freegan.info website.
The empty shopping cart protest is called a Whirl-Mart action: the “reclamation of private consumer-dominated space for the purpose of creating a symbolic spectacle.”
Whirl-Mart will be followed up with a free community meal “made with love from the discards of our wasteful society.” On Nov. 27, the Really, Really Free Market will bring bartering and sharing of all sorts of goods and skills to the Judson Memorial Church at 55 Washington Square from 3 to 7 p.m.
These events all fall under the banner of Buy Nothing Day, a holiday created by the Canadian magazine Adbusters. Freegan.info describes it as, “a holiday designed to get people thinking about how workers, the environment, and animals are harmed in making the products we buy, and about all the good things we can do with our time instead of shopping.”
One of the founders of the holiday and the editor-in-chief of Adbusters, Kalle Lasn, says it’s a day when people make a pact with themselves not to buy anything for 24 hours, and many people discover that buying is really an addiction.
“People sweat. They try to resist buying that coffee or chocolate bar, some of them break down and buy something ... it can be as difficult as giving up smoking,” said Lasn. The holiday has been around for 20 years and has spread to more than 60 countries.
Riding on the momentum of Occupy Wall Street, Lasn expects this to be one of their biggest years. Adbusters has started the anti-consumerism campaign #Occupyxmas.
Family Time or Overtime
Anthony Hardwick of Omaha, Neb., created a petition on Change.org, calling for retail employees to have time with their families rather than on the sales floor. More than 85,000 people had signed it as of Tuesday morning—up from 15,000 on Monday morning.
Big box stores Target and WalMart are opening Thanksgiving night this year to allow for more Black Friday shopping time, but petitioners on Change.org think it will cut into family time for store employees.
Target will open at midnight, meaning employees will have to arrive at 11 p.m., and WalMart will open at 10 p.m. Several other stores are taking their lead to get a bigger chunk of the Black Friday sales.
“It’s a national holiday, not a national shopping day,” writes Bryce Allison as his reason for signing the petition calling on Target to open at 5 a.m. on Friday instead of midnight. Allison thinks the store should “try giving thanks for your employees that bring you so much money.”
Gary, who works at the Target location in Hoboken, N.J., says he will start on Friday morning, but he thinks people who start Thanksgiving night should be able to spend time with their family. Another employee who gathered shopping carts in front of the location Monday afternoon declined to comment, saying only, “I’m not sure what will happen. It hasn’t been decided yet.”
Target spokesperson Molly Snyder confirmed in an e-mail that stores would open early, explaining that customers have said these hours would better fit their schedules. She also made it clear that employees would get holiday pay and “our store leaders work closely with team members to accommodate their personal scheduling needs, as we do every year.”
WalMart responded to an inquiry about having employees work on Thanksgiving: “Our customers told us they would rather stay up late to shop than get up early, so we’re going to hold special events on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.”
A customer in the Target parking lot on Monday, Eric Morin, said he thought it would be okay for employees to work Thanksgiving night as long as they have the choice. He is from Canada, where they celebrate Thanksgiving in October, and he said some employees might be in a similar position.
“Like me, I don’t have any family here so I wouldn’t mind.”
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