Recently a good soul sent me this little rant about “Buy Nothing Day” called “Steal something day” published 10 years ago. In honor of this mad genius, I am reposting along with my Crimethinc video “Why I love Shoplifting from Big Corporations”
Happy Black Friday!
STEAL SOMETHING DAY
a shameless 24-hour stealing spree!
November 26, 1999 – Participate by participating!
(Press release from http://tao.ca/~lombrenoire)
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 “proves 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 marginalized 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’ intellegentsia 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 we like to say in Montreal: diranger les riches dans leurs niches!
And remember, we’re talking about stealing, not theft. Stealing is just. Theft is exploitative. Stealing is when you take a yuppie’s BMW for a joyride, and crash into a parked Mercedes just for the hell of it. Theft is when you take candy from a baby’s mouth.
Stealing is the re-distribution of wealth from rich to poor Theft is making profits at the expense of the disadvantaged and the natural environment. Stealing is an unwritten a tax on the rich. Theft is taxing the poor to subsidize the rich. Stealing is nothing more than a tax on the rich. There is solidarity in stealing, but property is nothing but theft.
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.
Download our detourned poster http://tao.ca/~lombrenoire, make copies and stick it up wherever you can. And don’t forget, send your scamming and stealing tips to us at lombrenoire@tao.ca.
See you next Steal Something Day which, unlike Buy Nothing, happens every day of the year.
watch out lifestyle anarchists. the co-optation you fear from bourgeois kitsilano hippies is headed to your neighborhood in east van. where does this problem come from? a lack of sufficient analysis of race and class dynamics within counter-corporate resistance movements.
crimethinc is a prime example. a propaganda empire, with beautiful poetry, funded by some trust fund kid with heady ideological opposition to the capitalist system. he can afford to feel this way. just like the white girl with the car, the computer, the photoshop skills, and the privilege to be able to walk into a sam’s club and steal without being profiled a criminal. if a black person tried that one they would be heavily scrutinized, labeled a “looter”, probably arrested. notice the race relations. the young white kid who lives in an apartment.. no social relations addressed in the video. where are the black people in this equation? working at sam’s club.
and what does the white kid steal? hershey bars? disposable diapers? where the hell is her baby?
how about grow something day. or make some great culture jamming art day, or anything constructive. take care of someone elses kids day. ???
anyway. i actually agree with the anti-corporate politics, but I think that stealing from capitalism is not even remotely a viable survival tactic or resistance tactic. the beast will find a workaround.
for a more realistic representation of poor people stealing from the wealthy, check this out.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=829252794
Hey Whitenoise, thanks for your comment…
Regardless of where the Crimethinc “money” comes from, I was introduced to anarchism through them, so I find their wide reach amazingly valuable.
As far as shoplifting goes, as a latino I understand that the penalty and treatment of me if I was ever caught would be harsher than that of a white suburban teenager.
But if one has privilege, at least use that privilege in ways that resist capitalism and the state. She could have used her photoshop skills to make ads for chocolate bars and diapers (her baby appears at the end of the video) instead she uses her skills to steal.
You could argue that she could use her skills to make posters for the resistance, but in a 5 minute clip it’s impossible to develop all the facets of a character’s life. But to add to her story, she’s an ex Adbusters designer. After she became pregnant, her meager Adbusters salary was not going to be enough to pay the baby’s bills, so she’s forced to steal to make ends meet. Heh!
That Dead Prez video track is one of my favorites and I used it on the first episode of my fuckin show.
East Van for Life
Our technology is racing forward while our social designs remain static. WHY? Cultural change has not kept pace with technological change. Humanity now has the means to produce goods and services in abundance for everyone.
Science and technology are diverted from achieving the greatest good for all in favor of self-interest and monetary gain through such strategies as planned obsolescence, which is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency. For example, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, whose function is presumed to be conducting research into ways of achieving higher crop yields per acre, actually pays farmers not to produce at full capacity. The monetary system tends to hold back methods that we know would best serve the interests of people and the environment.
http://p2pfoundation.net/Venus_Project#An_Obsolete_Monetary_System
whitenoise go join some activist group with that “do something constructive” nonsense.
and cut that racist shit out. black people are too dumb and oppressed to steal successfully i guess?
here’s a video for you all to enjoy:
(Jakki The Motamouth – Cleptobrainiac) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OrK5j9JpmE
sup stimulator, i see you doing your thing ;p