Buy Nothing Day
Owen Sykes, 29.11.2006 18:52
West Bend anti-consumerism activists demonstrated on Black Friday.
This year, deal-seeking shoppers were met with a surprise, the day after thanksgiving. A group of activists in West Bend, Wisconsin were up bright and early to meet the shoppers. The group, demonstrated outside the West Bend Wal-Mart supercenter from about 8 in the morning until sundown.
The groups held signs reading 'Consumerism Creates Waste', 'Save Lives not Money', and 'Break the addiction', among other things. Throughout the day about 30 people were involved in the demonstration. The protest went off without problems, with the exception of a little heckling from aggressive shoppers.
Overall the day was a major accomplishment. The message reached a lot of supportive people, and in the process was a great community-building experience.
Expect more out of West Bend in the future.
!
01.12.2006 - 00:01
Yeah West Bend! Keep it up!
Can I recommend that you pick up Che Guevara's GUERILLA WARFARE, and focus on the chapter on "Suburban Guerilla Warfare" ? Yes!
!>
Good job.
03.12.2006 - 15:55
I was at the Wal Mart on Capital Drive in Milwaukee doing stuff for Wake up Wal Mart. I was the only one there, though. Check out www.wakeupwalmart.com to get involved.
Becki>
Represent
03.12.2006 - 17:12
I don't like "suburban warfare" from Guerilla warfare. It basically says that suburban guerilla warriors shouldn't, and in fact, cannot take any real action. Rather they should just be subservient to bands in larger cities; they should just wait for orders instead of taking their own action.
Lame.
Suburban insurrection>
Guerrilla Bore-fare
03.12.2006 - 20:27
Guerrilla war is a bit cliche and played out anyway, with little to show except misery and failure. Let's not get mired down in the past, especially not lame garbage like "armed struggle. Yaaaawn.
smashy smashy>
surburan guerilla talk, without the walk
05.12.2006 - 18:21
There's a time and a place for everything. Whenever our desires deem it necessary.
Che was pretty wrong in some important ways about guerilla warefare and that played a big part in why he died. Urban rather than rural is by far the best way to go. There was a urban guerilla manual written by some south american revolutionary. It's called the urban guerilla manual. You can probably find it online.
This kind of discussion usually is really silly. It's mainly just talk by a bunch of arm chair revolutionaries who will never really get to do any of these things (and frankly don't want to do anything but talk), but like to think about them to relieve the guilt they feel doing nothing to create an insurrectionary culture of resistance.
Prove me wrong.
a herd of kittens>
armed struggle
05.12.2006 - 18:54
Someone said:
>>It basically says that suburban guerilla warriors shouldn't, and in fact, cannot take any real action. Rather they should just be subservient to bands in larger cities; they should just wait for orders instead of >>taking their own action.
When it was written, suburbs (at least, north American suburbs) held less strategic value than they do today; now major elements of concentrated power, which would need to be broken up during revolutionary upheaval, exist in the suburbs. I have the feeling that if it were to be rewritten, this chapter would look very different.
Nonetheless, this is an excellent criticism. Guerilla Warfare is based on the general principle that if we can capture the government we can control is and use it for our own good. This is an inherently anti-liberatory method of resistance as it focuses on CAPTURING power, not taking it from those who currently have it and dispersing it. The Zapatistas a perfect example of how armed uprisings can transcend outdated strategies.
Another person said:
>>Guerrilla war is a bit cliche and played out anyway
I'm glad the movement has progressed to the point where strategies of resistance are judged as if they were book reviews in the Believer magazine.
>>with little to show except misery and failure.
What? The Sandanistas won, didn't they (importantly, their reasons for ultimately losing had nothing to do with guerilla strategy)? The Rwandan Patriotic Front was THE force which defeated the Interahamwe and ended the Rwandan genocide; they were a guerilla group. And there are so many more examples of guerilla groups which have succeeded in liberating land and thier own autonomy. While their are many valid criticisms that can be made to guerilla warfare (see above), this comment is extremely ignorant and blanketed.
>>Let's not get mired down in the past, especially not lame garbage like >>"armed struggle. Yaaaawn.
Indeed, let us stop learning from the past. All of our actions will now be guided by intuition alone. Down with lame garbage! Down with sleep!
Believer Enthusiast>
...
05.12.2006 - 19:02
I agree with a lot of what Kittens said, but I disagree with this:
"Urban rather than rural is by far the best way to go."
While it is clear that urban centers should be targeted by insurrectionaries because they are centers of power, it is also clear that no urban insurrectionary can liberate rural villagers. This might seem really basic, but it bears repeating: the struggle is in your community. So urban might be "the best way to go" if you live in a city, but if you don't I don't see why it would be a bad thing to fight where you live. This is in addition to the fact that there are many centers of concentrated power (government--prisons, for example--and corporate--factory farms, for example) which do exist outside of cities.
fresh-maker>
tactics
08.12.2006 - 19:50
tactically cities are much much easier to sustain guerilla warfare (not to say that there are many people and things that do not exist within the city that also need attention). That's all that I was talking about.
It would be nice if we had a reply to function on our comments section.
a herd of kittens>
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