No Black Friday--Well, For Me, Anyway

So, there is movement based out of social justice on behalf of Mike Brown and his slaying in Ferguson, which encourages people not to shop today of all days--of consumerism, the most high holy.
We all shouldn't shop today, anyway, though. I don't just say this because I'm going to be at work tomorrow at 8:30 sharpish. We shouldn't do this because people have been told they will work Thanksgiving or be fired.  We can do this in honor of striking Walmart workers.  We can jointly acknowledge that Black Friday isn't even the best day, necessarily to shop. 

I know, for me, I hate crowds and noise and bullshit. On any given Friday, I would just like to go to work. My actual shopping is a long, slow, loving hunter-gatherer experience that has a lot to do with looking at circulars and hitting the mall when it is not crowded with other bodies and touching merchandise and making thoughtful choices and not going -"Shit! Now! Buy this shit now! More shit now! ARGGGHHHH!".

The idea of standing in line in the cold outdoors in expectation of some kind of crazy sale is--so not gonna be me. So I feel like a right smug tart telling anyone this should not be you, either. But really--let this not be you. Maybe, even if consumerism has its place, making a holiday of consumerism is totally out of place, and we should really make a place for enjoying a post-Thanksgiving high that does not involve swiping a card and trying to buy love from our fam by getting them discounted consumer goods.

And yeah--consumerism sucks in general and I don't know how it relates to Ferguson, specifically. I don't care. Black Friday is tacky and sometimes even violent (anarchists targeted the Macy Parade this year)*.  I have no sympathy for it. I'm just saying, shopping does not deserve a holiday. People do.

*Nota bene: by anarchists, the newspaper article means "anarchists" and I mean "people who don't understand why a movement that signifies by pissing people off, will only serve to piss people off."

I'm in Favor of a Black-out for Black Friday for Walmart

It was Black Friday 4 years ago that I noted the passing of a Walmart employee who was trampled in a Black Friday melee. Each year, similar things seem to happen, but the low compensation, bad to non-existent benefits and the general company disregard for the rights or well-being of Walmart employees, leads me to support the proposed Black Friday action to strike (even though Walmart is nonunion) and for people who support retail-worker unionization, or at least decent treatment, pay, and benefits, to avoid Walmart on that day. For a primer on how and why Walmart is a crappy business model that hurts communities, please review this,  and for an easy petition to mark your support of the Walmart walkout, you can note it here. 

Now, I know avoiding the local Walmart is easy enough for me (I live across the street from one, but I am borderline agorophobic in big shopping crowds to start with, and can reasonably attest to having other affordable options for shopping for another.) But if you at all can--march with your wallet.  Shop smart--don't shop Walmart.

(Also, to make this a definite "Know your Class War" item: consider whether Waldemort could well afford to pay its employees more.  The owners of Walmart have more wealth combined than the bottom 30% of Americans.)