Anarchists in the Aisles? Stores Provide a Stage
This is the season of frenetic shopping, but for a devious few people it’s also the season of spirited shopdropping.
Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary.
Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.
Self-published authors sneak their works into the “new releases” section, while personal trainers put their business cards into weight-loss books, and aspiring professional photographers make homemade cards - their Web site address included, of course - and covertly plant them into stationery-store racks.
“Everyone else is pushing their product, so why shouldn’t we?” said Jeff Eyrich, a producer for several independent bands, who puts stacks of his bands’ CDs - marked “free” - on music racks at Starbucks whenever the cashiers look away.
Though not new, shopdropping has grown in popularity in recent years, especially as artists have gathered to swap tactics at Web sites like Shopdropping.net, and groups like the Anti-Advertising Agency, a political art collective, do training workshops open to the public.
Retailers fear the practice may annoy shoppers and raise legal or safety concerns, particularly when it involves children’s toys or trademarked products.
“Our goal at all times is to provide comfortable and distraction-free shopping,” said Bethany Zucco, a spokeswoman for Target. “We think this type of activity would certainly not contribute to that goal.” She said she did not know of any shopdropping at Target stores.
But Packard Jennings does. An artist who lives in Oakland, Calif., he said that for the last seven months he had been working on a new batch of his Anarchist action figure that he began shopdropping this week at Target and Wal-Mart stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“When better than Christmas to make a point about hyper-consumerism?” asked Mr. Jennings, 37, whose action figure comes with tiny accessories including a gas mask, bolt cutter, and two Molotov cocktails, and looks convincingly like any other doll on most toy-store shelves. Putting it in stores and filming people as they try to buy it as they interact with store clerks, Mr. Jennings said he hoped to show that even radical ideology gets commercialized. He said for safety reasons he retrieves the figures before customers take them home.
Jason Brody, lead singer for an independent pop-rock band in the East Village, said his group recently altered its shopdropping tactics to cater to the holiday rush.
Normally the band, the Death of Jason Brody, slips promotional CD singles between the pages of The Village Voice newspaper and into the racks at large music stores. But lately, band members have been slipping into department stores and putting stickers with logos for trendy designers like Diesel, John Varvatos and 7 for All Mankind on their CDs, which they then slip into the pockets of designer jeans or place on counters.
“Bloomingdale’s and 7 for All Mankind present the Death of Jason Brody, our pick for New York band to watch in 2008,” read a sticker on one of the CDs placed near a register at Bloomingdales. “As thanks for trying us on, we’re giving you this special holiday gift.” Bloomingdales and 7 for All Mankind declined to comment.
For pet store owners, the holidays usher in a form of shopdropping with a touch of buyer’s remorse. What seemed like a cute gift idea at the time can end up being dumped back at a store, left discretely to roam the aisles.
“After Easter, there’s a wave of bunnies; after Halloween, it’s black cats; after Christmas, it’s puppies,” said Don Cowan, a spokesman for the store chain Petco, which in the month after each of those holidays sees 100 to 150 pets abandoned in its aisles or left after hours in cages in front of stores. Snakes have been left in crates, mice and hamsters surreptitiously dropped in dry aquariums, even a donkey left behind after a store’s annual pet talent show, Mr. Cowan said.
Bookstores are especially popular for self-promotion and religious types of shopdropping.
At BookPeople in Austin, Tex., local authors have been putting bookmarks advertising their own works in books on similar topics. At Mac’s Backs Paperbacks, a used bookstore in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, employees are dealing with the influx of shopdropped works by local poets and playwrights by putting a price tag on them and leaving them on the shelves.
At Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., religious groups have been hitting the magazines in the science section with fliers featuring Christian cartoons, while their adversaries have been moving Bibles from the religion section to the fantasy/science-fiction section.
This week an arts group in Oakland, the Center for Tactical Magic, began shopdropping neatly folded stacks of homemade T-shirts into Wal-Mart and Target stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. The shirts feature radical images and slogans like one with the faces of Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian anarchist. It says, “Peace on Earth. After we overthrow capitalism.”
“Our point is to put a message, not a price tag, on them,” said Aaron Gach, 33, a spokesman for the group.
Mr. Jennings’s anarchist action figure met with a befuddled reaction from a Target store manager on Wednesday in El Cerrito, Calif.
“I don’t think this is a product that we sell,” the manager said as Mr. Jennings pretended to be a customer trying to buy it. “It’s definitely antifamily, which is not what Target is about.”
One of the first reports of shopdropping was in 1989, when a group called the Barbie Liberation Organization sought to make a point about sexism in children’s toys by swapping the voice hardware of Barbie dolls with those in GI Joe figures before putting the dolls back on store shelves.
Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, said he was not sure if shopdropping was illegal but that some forms of it could raise safety concerns because the items left on store shelves might not abide by labeling requirements and federal safety standards.
Ryan Watkins-Hughes, 28, a photographer from Brooklyn, teamed up with four other artists to shopdrop canned goods with altered labels at Whole Foods stores in New York City this week. “In the holidays, people get into this head-down, plow-through-the-shopping autopilot mode,” Mr. Watkins-Hughes said “‘I got to get a dress for Cindy, get a stereo for Uncle John, go buy canned goods for the charity drive and get back home.’”
“Warhol took the can into the gallery. We bring the art to the can,” he said, adding that the labels consisted of photographs of places he had traveled combined with the can’s original bar code so that people could still buy them.
“What we do is try to inject a brief moment of wonder that helps wake them up from that rushed stupor,” he said, pausing to add, “That’s the true holiday spirit, isn’t it?”
Christopher Maag contributed reporting.
© 2007 The New York Times
This is very funny stuff. Thanks for the great laughs.
How about a bar of lead in the toy section, one could get right to the point!
Yes, time to start “Shopdropping” for Kucinich. Make a flyer, brochure or download one of off of the national, state or local websites. Print it out and put it in a copy of Kucinich’s book or Krugmann’s “the Conscience of a Liberal’, or Mother Jones or The Rolling Stone Magazine. Put them under the windshield wipers of vehicles at the malls and shopping centers who have bumper stickers with Kerry/Edwards, Question Authority, Impeach Cheney/Bush, Stop the War, War is not the Answer etc. Paint or wrap a soup can like Andy Warhol or wrap a cereal box and put it on the shelf at the grocery store with a Vote for Kuinich and the reasons that people should vote for him. We don’t have the money and since the MSM won’t treat Dennis fairly or allow him equal time for the debates, this is what we have to do. Don’t just blog, organize!
It occurs to me that We the People have ceded our rights as citizens to the burden of consumerism, We are no longer considered citizens, but more and more We are refered to as consumers. We no longer elect represenatives, but we now have the Senator from Walmart, the Senator from Boeing, the congressman from McDonalds and the VP from Haliburton. So long as consumers we continue to pay the exorbitant intrest payments on homes, cars and shopping sprees, we will continue to own the yoke of consumerism. Want a reaction from Washington…. STOP PAYMENT !!!! And stop paying those candidates’ campaign funds… I’ll stop paying my cable bill if you do…. MSM will only continue to broadcast lies if we continue to pay for them. When we stop paying we tell them that we are no longer listening to the lies, and buying Brittney over the real issues of inequality in this nation. Ah…. but consumers are like lemmings on the march…. they don’t stop charging until they are over the cliff.
KCT
Trainer12: APPLAUSE! APPLAUSE!
GREAT ideas–simple, inexpensive, and, possibly, EFFECTIVE!
THIS is a great grassroots idea with AWESOME potential!
I will start this as soon as possible and share the idea. I hope others reading your post will do the same. Does the Kucinich campaign donate fliers? Where do I get–or make–professional looking handouts?
I am going to my supermarket right now, in the time it took me to read this article, my devious mind came up with an idea: on the rim of the food shelves, there is a place where the employees stick the price of an item on a small label, easy to remove and install as prices change (rise). I am printing up new labels…here’s what i got so far,- Buy This! your Kid Isnt fat Enough- or, -Would You feed This To Your Dog?-, and how about, -Is Junk Food Child Abuse?-
Not quite the same thing, but I’ve engaged in “thought dropping” for years. When I’m done reading one of my radical magazines or newspapers, I find a good place to leave it. Imagine Funny Times in your doctor’s office, or The Hightower Lowdown at the Veterans Administration hospital waiting room.
In keeping with the spirit of anti-consumerism I would like to point out a new documentary film “What Would Jesus Buy”
It features The Reverand Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir and is playing in very limited release. Highly recommended!
“MSM will only continue to broadcast lies if we continue to pay for them” ; this is the best and simplest expression of the only solution to the problem of corporate and governmental propaganda.
Sigh . When will Americans appreciate the awesome power and ease of this , the simplest of gestures , a button-click ?
The only vote that Americans can or should trust to achieve the desired results is the on/off button and everone who owns a television set is a registered “voter”, citizen or non-citizen , non-con or ex-con , black or white ,voting-age or non-voting age…
celebrity,
http://www.kucinichonline.com/pdfs/
“Our goal at all times is to provide comfortable and distraction-free shopping,” said Bethany Zucco, a spokeswoman for Target.
Have you ever watched people shopping? Have you noticed the airheaded focus, that “I’m not really sure what I’m doing here but there must be some reason” look of semi-intense concentration on the faces?
It’s nearly the same thing that goes on when people are driving their cars, not really focused of the task of driving, just occupying space in a moving machine, headed somewhere at one moment, and then—whoops!—they take a quick turn into a fast-food joint or gas station.
And then there are the desperate housewives wandering the aisles at Lowe’s of Home Depot, with child safely ensconced in the buggy, searching for a another thing to hang on the wall or a new plant or some decorator light bulbs.
Now, be it known that I shop, too, but for food and the stuff I need to maintain my building. I make a list, drive like hell to get there, get the stuff, and zoom home, hoping that the traffic signal god is with me all the way (sometimes I just go through the red ones). Can’t take a bus here and can’t walk there, mostly. I guess for some, shopping is an experience. It’s an experience I can live much more happily without.
This is civilized life?
As a reformed shopper, I sometimes have trouble thinking clearly. So I may have wasted many words in the post above.
But this I know: shopping is now the only inalienable right remaining to all US citizens—as long as you’re an acceptable-looking presence in THEIR store or mall and you aren’t engaging in any sort of activity which could cause people to think or become distracted from letting go of their money.
Shopping is the outcome of a secret compact between the ad agencies and the human species known all too widely as the consumer. Shopping is sacred. It is a spiritual practice whose benefits are widely known. Scientific research will, in the future, document the power of the experience.
So exercise that one remaining inalienable right before the whole thing collapses. Buy something completely useless, something you can put on a shelf to remind you of this sacred trust. And do it soon. There are only 365 more shopping days until next Christmas, or 730 more shopping days until the Christmas after that one.
Trainer12, I concur with celebrity that your ideas are excellent!
I hope you don’t object, but I’d like to add a rider to the effect that it might be a good idea to put Kucinich material in books and magazines that aren’t typically purchased by progressive, left-wing people but, instead, by the average working guy or gal. Books written by popular mainstream writers like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, and magazines like Sports Illustrated, The Ring, Cosmopolitan, People, Outdoor Life, Newsweek and so on.
Again, kudos for a very good idea!
[T]he Center for Tactical Magic, began shopdropping neatly folded stacks of homemade T-shirts… feature radical images … of Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian anarchist. It says, “Peace on Earth. After we overthrow capitalism.”
Great move by the Center for Tactical Magic, you bunch of brainless dipwads. Bakunin is always used by the Establishment as being typical of anarchists, as he advocated the use of dynamite to overthrow status quo. He represents a very small minority of anarchists, and definitely gives anarchism a bad name. So thanks for nothing, sh*t-for-brains.
It seems like some interesting subversive mischief and not much more, although I like ticonderoga’s and Jan Steinman’s ideas. My dad subscribes to The Nation, and takes his back issues to work with him and leaves them laying around.
I was struck by this comment…
“Our goal at all times is to provide comfortable and distraction-free shopping,”
As if the big stores don’t already try to distract you from all the things you don’t need whilst shopping.
And this…
“It’s definitely antifamily, which is not what Target is about.”
Capitalism and consumerism are pro-family????
Wow.
What about putting a magnetic bumper sticker with the ‘left’ message on somebody’s rear, where he/she is unlikely to find it quickly. Like a bus or semi, when they are parked, on public grounds.
Or a Kucinich sticker on an ambulance or a fire truck. Latter one needs to be in yellow then, left?
Happy Whatever You Want To,
Good Times, Stay Well And Be Good.
ItsJustKarma
^^^^
I’ve thought of doing just that.
hee hee hee…naughty lil leftie gremlin I am.
There’s a store here called “Ollie’s” that caters to the Wal-Mart set.
They have a large book section, mainly remaindered novels and fundy Christian stuff and books about Harley Davidson motorcycles and cooking.
There was a big hard cover novel over there with a cover photo of a woman’s leg in a soapy bath tub, and the title was “What She Wants”. So I made it a point to go in there many, many times and move that particular book from the novel section into the middle of the ‘Christian’ inspirationals.
I bought only one gift this Christmas season and that was a nice candy dish with candy for my Aunt. I also expressed to everyone that I did not wish to receive any store bought gifts. I’ll be wearing old jeans, a sweatshirt, old tennis shoes and socks with holes in the heels for Christmas. I usually give some cash to the nieces and nephews who are all in their teen years. I’ll be bringing good food to our gathering and sharing hugs and laughter. I’ll be feeding all the critters both domestic and wild extra special foods as well, and I will provide a special Spirit plate too to be left in a special place in nature. Seasons best wishes to all.
God that was great! Putting Holy Bibles in the Fiction/Fantasy section!
I just love it!
Resistance is a wonderful thing once it gets started.
(So key a hummer today……. or at least drop pro-democracy leaflets out your pockets everywhere you shop.)
Simple, cheap, effective.
of course some rent-a-cop might call it littering (at my company they called a union sticker VANDALISM!! and would fire anyone who slapped a “No more favors” union sticker anywhere on company property. But as a customer losing leaflets out your pockets is just simply brilliant.
Rock on! Rockin in the free world!
Hmmm . . . how about bookmarks printed with the web address of the American Psychiatric Association membership directory placed within Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly titles?
great idea Storky!! This is great stuff - I wish I would have thought of this years ago!! Never too late to join the fracas I say
I recently started leaving flyers on windshields at inner city churches tellimg people to call Rep Gwen Moore to sign on to the impeachment bill. It’s a target market, they hate bush but don’t know they can do anything.
But I’d be careful about putting stuff in supermarkets. They’ll probably arrest you for something eventually. It’s their business after all. Corporations have the rights, not you.
Another one ‘left’ here.
For 50 cents You even get to position all those important fliers (e.g. Dennis Kucinich)
into Your local Newspaper vending machine. You can still take Your copy though.
When I first came upon this web site a few years ago I thought others should check it out. I printed up a couple of pages of the words “common dreams. org,” cut them into strips, and left them laying around the local mall.
IN response to Trainer 12
Has anyone heard of Bookcrossing.com?
You can register books and leave them laying around for other’s to pick up… they enter a specific tagging number on the book into the site and they can log in.. yOu can track where the book goes…
Perhaps put some Dennis Kucinich books around..???
“Merry Christmas” from Tex the Toxic Talking Toy!
You want to pull his string again? “Lick my boots!”
“We provide distraction free shopping”…. That is just the problem- I want to alert the shoppers that an important primary election is about the happen— the next president will be choosen in the next month!!!! They kick you out if you are trying to get petitions signed- except in California where there is a law that petitioning is allowed in shopping malls.
iwarrior,
Re: capitalism/consumerism being profamily;
Please forgive me if I am wrong, or merely stating the blatently obvious, but I think consumerism/capitalism are extremely “profamily”. The great symbol of this is the family car which brings freeways, and billboards, and malls, and suburbs, and gated communities, and thus, isolation of the the family. I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think this is all part of the plan to restrict social interaction to work, the family, and a small number of other systemically approved venues. When I go visit my sister’s family in the burbs I am amazed that although there are streets and homes that seem to go on forever, you never see anyone in the streets. Should you want to set eyes on another human being your best bet is the shopping mall, which is also a good place to go when you are feeling lonely and isolated. Though of course, you never actually interact meaningfully with anyone there. The system seems to want family units that are isolated. Even that is not enough. Much better if they are a little afraid of the world out there - a message pushed again and again by the tv sets glowing in the windows in gated communities.
I have heard Mr. Chomsky saying that the American people are far more progressive than their leaders. The problem, he says, is that they are not organized. Cities used to have public squares, now they have “comfortable distraction free” shopping and entertainment zones. How will people become organized when much of their time is spent driving from work, to home, to the mall, to the cineplex, to church…??? If we do not become organized how will things ever change?
Have a merry boxing day.
hardtruth: “I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but……”
How many times in the recent past have we found ourselves apologizing for stating the obvious? The neocons have set the terms of the debate and redefined the emotional tone of various key terms in order that they implement their egregious, hateful, and disgusting agenda, and we have done nothing but allow them to do so.
Afraid of being called a conspiracy theorist? Consider this: did some lone nut also shoot JFK from in front when it was “proven” he was behind Kennedy? Did just one person pull off the hijacking of the 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 elections? Was the neocon agenda, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), written and signed by a single patriotic American?
My sincerest hope is that each and every person that considers him or herself “progressive” found a “set” waiting for them under the tree this morning. And that we wear them proudly at all times. Because Jeezus, do we need it now more than ever….
@hardtruth
I see your points, but hasn’t rampant consumerism and capitalism ravaged families? Downsizing, the widening of the gap between rich and poor, the shrinking of the middle-class, the rising cost of homes, the stifling of upward mobility, pollution, lack of opportunity, education becoming more privatized and becoming out of reach, junkfood being more expensive than junk food, the drug war, the war on terror, the lack of universal healthcare, etc. have all made it harder for people to start families let alone keep them together.
Now if you’re talking about Target’s vision of family, the family who spends together, stays together, then yes socialism, anarchism, etc. would be anti-family. Pro-family to them means going into debt to buy the kids the latest clothes and gadgets, so that Sally and Johnny can go disappear into their rooms, fussing with IPOD’s and XBOX’s, while mom and dad can go to that 2nd job or just veg in front of the TV because they’re too worn out to do much else. I think your theory of isolated families is sound, but these families are often isolated from each other as well. And that isolation itself is destructive to families.
I always get angry when conservatives act as if they are the ones protecting family values against the subversive left. As if progressives want children to kill their parents and abolish marriage. It’s the Right and their policies that are wrecking the family, not some sort of amoral leftist counterculture that doesn’t really exist. Progress is pro-family. Progress is on the side of mothers, fathers, and children. Progress wants the people to live better lives. The Right wants to make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness a luxury that is becoming more and more difficult for most to achieve.
And that’s my speech for the day.
I have long enjoyed recycling my liberal magazines into my small town hospital emrgency treatment rooms, where I work as a nurse. What better place to get a captive audience for Rolling Stone, Utne Reader and Harper’s etc. Of course what I really enjoy is when I catch some redneck looking dude actually reading one.
iwarrior,
damm fine speech. It fits perfectly with my indictment of the Petro-American way of life. It gave me much to reflect on with the failure and unhappiness in my family when I was growing up. We spent our lives in transport breathing fumes, ignoring each other and me rebelling against the authoritarian neocon extremism or my father (Archie Bunker) and the Born again fanaticism of my mother (Edith bunker) who turned to Evangelical extremism to deal with not having any electrical power or a road in hillbilly hell for years behind barbed-wire fences. The isolation and Southern hatred of anybody different then they were was the most oppressive experience of my life. The burbs wasn’t much better before that. At least in a prison, you have inmates to talk to.
Now I live on a wonderful island most of the year, where islander natives, who are very poor, have ten thousand times the quality of life we lived. Unlike we were, they are truly happy: without a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of. They help each other, sing, grow vegetables, trade in tiny towns with a town square and local governance , and live a life of bliss pulling fruit off the plentiful tropical fruit trees that are everywhere. Back in the U.S. those nasty suburbanites wouldn’t pull over to piss on you if your car slid off the road and you were on fire. Here, even if you’ve been drinking too much, they’ll help pull your car out of the bushes, collect all your bottles that rolled out and place them carefully back under the gas and brake pedals from where they came. Good Luck Sir! Off you Go! No body goes to jail around here unless he hurts somebody. It’s Nirvana. (before I get a lecture, keep in mind with the state of the roads its hard to get over 15mph.)
Life in most of the USA sucks imho.
And that’s my life story for the day.
Quote: “KCThompson December 24th, 2007 1:23 pm
… Want a reaction from Washington…. STOP PAYMENT !!!! And stop paying those candidates’ campaign funds… I’ll stop paying my cable bill if you do…. MSM will only continue to broadcast lies if we continue to pay for them. …”
THAT REMINDS ME me of the idea that is heartwarming to or for me and which is to stop voting UNLESS there are truly candidates [worthy] of electors’ votes; although we can’t seriously rely on electors’ sanity and maturity to arrive at adequate understanding for this, given most electors have proven to be examples of ways to NOT follow. But putting that reality aside, thinking only in terms of how electors should instead be intelligent, adequately informed, mature, responsible, ethical, etc., well, then I continue with my point.
Sure, abstaining from voting is a view or approach that is difficult to understand or adopt for or by eligible voters, but it’s nonetheless the best choice. It’s the only choice or (passive) action that can presently send the kind of message that is fitting for or with the present govt; and it applies for or to both main parties.
There already are roughly 35-40% of citizens eligible to vote who abstain, so if half or more of those who do vote, electing, as we have been witnessing for decades now, criminals, cons, anti-constitutional “clowns”, and incompetent “candidates” to public office, well, if half of these voters joined the abstainers, then it’d send a strong message; one of a sort that we might consider analogous to the concept found in the words “WINTER OF OUR [DISCONTENT]”.
‘Winter’ is a good, fitting term, for this govt (and the general culture of the country) is hellishly cold; while, of course, ‘discontent’ is entirely fitting and should be strong, strongly felt and reasoned.
Voters can’t express discontent when electing candidates who are criminals, cons, etc., to public office. It’s oxymoronic and moronic to think of such voters being discontent, for their votes prove otherwise; except when voting for truly honest and sane candidates, but who are extremely few, [unfortunately].
Etc. The country must stop electing schmucks, to say the least of what they are, to political or public office. All like that need to be FIRED, while, and for emphasis, the masses can express the fitting disdain these schmucks merit; the citizens who wish to express this disdain anyway.
Yes, ‘FIRED’. After all, elected candidates are hired, and only people who hire others can exercise firing them. We can’t fire people who are not in our employ, and political or public office holders are in the employ of their employers, the public.
The Constitution should have a clause or amendment ruling that if say 75-80% of eligible voters do not vote, so when there are over 20-25% who abstain, then an election is declared automatically null and void, that it must be reheld. It might be supplemented by the requirement that such cases must be correctable by letting the masses determine which of the first set of candidates are to be replaced and who the replacements will be for when the election is re-held or re-performed.
For crying out loud, when the country has 35-40% of eligible voters abstaining, then this should be sociologically diagnosed as being indicative of a very serious social problem, a signal or symptom telling us loud and clear that a serious problem requiring redress must be addressed and correctly and ethically so.
So far, the country has adopted the ‘instead’ approach; letting a minority decide who’s to be elected to public office. After all, the abstainers so far and usually outnumber the votes cast for the candidates running for office.
It’s one of the significant or important ways in which the country does NOT have representative democracy; although it really has no true democracy worthy of note anyway. The govt belongs to The People only on a or some [”piece of paper”] (GWB), one treated like ass-wipe (the way GWB clearly likes to treat it); and we all know what people usually do with that kind of paper after it’s been used and only [once], right! I mean, like most people don’t re-use ass-wipe multiple times; not usually anyway. Right? Right!
The People must make that “piece of paper” meaningful, else we may as well all get a copy and also use it for ass-wipe. Why let the con, criminal, fiend (hell-fiend), … elites alone have all the fun of treating our piece-of-paper laws as ass-wipe material?!
Anyway, I always find it both significant and interesting when more eligible voters abstain than the elected party gets for votes. During the last elections for presidency, we had around 25% more abstainers than the elected or appointed president got for votes; around 30% for the latter and 40% for the former. Depending on which of two ways we consider that, it’s either 25% or roughly 33% more who abstained, 25% if we say 30% is 75% of 40%, or 33% if saying 40% is 33% more than 30%.
Either way, that’s quite a winning margin for the abstainers.
40% is a very significant number, imo, but it’s been disregarded, treated as very, enough, insifnicant.
So, double it to 80%, which should be a “shock and awe” matter. Even 50% should be a good start; 60% of course being better, and 80% being great, if achievable, which it likely wouldn’t be, given most people are sickeningly stupid, irresponsible, cowardly, finders of invalid excuses for not acting as they should, and so on.
Unless people can vote for Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, people like these, abstinence strikes me as the really sole way to honourably vote; by refusing to vote for evils, regardless of doing so for lesser evils.
Lesser evil means it’s still evil!
Paul has some questions to answer, based on an MTP interview with him that I view over the weekend, and during which he additionally stuck me as someone who’s a bit aged and not particularly of strong health. He struck me as if soon to “keel over”, “kick the bucket”; a bit too old for my political liking. But I would definitely see him as fitting for political counsel and legislator of official kind. He has questions to answers before being able to more fully satisfy me, but not of a kind that bears on whether or not I think he would make a good and official political counsel for U.S. govt leadership. I definitely see him as fit, even very, for that latter sort of role; therefore, also as legislator.
Kucinich, Nader, McKinney, and possibly if not surely also Gravel are all of stronger health, from what I’ve gathered so far, and meaning that with respect to Gravel, for I think he’s older than these other three people.
I’m not sure if Nader’s running yet, but seem to vaguely recall having seen some very recent notice of him having started to launch his campaign.
I could not vote for any of the other candidates; none of the others, absolutely none. Instead, I see all of the others needing to be outed, unelected, and to be held accountable, for they’re all criminals. Their crimes differ in nature, but they’re all criminals according to minimally my book of LAW principles. I think that they could be definitely proven to be criminals based on govt, U.S. law though; if only we had truly just courts of law. No, I don’t think that; I’m instead and very certain of it.
Let the Constitution be such that when the abstainers outnumber the votes cast for a winner of an election mean that the election is automatically nullified, rendered void, needing to be reheld and with the abstainers permitted to indicate who they want for replacement candidates for the election. Of course that could not reasonably be permitted endlessly; if the latter scenario happened, abstainers stated who they wanted to run for candidate(s), this wish was respected, and the abstainers again abstained, then “too bad, but you were given a chance and you’ve spoiled it; therefore we’re not going to run through the process again!”. That is, they’d be given a just opportunity to have themselves represented in elections; just that it would be a one-shot opportunity, and left to them to live up to the [right] to have a fair chance at being represented.
This would be [representative] democracy, which is the only valid kind.
Anyway, abstaining in the next election can’t hurt, I believe. If it’s not one of the above-named people who is elected for president, then I doubt that it’ll really make any significant difference which of the evil ones, alternatives is elected; we’re still going to be repeating election of evils.
This sounds like an excellent way to get your message out there! I encourage everyone to take some time out to make something with an anti-consumerist/materialist/war/propaganda message on it and drop it at your favorite “box store.” It will probably be a heck of a lot of fun too. Dropping radical literature is also a great idea! I concur with both KCThompson and Mike Corbeil that you should ONLY VOTE for candidates that have been shown to uphold peace and justice. If there aren’t any then simply do not vote. And stop paying for cable if all it delivers you is junk news and junk shows. Even, go a step further and before you cancel your cable watch Fox news for a while and write down all the advertisers that you see on the network. Make sure to call them and let them know you will boycott their goods/services as long as they make it a policy to advertise on networks like Fox. Tell friends with similar feelings to do the same.
These kinds of actions can go a long way to influencing change if enough people participate. The same cannot be said about voting, since (as we see very plainly now) we have very little recourse if our elected representatives betray us, as many have so utterly. So go to work and take action into your own hands! And, tell your friends! Maybe even get together and form a group to hatch up new ideas! Have fun and do the world a favor. Believe me, it will thank you later.
Mike Corbeil December 26th, 2007 4:26 am
Your a “know it all” and people don’t like that.
You have a hidden agenda hear at CD. I see threw your gibberish. Your just posting to post your advertisements and maybe get read by the unassuming reader. You dont read the articles. Whos paying for your tripe, bucko? That last post is very un-American. Are you trying to be the face Cheney sits on?
re 12/26 4:26am
not voting isn’t a protest, it’s alienation, and is counted as a vote for the status quo. please do not listen to this terrible advice.
instead, go to the polls and write in the candidate you would hope to win—regardles of whether he/she is on the ballot. that would be much closer to the anarchist spirit of the article.
Some mischief in bookshops that I have been doing several times. I shift books like Naomi Klein’s Shock doctrine around so that they are more prominent and turn books by Thomas Friedman an other brainless scum around.
Mike Corbeil
Hummm, approximately 45% of eligible voters are already making the statement of not voting and it is part of the problem not a solution. If you want to increase voting then the contingencies would be (an honest election procedure) between candidates, voters, and election results. Note that voting is only part of the process election outcomes. Call your senator or congress person if thier voting record does not reflect your values.
Something similar to the article is when people write political messages on bank notes. Has anyone else ever got a “In Cthulhu We Trust” $20/10/5/1 bill?
Where can I get the t-shirt?