OF: Black Friday

Alas, Thanksgiving has arrived. Which means that in approximately 24 hours America will be donning her fat pants and cuddling up to a hot plate of turkey lovin'.

Don't get me wrong: I love the turkey lovin'. I don't take offense to someone pile-driving through an entire plate or two of green bean casserole. ASIDE: am I the only one who actually likes green bean casserole? We could get into a whole discussion about moderation and gluttonous behavior and all that, but really, Thanksgiving alone isn't enough to qualify you as obscene if you "go ham" on turkey...or something.


But you know what I don't love? You know what IS obscene? This...

AND THIS:

Every year after November 25th we hear the perennial horror stories of Americans fighting and getting trampled in the name of crock-pots, DVD players, and flat screen televisions--and all of this after willingly enduring several hours in the cold, herded like cattle. Every year the sales begin earlier and become more enticing. Every year corporations spend millions of dollars trying to figure out how to part the consumer from his. Why even wait in the cold when you can wait inside a Walmart store which is open all night? Why even fight the crowd at all when you can shop in your underwear on Cyber Monday or from your Ebay app for iPhone?

Ladies and gents, it's a brave new world when we can buy cheap Chinese products while sitting on the crapper. I'm sure that's a metaphor for how our country is going, but I'm not caffeinated enough to figure that one out just yet.

To be fair, I've taken part in the Black Friday madness--once--and I waited in line for 2.5 hours in a Kmart in Yonkers for an awful polyester (i.e. scratchy and uber-flammable) blanket, a T.V. stand, and some kitchen items that I was otherwise too poor to afford at the regular price as a malnourished undergrad living in New York City. And you know, I sort of get it: 


Oh the comradery of capitalism! 
Oh the build up until the doors swing open!   
Oh the neatly-stacked towers of microwave boxes! 
Oh the fuzzy Spongebob slippers! 

Oh the discount laptops that seem to promise that *this* year little Billy will love me, and besides it's for school, and he will make the most of it by not wasting endless hours playing Skyrim or watching cats doing ridiculous things on YouTube!


Call me old-fashioned, a whiny-pants Liberal, a Debbie downer, but--I'm not participating in Black Friday. Further I encourage my friends and family not to, and here's a few reasons why:

1) This may sound simple, but Black Friday means = employees will need to cut their holiday/family time short to serve you. Major corporations like Target, Macy's, Walmart, and BestBuy are now opening on Thanksgiving to allow shoppers to spend, spend, spend. Yeah, so what, you ask? This move is particularly offensive to me--and it should be to you too--because it is yet another example of the American labor force being undermined and undervalued for profit. I will not shop at any store that is open on Thanksgiving.

2) You may be getting a fabulous discount on your tchotchkes, but at what overall cost? The things we are buying ultimately support multi-national corporations who are increasingly exporting jobs, lowering wages and benefits, and ditching their relationship with the American people faster than Kim Kardashian ditched Kris Humphries. Unconvinced? While you're recovering from your tryptophan coma tomorrow, take a gander at Walmart: the High Price of Low Cost or Capitalism: a Love Story. Unmitigated consumerism does not benefit the economy, it places us in debt.

3) While we're discussing unmitigated consumerism, let's talk about the effects of raising generations of people who have become programmed to believe that their love of others/self-worth/parenting/sense of personal satisfaction/celebration of the birth of Christ is determined by the gusto of their gift-giving. Hence why we must buy more, and earlier, and cheaper. Hence why we must buy anything at all. This disturbs me more than anything. It can't be blamed entirely on Black Friday, but it is certainly aided and abetted by that phenomenon.

As a parent I am constantly worried about the ramifications of various things in my child's life. Responsible consumption ranks as highly for me as proper nutrition. I often think about purchases as ethical or moral choices, and how I can communicate that sense of urgency to my daughter. I think of my own poverty as a child and how I longed for meaningless junk to make me feel adequate, worthy, anesthetized to my environment. I think about the extreme poverty of children making trinkets in other countries; children who are working harder than I have ever worked in my life, and for far less.

I want a child who has been instilled with the confidence to know she is loved, precious, and blessed without copious things as evidence. It's not that I'm opposed to gift-giving--quite to the contrary, actually. I am, however, opposed to traditions that ask that one sector of the population to sacrifice rest and family time so that a slightly more advantaged sector of the population can act like buffoons while handing over their increasingly small incomes over to the most privileged sector of the population.

Stay tuned for a forthcoming post, "OF: Homemade & Economical Gifts." But in the meantime: gobble, gobble kids.

OF Occupy Wall Street & Those "Lazy, Misinformed" Protestors

Like everybody not concerned with Kim Kardashian's 72-day marriage, I've been thinking a lot about Occupy Wall Street lately, and the state of our union. And I don't have as many answers as I do questions:

• What's up with these people who keep insisting that the Occupy movement is about demanding a handout?

• What's up with politicians claiming to represent Christian values, but showing through their actions/legislation/rhetoric that they hate people?

• What's up with with the idol worship of capitalism and the fairy tale that is the "free market" system?

• What's up with all the anti-immigrant and anti-poor people vitriol?

• What's up with all the anti-intellectualism?

• What's up with America? 

 ...and most importantly...What's up with Michele Bachmann's crazy eyes?

That first question in particular really persists for me. The irksome idea that the people occupying Zucotti Park, or closing the Port of Oakland are really just doing all this unnecessary rabble-rousing because they are whiners who can find nothing better to fill their time--like 1) taking a shower, 2) getting a job, and 3) "sucking it up," as it were, like hard-working adults. 

I don't know what's the most troubling aspect of criticisms like these? Should I be more upset that they are often issuing from the mouths of working-class people who are, themselves, marginalized by the systems and status quo they so fetishize? Or should I be more disturbed by the fact that criticisms like these actually belie a deeper, more pernicious societal distrust of democratic processes like the right of the people to assemble peacefully and demand change? Whereby we see protest and picketing and occupying as something only 60's-nostalgic hippies and nit-wit college kids do? Whereby we say, hold on America: you are not allowed to speak or organize until you've provided the inherently-biased-corporately-owned media with a bulleted, and footnoted list of grievances and demands?

How dare they open their mouths to speak without a figure-head and a five point plan!

How dare they start a national dialogue on income inequality, staggering personal debt, and corrupt K-street lobbyists stealing the legislative process away from the American people!

How dare they talk about things like corporate corruption and monopolization--because, isn't Walmart splendid? We need our cheap toilet paper, America! We need our Kathy Ireland sweaters knitted by a 10-year-old in India! We need our Comcast customer service delivered to us by a rep in the Philippines!

Corporations are job creators! Corporations are people! Wealth trickles down! But I digress...

Back to my original point here: the OWS movement has virtually nothing to do with a handout, ladies and gentleman.

If I could personally sit across the table from naysayers or Conservatives like those who've come out in support of the mocking, anti-OWS movement called "We are the 53%"--I'd tell them, respectfully, this:

1) The Occupy movement is not about a handout, it is about justice. As someone who supports OWS, I feel like our government and economic systems should support people who, like you, have: worked 3 jobs, paid for your own schooling, and did not ask for any help along the way. More power to you! I think you should be rewarded and be able to keep what you worked so hard to earn. But the truth is, our current systems don't reward that at all. In fact, our current economic model is increasingly against you--the dude in the middle. Look at the statistics on income tax for individuals versus tax for corporations. And this is just one aspect of the overall way the middle-class is being sucked dry, eradicated to a mere footnote of post-WWII America. The fact that the 53%-ers are telling themselves (and others) to stop whining and "suck it up" tells me that they've decided--ignorantly, or stubbornly, like good little worker bees--to lay prostrate, willingly, before the altar of a disinterested idol at their own expense and peril. If you think American big business is here to benefit the community and treat its workers with dignity, you are sadly mistaken.

2) To believe that the protesters are there because they are not professional people, or are lazy and don't want/need jobs is astoundingly untrue. Of course there are always going to be those people present at protests or demonstrations who are there purely for the drama or fun of it--the unwitting bandwagoners. This is as true for the Occupy movement as it is for the Tea Party supporters who descended on the capitol last year. But I don't think it's fair for the media--both Conservative and Liberal--to paint a portrait of the participants as ignorant, iPhone-bearing, privileged crybabies who want to feel like they're participating in a botched nouveau version of the 1960's.

I am myself representative of many of the people I met at Occupy Atlanta: I am a Master's-level degreed professional, underemployed, facing hefty student loan payments for my education, and discouraged at the lack of prospects for anything beyond working 2+, part-time, service-sector jobs (if I'm very, very lucky).  

Look, I want a job! Let me clarify that, I'd like to be fully employed. I'm one of the fortunate few with the privilege of a part-time job. And further, I don't expect anyone but myself to pay for the student loans I took out with the full understanding that nothing is certain or promised to me except death and taxes. I support OWS not because I want a Wall Street-style bailout for my personal debt, but because I want a future for my daughter that doesn't make it necessary for her to become a indentured-servant-debt-slave to survive or in order to realize her natural right to an education while the privileged of our society reap interest on her hopes and her toil.

I'll work 2 or 3 part-time jobs if I have to, and I will, and I have before. All pride to the wind, folks. But it would be nice if I only had to work one job in order to pay my bills and provide for my daughter. Does that make me an over-privileged, spoiled jerk to hope for a future where my hard work and education results in a 40 hour work week, benefits I can afford, a modest savings, and God-forbid--two weeks of paid vacation? Doesn't look like that kind of pipe dream is going to happen for me, and millions of Americans like me any time soon. Here is the latest employment summary from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and as expected--things are bleak. And that summary doesn't even include the story of the "underemployed" such as myself, which represents an even larger sector of the population. And that summary doesn't even include discouraged workers or those who are ineligible to claim unemployment!

3) The last thing I would tell the mockers of Occupy Wall Street is this: instead of useless cynicism or passive mockery, why don't you try activism? Why don't you embrace optimism? Empowerment? Change? Disagree with my political opinions? That's totally fine. That's democracy. That's America. But do something about it besides posting a snarky comment on Facebook.

Of course there are issues with OWS, it's an imperfect process like anything new and different. But considering History--and yes, by that I mean the fruits of the 60's (which include civil rights, the desegregation of schools, and women's rights--all generally considered positive social changes)--I simply ask you to give it time. Let it figure itself out without your prejudice or the confines of outdated modes of operation. 

The kids are alright.