mattwie.be archives

Make Something Day is a response to Adbuster’s famous Buy Nothing Day, which is itself a response to that high holy day of American consumerism called Black Thursday. Buy Nothing Day resists consumerism with buying nothing. The people behind Make Something Day have a better idea:

In response to the over-consumptive habits of western culture, Adbusters magazine has been promoting Buy Nothing Day for years now. The Friday after Thanksgiving in the U.S. is typically marked as the busiest shopping day for Americans. But we live in a world that can no longer handle our consumptive habits here in the west. And while we pile up on things we don’t need a large portion of the world exists without basic human needs being met every day. We applaud Buy Nothing Day… but it isn’t enough for us. We believe that giving is a central part of being human. So, we replaced the negative with something positive: Make Something Day. Go ahead and give gifts this holiday season. As they say, giving is better than receiving. But that doesn’t mean buying something is. So, we encourage folks to avoid shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Instead, stay home, put a log on the fire and try making something for someone. Don’t feel creative? Check out the different pages on our site, get inspired and share your stories with us!

This is, of course, not directly applicable to us Canadians–our Thanksgiving is two weeks behind us already–but I like the positive approach to resistance on display here. This is the kind of imagination we need so as not to merely resist the current system, but to start embodying an alternative.