Buy Nothing Day: The Occupy Wall Street Movement

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The most significant campaign in the Adbusters’ battle against consumerism and overconsumption is their involvement in “Buy Nothing Day.” The first day to buy nothing was originally organized in 1992 by Canadian artist Ted Dave, and later promoted by the Adbusters. Although Buy Nothing Day has become an international event; more than a million people “celebrate” the day in countries all over the world, the main focus is on the United States. Since Buy Nothing Day is held on the Friday after the American holiday Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States, it is clear that the Adbusters mainly aim at the American consumers and their extreme shopping behavior on the day where shopping peaks more than ever. From the…show more content…
Tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day.”80 Although CNN has broadcasted this uncommercial several years, many other commercial television stations declined because they were afraid that their advertisers would not have been too pleased about airing it. In 2011 Buy Nothing Day “married” the Occupy Wall Street Movement, meaning that the messages of both movements became intertwined. Hence, that year Buy Nothing Day became known as “Occupy Xmas.” According to Lauren Bercovitch, the production manager at Adbusters Media Foundation, “the Occupy movement talks about a systemic change and a huge cultural paradigm shift, and for the holidays, it’s the same kind of thing we need to be thinking about.”81 Bercovitch does not necessarily want people not to buy gifts, rather to buy them locally to support local economies or to make the gifts yourself. In other words, she wants people to reassess American consumerist behavior in combination with revaluating Christmas. In short, Buy Nothing Day (and Occupy Xmas) aim at many different goals that all come down to make people consume less.Not everyone in the United States is as excited about one day without shopping as the Adbusters and their supporters are. It seems that the freedom to consume is so embedded in American national character that one day buying nothing is even perceived by some as “an unpatriotic act.”82 On an online discussion forum
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