Penny Protest
As Rod Serling so often intoned, "Offered for your consideration..." in this case the proposal is for an economic protest of the Bush administration's war in Iraq: "Not One Damn Dime Day."
The stated intent is to attempt to "shut the retail economy down," though it seems much more reasonable to presume that at best it'll just make a momentary dent in it. The method is to boycott all forms of consumer spending for the day. "Not one damn dime for anything for 24 hours" is the call.
Targeting January 20th - Inauguration Day - an email from the always delightful Mr. Vacation (it's an old handle for him, and I prefer not to use a person's real name of a non-public figure in an entry unless given permission) was my first word of this. I'm still making my mind up as to the merits.
Likely many of you are immediately reminded of the various proposed protests in this mode of the oil companies, which spread through email chains every so often. It's the same pitch, but in that case it was simply a cry to buy no gasoline on a certain day. The fatal flaw in that plan was one that immediately struck me as obvious: It'll have no net effect, because even those who would observe it would either be tanking up the day before or waiting until the next day to go in for a fill. The first impulse is to see the same flaw in this new proposal, as those who observe it may be inclined to "stock up" for the consumer holiday. Most all of it is noted here, too, now that I've looked around a bit.
Still, there could be some telling differences.
A cessation of all discretionary consumer spending on a single day would be a very visible form of protest, and one timed to coincide with Dubya being sworn in for another four years of destroying most desires to live. Also, unlike the gasoline boycott it's not intended to bring down prices, it's only calculated to send a message, and to send it via the marketplace -- okay, more correctly, to send it via the media by doing something they'll deign newsworthy.
Beyond that there could be an unintended benefit. By refusing to spend anything on a given day it could remind many of us how utterly discretionary so much of our spending is, which is a fantastic message if one can really learn it. (This is part of the intent of the annual Buy Nothing Day push, landing on Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving and the nominally traditional retail kick-off of the holiday shopping season.) Between reminding us that an enjoyable day doesn't have to come with several receipts, and inviting speculations of how much money one could save over the course of a year if those Starbucks trips or the daily trip out for lunch were cut out of the budget... that's potentially life-changing, as funny as that sounds.
So, for the moment, I'm just considering it and wanted to offer the same chance to whoever reads this. I seem to have come up with a couple reasons for trying it, and since the protest angle hinges on getting enough people behind it to make it visible, spreading the word around is a necessary step... hence this post.
Any thoughts, pro or con?
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