Dan brez nakupov – 24.11.2012

Dan brez nakupov, oz. Buy Nothing Day – BND se praznuje danes, oz. jutri. V ZDA se praznuje prvi petek po dnevu zahvalnosti, povsod drugje pa prvo soboto po tem prazniku – torej jutri. “Praznik” je internacionalni in je neformalni prikaz protesta proti prekomernemu potrošništvu. Koncept, oz. ideja je plod umetnika Teda Davea in datira v leto 1992. Šele leta 1997 je dobil praznik nov datum – dan zahvalnosti je namreč magnet za nakupovanje in tega se zavedajo tako trgovci, kot tudi umetnik Ted.

Prav tako se nas večina zaveda, da se z enim takšnim dnevom ne bodo spremenile potrošniške navade naše družbe, oz. ljudi. V bistvu je v Sloveniji situacija celo malce drugačna – za veliko ljudi ne bo kriv “praznik”, da ne bodo šli v trgovske centre v nakupovanje, ampak so jih k temu prisilile razmere, ki vladajo v Sloveniji in situacija, ki jo občutijo v svoji denarnici.

Sam podpiram idejo, kljub temu, da se zavedam, da bi morali, da bi našo, “v slabi formi” Sloveniji, spet dvignili na noge, delati ravno obratno – več trošiti. Ampak to je malenkost.

Canadian Press, Friday, September 15, 2000
Vancouver actor Ted Dave better known as an activist by John McKay
TORONTO – Vancouverite Ted Dave considers himself a number of things that begin with the letter A, including artist, activist and actor.
In the latter category he is attending the Toronto film festival as part of the cast of Low Self Esteem Girl, a Vancouver-made, low-budget film ($8,000) shot on digital video by former comic book artist Blaine Thurier. Dave plays an affable pot dealer.
But back in 1992, Dave was working as a graphic artist for the Georgia Straight and became frustrated with the rising unaffordability of day-to-day purchases. So he initiated “Buy Nothing Day,” a campaign to send a signal to the economy and the corporate sector that consumers do have power. “Absolutely everything around us in the urban environment is set up to be coercive, to get you to buy things spontaneously,” he says.
“I was getting exhausted and I thought it would be really nice if we could take a break.” The idea was to pick one day a year in which people would boycott all merchandise purchases. He chose the last Friday in November, just before the American Thanksgiving and usually the kick-off to the Christmas shopping season in North America.
Dave basically began with some posters which he created and distributed in the Vancouver area that included a manifesto proposing a 24-hour moratorium on all consumer spending. “To return the purchasing power of the marketplace to the consumer. The idea of voting with your dollar, it seems to be an apolitical solution to what was once a political problem.”
The awareness campaign grew, and nine years later under the auspices of Adbusters magazine, is honoured in countries all around the world, including the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. But Dave, now 33, is no hypocrite. If people want to boycott Low Self Esteem Girl on Buy Nothing Day, that’s all right with him. Canadian Press.