I didn’t get up at 4am to go buy stuff. It won’t be hard for me to buy nada today since I am already somewhat broke. But I find the whole concept fascinating. Listened to a story on Democracy Now while we were cooking T-day dinner yesterday about the What Would Jesus Buy? documentary which looks hilarious and thought-provoking. Check out the Save Christmas link there for some links to fair trade.

Also, my sister Kate has some good ideas of her own how to save Christmas by taking the hand-made pledge.

On that note, Senator Durbin, who I hounded for a picture last week, gave a speech on how he is seeking to introduce a bill that creates more oversight and inspection of toys being imported in to the country. That seems to be a topic foremost in a lot of parents and grandparents minds this year. I think it is a good idea, but I also wish the same toy manufacturers were concerned about the health and treatment of their workers. It reminds me of a doctor treating the symptoms only and ignoring the underlying cause. How can we expect to have safe products if we’re continually look for ways to make them as quickly and cheaply as possible? If the manufacturers are ignoring the safety of humans producing the stuff why wouldn’t they also ignore the safety of the humans consuming the stuff?

At the Chitag show I spoke to a dozen toy designers about their products and whenever I brought up where it was manufactured they were eager to tell me about how their toys were made in China but…

using safe and inspected materials. No one ever continued on to say that they had made certain the workers had decent shift lengths, fair wages and a safe environment.

Lastly, this would be a good time to mention a book I am reading which touches on all of these topics. Anne Elizabeth Moore’s new book Unmarketable really digs in to the origins of punk and DIY culture and how it functions as an anti-thesis to hypeconsumerism in our culture. What she notes is how the advertisers managed to co-opt the punk message and trick us all in to liking their stuff by creating good Peter Murphy CBGB’s drunken flashbacks and somehow tying them in to our latest minivan purchase. It may be brilliant but it is wrong, dammit! Of course, my friend Bryan would say it is less sinister than that and has more to do with the former drunken CBGB’s jaunts being populated by artists who later got designer jobs and try to squeeze a little fun in to their work by putting in things they like and laughing their asses off as former Huey Lewis fans pretend they used to like that stuff. Guess what Bryan does for a living? Its all about him, big Mr. Graphic Designer. Of course, I believe there is truth in both perspectives, because I am above all the constant voice of reason and balance…if only on my own blog. Plus, Anoif is totally in this book as a sort of recovering American Girl addict. So you should read it for that reason alone. And if buying books and paying for movies about being rabid consumers strikes you as ironic, than you are smarter than your myspace page pretends you are.

I think we all need to remind ourselves sometimes that there are no black and whites in a global economy. You pretty much cannot brush your teeth or take a train without having effects on the economy in small butterfly like ways….repercussions which you will never directly discover. A gallon of water down the tubes, a car factory worker laid off, all because of you. The guilt. A ways back I made a smaller vow to myself than some after I lay awake for weeks imagining how everything I eat and wear and use is supporting corporations who are trying to maximize profit and wondering who suffers as a consequece. My conclusion was that even if I made my own toothpaste out of herbal products grown in my garden and knitted my children’s underpants out of wool from my own sheep, somehow I’d sell out in some tiny way. Ways I would never know but could easily kill myself by continuing to imagine. Maybe I’d buy my beeswax from a corrupt exporter who invested heavily in brick-making factories which drove its workers to ruin with 15 hour shifts and no days off. If I discovered this, I’d surely get my beeswax elsewhere.

But what I could do for starters is, I’d focus on things I loved, like coffee, food,my children, the Flight of the Conchords and animals. I’d start with them and work my way up. Could I buy coffee that was made without blood and tears? Could I get at least a portion of my food from local peops who I trusted and feed mostly unprocessed food to my kids? Could I convince my husband to drive me around NYC while I stalk my favorite musicians? Just doing those things is a full time job. Just living in a western society gives me an enormous advantage that I cannot counteract, and wanting to do so is like being that kid in class that draws on his arm until it bleeds. So, buying a book about anti-consumerism and watching a movie about it-yeah, they are hypocritical when looked at through a lens of absolutism. But when looked at as a way to clarify one’s thinking about issues in order to make changes which will improve the world, they are useful tools and far more fun than shopping on black friday.