Commercial Disobedience (Why have I never heard of it?)

I know, google's first page or so would have you believe that this phrase has been uttered maybe twice in the past decade. First, in 2002, by a guy named Grimmelman at the Laboratorium, who used it to describe the time an RFID security tag fell out of a book while he was shopping, and he set off the alarm a couple times just to irritate the bookstore, then set to dreaming that if a million people did this, bookstores would stop putting the damn things in books.

More recently, Mark Cassello wrote about it in Huffington post, explaining that mass retreats from Netflix and Bank of America qualify as nothing more than collective consumer action, falling short of actual commercial disobedience. Then he goes off on a tangent about Apple's evilness, I guess because Steve Jobs was barely cold, as if a collective consumer decision to not buy ipads would qualify.

I'm not buying that any more than I believe that occupying public space is civil disobedience. Commercial disobedience involves asserting oneself outside the seller-consumer relationship, at least until such time as purchases are made compulsory. I guess you can get partial credit for resisting peer pressure to buy all the latest crap, but that's only the mildest form.

To disobey would be more along the lines of people who refuse to be foreclosed and ousted, who sit tight in their homes, maybe even force the bank to rove in court that it owns the mortgage (not so easy, given the slicing and dicing that occurred). Pickets and protests on corporate grounds, that's disobedience. The 1% want to have it all, and exclude us, so why are we not sitting in at their lunch counter, moving to the front of the jet? That's commercial disobedience.

I'm too big a wimp to crash a board meeting or an exclusive golf resort, so I satisfy myself with smaller disobediences. One great thing I read about lately was to take credit card offers and other postage-paid return envelopes and stuff them with whatever will fit: plastic, other junk mail, and messages to the mail-room staff like "Unionize!" or "Your CEO golfs and calls it work." My sister said she's enclosing stacks of coupons that arrive in her mailbox, since the people who open it may benefit.

Then there's the kind of disobedience that amount to dismissal, turn your back on commerce, drop out. Doing so completely is so rare that I bet you don't even know anyone who's done it. Short of pemmican in a pit house, you can pick and choose divestments, from ditching an IRA that leans on big bad companies to non-cash exchanges of food with friends.

Finally, there's armchair disobedience. Like sitting here and advising people to occupy foreclosures and walmart, peppering my prose with improvised sarcastic devices. So few people have ever seen this stuff that I can confidently state that no actual disobedience has come of it.

No doubt there's more. Somebody must have been thinking about this before. Civil disobedience brought and end to Vietnam and legalized racism, and the term is something that is still widely taught today. But our anger at the savage capitalism that is to blame for so many of our social and economic woes remains inchoate (behold the aimless occupiers), marginalized (Ralph Nader's accurate but bland blandishments), or plain old stupid and dangerous (tea partiers who think the government is the problem).


Already, some have the support of their local sheriff, maybe even their congressional rep.

Occupy Walmart

One of the litmi of the Left is Walmart. "I Don't Shop at Walmart" stickers appear on bumpers of old Volvos, Prius's, and other awkward-to-pluralize brands preferred by progressives. Labor protests the poor wages (poorer still if you are a woman) and the anti-union stance of the company. Liberals smirk and giggle at that People of Walmart website.

And strangely enough, it works in the other direction as well. The Right--or at least the rank and file, the commoners with the votes, the LumpenRight--shops at Walmart. Scoop up them Asian goods, even though it meant your brother got laid off. Buy that beflaggled patriot wear and the disney princess crap. Squint and grunt at them commies who would let unions into Walmart. Swipe the card while Walmart swipes your paychecks. And for God's sake, vote Republican.

So, with this powerful symbol of piratical capitalism run amok, amidst every community with a 15 acre pad site and the critical mass of consumer households to offer, we are occupying parks? Parks?! Land that already belongs to the public?

Granted, marching into a Wall Street Bank or a Walmart Street retail establishment and setting up a tent invariably results in arrests, whereas most cops are just letting the protesters stay in the parks, entertaining themselves at the seeming cluelessness of some college kids, and the un-bra'd chests of others. Occupying private property is frowned upon in the US, and it's really hard to imagine Occupy Walmart lasting more than a few days, ending in the ozone and burnt hair aromatic aftermath of taser fests of the rent-a-cops and eventually the real ones.

But, we can protest outside. We can hold up signs about jobs outsourced and landfills bursting, about grandpa serving his country and working all his life only to be humiliated as Greeter because he cannot afford retirement. OK, that's a long sign, but you know what I mean.

And, stealthily, we can protest inside. Pick up something and replace it on the wrong shelf. Try on the maximum number of clothes every time, ask for assistance, do whatever it takes to make the workers work more, because that's the only way they'll get more hours and more cash, the only way Walmart will create more jobs (crappy though they may be). Get yourself hired there, and then invite in a union. Go in and apply stickers with "This Used to be Made in America" or some other clever shit I cannot think of right now.

Or not. You don't need to sneak and snivel. Get in their face. Rouse the rabble, yell crazy stuff or go all yippie-theater on them 'til they escort you off the premises, making everyone there a little freaked out, a little less inclined to hang around and spend more. You don't even have to go there physically, just write letters to the editor, blog, expend your own breath ranting and exhorting (or, if you are not a blowhard like myself, riffing reasoning). Talk to your Walmart-shopping friends about how the place sucks money out of localities (not just what you spend there, but jobs lost, taxes unpaid, resources expended on their behalf, not to mention that act that someone who works at Walmart is eligible for welfare because the pay is so shitty).

Occupy Walmart however you see fit. Squelching the flow of customers, shaming the company in the public eye (all you gotta do is tell the truth for that to work), or advocating for their workers. Whatever you want to do. Just don't buy anything there.

Unoccupy Wall Street

My last post expressed some doubt as to the sustainability and soundness of the Occupy protests happening. It is only fair to suggest alternatives, or be branded a do-nothing whiner.

So, let's Unoccupy Wall Street. Denizens of the financial district are not among the readers here, so we can begin by claiming success in terms of the physical place, but you know that's not what I'm getting at. Divest. Don't let your money occupy their vaults.

You live near a credit union that can take care of your banking needs from saving pennies to getting a home mortgage, and they won't Lincoln and Hamilton you to death with fees. You'll be a member, sharing in the profits and governance of a financial entity beholden to a broader ownership and longer time horizon than profit-obsessed big banks. You may also have a local bank that has a stake in a healthy community and treats its customers decently. Either choice beats parking your money in an institution prisoner to quarterly profits, sophisticated (yet still fundamentally stupid) gambles, publicly-funded bail-outs, exalted executives, and just plain greed.

But I don't need to convince you why, just that you should take that step if you already have not, and make your personal finances Unoccupy Wall Street. This November, vote with your finances. While media images of hippies and anarchists doing everything from wearing sinister masks to making love easily lend themselves to dismissal or discrediting of the Occupy movement, it would be hard to misinterpret the image of a run on the banks, a line of people in front of Bank of America waiting to withdraw their funds. If I had the audience to pull it off, I'd call for November to be Vote With Your Money month, a coordinated action. Doing an Unoccupy Wall Street event during the election month (or maybe the cyclical, slower-building version of the plan: Withdrawal Wednesdays), seems like a decent strategy to focus attention and impact on the action.

The financial effect to the big financial players would be negligible to begin with, and the power would be in the perception that we commoners are sick of playing their game. But as was the case with ending South African Apartheid, a few humble divestitures can lead to a few more, and eventually reach a tipping point where continuing business as usual becomes too costly, and real progress happens. You can be the beginning.

Meanwhile, it's a matter of retreating from the various corporate territories you occupy. Get food that was grown closer to you (your own yard would be a good place to start), and processed less; go to restaurants run by local families. Clothe yourself at thrift stores and yard sales, so even if that shirt was made for a famous name brand, they don't get a cent on the transaction. Keep driving the same old car (repaired by your unemployed neighbor or a local shop) or hop on a bike or bus. Disconnect the cable and just use your phone for phone calls instead of incessantly connecting to the corporate web. Make your gifts.

So really, unoccupying Wall Street turns out to be a bunch of small, easy steps. You'll find that you end up saving money. You will be more free of the corporate matrix, and at the same time more connected to your community and interested in its welfare. In the short term, divesting improves your life. If enough people unoccupy Wall Street, then in time our nation's life will take a turn for the better. Try it.