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What is a Whirl-Mart?
The action is comprised of a group of anti-shoppers ranging in size from 1 to 50 members. The ritual consists of activists/actors arriving at a Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us or another chain superstore at 12-noon on the first Saturday or Sunday of the month and proceeding to push empty shopping carts slowly and silently through the aisles. Eventually, all of the participants locate one another and form a single-file chain of anti-shoppers which weaves, wanders, and whirls throughout the store for about an hour. It is a collective reclamation of space that is otherwise only used for buying and selling. It is a symbolic display of the will to resist the capitalist ideology.
'Whirl-Mart' is an experiment that can be approached from several different angles. As a work of art, it examines and blurs the boundaries that have been established between performance art, protest, living sculpture, and direct action. As an action of resistance, it utilizes the power of silence in occupying private consumer-dominated space with a symbolic spectacle. As a ceremony, it is a counter-ritual to shopping that transforms the super-store and its wall-to-wall array of products into a surreal and colorful cathedral. And what the heck-- it's just darned fun!
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National & Worldwide
Whirl-Mart Ritual Resistance International Whirl-Mart HQ World Changing Models, Tools, and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future Critical Mass Critical Mass is not an organization, it's an unorganized
coincidence. It's a movement ... of bicycles, in the streets. Rev Billy's Church of Stop Shopping Lots of great scripts from/for performance interventions
with a heavy focus on Starbucks. Commerce
Jamming Commerce Jamming source page. AdBusters A global network of those who want to advance the new social
activist movement of the information age. Commercial Alert wants to keep commercial culture within
its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting
the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and
democracy. No Media Kings Jim Munroe's guide to doin' it for yourself Booksense.com Internet book search that sends your order to your nearest
independent bookstore. Starbucks Delocator Search that helps you locate locally owned alternatives to Starbucks
Media
The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media
outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth Project of the Independent Media Institute, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to strengthening and supporting independent and
alternative journalism. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the first to identify
threats to our basic rights online and to advocate on behalf of free expression
in the digital age. Declan
McCullagh's Politech Politech is the moderated mailing list of politics and technology.
Topics include privacy, free speech, the role of government and corporations,
antitrust, and more. MediaChannel.org The global network for democratic media.
PLUS the News Dissector's Weblog. CorpWatch.org counters corporate-led globalization through education,
network-building and activism.
Now Mr. Richard Perle, an adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, who urged America to war with moral
certitude, finds himself subject to questions about his own
standards of right and wrong.
Stephen Labaton wrote in The Times on Friday that Mr. Perle
was advising the Pentagon on war even as he was retained by
Global Crossing, the bankrupt telecommunications company,
to help overcome Pentagon resistance to its proposed sale
to a joint venture involving a Hong Kong billionaire.
The confidant of Rummy and Wolfy serves as the chairman of
the Defense Policy Board, an influential Pentagon advisory
panel. That's why Global Crossing agreed to pay Mr. Perle a
fat fee: $725,000. The fee structure is especially smelly
because $600,000 of the windfall is contingent on
government approval of the sale. (In his original
agreement, Mr. Perle also asked the company to shell out
for "working meals," which could add up, given his status
as a gourmand from the Potomac to Provence, where he keeps
a vacation home among the feckless French.)
Although his position on the Defense Policy Board is not
paid, Mr. Perle is still bound by government ethics rules
that forbid officials from reaping financial benefit from
their government positions. He and his lawyer told Mr.
Labaton that his work for Global Crossing did not violate
the rules because he did not lobby for the company and was
serving in an advisory capacity to its lawyers.
His convictions of right and wrong extend to the right and
wrong investments. On Wednesday he participated in a
Goldman Sachs conference call to advise clients on
investment opportunities arising from the war, titled,
"Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea
Next?"
MediaChannel.org
