Contact Michael via e-mail.
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!
Search the NEPA Whirl-Mart Site
Get your Networking on
Regional (NEPA)
Rally of One Peace can begin with YOU NEPA BLOG Blog by & about Northeastern Pennsylvania: issues, events, discussion, photos WatermelonPunch.com NEPA Whirl-Mart's web host xradiograph what Michael does when he's not "fightin' the man" SurfScranton.com 1,000+ regional links
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.
FreeCar Media is revolutionizing how consumers and advertisers interact
by providing a fresh and exciting advertising venue while providing a
means for people to drive for free.
Sign up for one of our ad sponsored brand new vehicles or sign up to wrap your own car and get paid up to $400 per month.
[a few minutes later....]
Welcome to FreeCar Media!
Thank you for registering! FreeCar Media is revolutionizing how consumers
and advertisers interact by creating a fresh and exciting advertising
venue while providing a means for people to drive for free.
We Wrap It, You Drive It, It's FREE!
We will notify you as soon as one of our advertisers selects you to be a
FreeCar driver. Please be patient. We are developing a new medium and
sometimes it takes time, but we promise we will work as fast as we can.
Costco, which opened its first store in 1983 and now has
432 locations, disputes the contention that it takes care of workers at
the expense of investors. "The last thing I want people to believe is
that I don't care about the shareholder," says Jim Sinegal, Costco's
president and chief executive since 1993, who owns about 3.2 million
Costco shares valued at $118 million based on yesterday's price of
$36.96, up 52 cents, in 4 p.m. Nasdaq Stock Market trading. "But I
happen to believe that in order to reward the shareholder in the long
term, you have to please your customers and workers."
When I was a kid growing up in a tiny town that didn't have much to
offer in terms of organized entertainment, my friends and I were forced
into creating our own fun and games. There was no fancy Chuck E.
Cheese's or even a single pinball machine (illegal, I kid you not) in
that place. It was just a bunch of kids with not much to do. And so we
became almost hyperactive out of some primal survival instinct, I
believe. We were like those women you hear about who miraculously find
the strength to lift a pallet of sod off a deaf baby or something.
As we look to the future and see a time when home
shopping, branding as fashion, wealth and white collar unemployment collide, we see no further use for the SUV.
Everything one could possibly want is just down the street
and around the corner at you neighbor's house.
Patronize independent bookstores. They sell online too. To find
and/or order from the nearest one, go to Booksense. What you 'save' at
chain and online bookstores isn't worth what you lose.
Read, buy, and tell your friends about non-blockbuster books. Attend readings by non-blockbuster authors.
Encourage the institutions you deal with -- schools, churches,
book groups, professional organizations -- to buy books from
independent bookstores. Most offer substantial institutional discounts,
and all of them -- unlike Amazon and other online product pushers --
pay taxes in your community.
Read. Think. Enjoy and create culture. Encourage your friends, children, and politicians to do the same.
5. Support funding for the arts; fight like hell when moves are made to axe what little of it is left."
I was struck by a flurry of those slick new TV ads by the
Wal-Mart superstores. These ads don’t sell products or services. They
promote the company and the great work it is doing to benefit the
communities whose markets it canniibalizes. They are clearly a response
to movements in cities and towns across a America opposed to the spread
of the big boxes that undercut competitors and drive out local
business--and, let us not forget, enrich the owners, as George Monbiot notes as he discusses the Forbes list of the super-rich in today’s Guardian:
“Every year the list is the same, but
every year it still comes as a shock. Of the ten richest people on
earth, five have the same surname. It's not Gates, or Murdoch, or
Rockefeller, but Walton.1 They are the heirs and trustees of the
supermarket chain Wal-Mart. Between them they are worth $100 billion.
Considering how the press fawns on the ultra-rich, we hear
remarkably little about them. Perhaps this is because their position is
rather embarrassing. The company which enriches them trades on the idea
that it is the friend of the common man and woman, distributing rather
than concentrating wealth.”
MediaChannel.org
