[Sosfbay-discuss] [Fwd: "Reverend Billy Talen for Mayor of NYC" sent you a message on Facebook...]

[Tian Harter]

My kind of radical! Praise-a-luya!

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: "Reverend Billy Talen for Mayor of NYC" sent you a message on 
Facebook...
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 21:18:18 -0700
From: Facebook <notification+zy96caa6 at facebookmail.com>
Reply-To: noreply <noreply at facebookmail.com>
To: Tian Harter <tnharter at aceweb.com>

Billy Talen sent a message to the members of Reverend Billy Talen for 
Mayor of NYC.

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Subject: New York's Consumerism

New York’s Consumerism

Consumerism is a deadly invention that came over our American culture in 
the last 30 years, dating back to Ronald Reagan, but getting much worse 
in the Clinton and Bush eras.  It’s how most of our society is 
organized. Our church defines Consumerism in the classic way:  It is 
economic power of corporations converting all human activities, all the 
earth’s resources – everything it can find - into the market. 
Everything is monetized, from intimate love all the way up to full-scale 
war and explorations in outer space.  Everything we do, everything we 
make, everything we dream - must make money for unseen investors.

Consumerized society controls individuals through media marketing, 
product packaging, transportation systems to go shopping, hypnotic 
credit systems and so forth – until it dominates our waking hours. 
Consumerism is what they call a “totalizing system.”  It expands outward 
across landscape and simultaneously into the individual’s psyche.  It 
must expand.  It is the modern version of empire.  How far have the 
corporations gotten?  History will call this the corporate era -  all 
policies, laws, enforcement, elections – all the functions of government 
are now a matter of buying and selling.  However, the corporations 
surround their control of government with a wrap-around marketing 
campaign that uses as its imagery the thing they are destroying: Democracy.

The average New Yorker deals with thousands of selling pitches each day, 
from six story high Kate Mosses down to the logos in the litter.  The 
corporation has overwhelmed whole cultural traditions - the arts and 
religion and education and journalism.  This “soft” side of society is 
now fully corporation-dependent.  Anyone who opposes this take-over is 
called a “protester,” or “controversial.”  We think we are full of 
energy and change because we believe the ads designed by corporate media 
reflect our own lives.  The truth is that we are suffering a time of 
passive Consumerism reminiscent of American culture in the 1950’s. 
Everything we do in public life is thoroughly de-politicized.

And yet we live in a time where we can dream of freedom from 
Consumerism.  As we say in the church, there is “Life After Shopping!” 
Consumerism, based on its false idea of prosperity – imploded in 2008. 
We call it “The Shopocalypse.”  Here is one form the downturn took in 
New York:  The bulldozers destroying our neighborhoods suddenly ran out 
of gas.  And now families are coming out of their homes and looking 
around as if a bombardment has paused.  We’re talking to each other on 
the corner.  As the gleaming buildings stand over us, half-finished and 
frozen in space – we look back at the Bloomberg economy standing there 
and feel our true feelings rise up.

And in this city-wide common sense talk we rediscover our old American 
radicalism, a lot like the long-ago reaction to taxation without 
representation.  It’s more obvious with the construction crane’s 
unmoving shadow on our street.  Such events that we had normalized into 
our understanding of inevitable corruption, like the killing of rent 
controls by City Council President Peter Vallone and the realtor lobby 
in the early 90’s – it looks like dramatic corruption now.  Some of us 
believe that we can resist the evictions and foreclosures because of 
regular conversations that suddenly all New Yorkers can share.  I’m 
talking about the moral force of the grand phrase, “We wuz robbed.”

All of New York’s Consumerism, whatever form it takes --- from $900 baby 
strollers to Target crap -  is fixed in place by the old corruption of 
real estate speculation. It’s NYC’s mother of all consumption.  Land and 
buildings.  So, will we take advantage of this current opening in the 
economy to re-define our relationship to real estate power, and create 
lease protections for home-owners and neighborhood shopkeepers?   This 
means confronting the old idea that real estate is to New York what oil 
is to Texas.  This fundamentalist code – what’s good for real estate is 
good for the city, and therefore developers should dominate our 
government… this old New York devil must be cast out…

And so we come to “the Rise of the Fabulous 500 Neighborhoods.”  Lots of 
our smaller communities within the bigger Gotham had good economies 
before Consumerism attacked with its chain stores and luxury condos. 
Bloomberg runs our city thinking it is his corporation, New York City, 
Inc.  Until last year, he was leading an assault on the neighborhoods 
like a military operation, creating an epidemic of high-rises, evictions 
and homelessness.  He has turned over all that is best about our city to 
his market transactions.  Mike Bloomberg’s persona is so comically a 
demonstration of Consumerism, that his illegal grab for another term and 
his spending $100 million on it – making the Mayorality one big product 
that he is buying -  gives us the chance to demonstrate in unforgettable 
fashion how our Democracy needs to resist Consumerism.  Let’s preach!
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-- 
Tian
http://tian.greens.org
Photographers dont have ears. They have eyes. Ramblin Jack Elliot on NPR