I hear tell there's some sort of athletic contest being held today.
Hey, I like football. I like sports in general. But last year our nascent family (more on that in a postscript) started a new tradition and quit the Super Bowl.
As this long-lived protest marks its second year today, I thought I'd revisit the Method it's an example of even though I'm sure blog traffic will be down as everybody's watching the game and ads so nobody will read this post.
From the category of Social Noncooperation we have 61. Boycott of social affairs:
A spirit of resistance may be expressed by a corporate refusal to attend certain social affairs, such as receptions, banquets, parties, concerts and the like. During the Nazi occupation, for example, the Danes refused to attend concerts of German military music. In late 1940 and early 1941 a wave of "cinema strikes" occurred in Norway in which patrons boycotted cinemas. These began in Stavanger, where the local cinema board was dismissed for refusing to allow members of Quisling's elite organization (the Hird) to enter for free. Cinema-going was then suspended elsewhere, culminating in the Oslo cinema strike in February. (This example is also related to the economic boycott.)
In Poland during the same period the underground forbade Poles to patronize cinemas and theaters which had been started by the Germans. In 1942 the underground determined that Polish theaters as well as German-operated theaters should be boycotted, and that no Pole should operate such a theater. Jan Karski reports that the predominant reason was that "no Pole could be allowed to forget, even for two hours, what was happening to his country, or to amuse himself. It was forbidden to interrupt the fight and insurrection in permanence against the invader."
Allow me to pre-emptively protest that I'm not a soulless, puritanical revolutionary who thinks people must be Morally Pure and shouldn't have fun or socialize until we have achieved Glorious Victory in The Great Struggle. As Emma said:
I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal...for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."
With that as backdrop, I'll indulge in a little more modified self-plagiarism:
There is value to social events--that's kinda why we have them. And when engaged in resistance, community is very important, so the question is what types of community-building are the most valuable. I found the time at my first war tax resistance gathering to be one powerful example, and of course there are many others that might still be "mainstream" or could be alternatives to the expected social interactions.
Of course we weren't planning on attending the Superbowl itself, but watching on TV is still part of the system. There are the ads that many people actually watch the game for and products are being pushed that we might buy them.
We have no illusions that today's refusal to watch football will end corporatism in America, or even obnoxious player salaries, let alone get us single-payer. No duh.Yet imagine if more people joined in boycotting the NFL's crown jewel with all its militaristic displays, refused to help the media networks that don't do their duty as the Fourth Estate while gladly taking our money, and didn't purchase the products crammed down our throats...maybe something could change for the better in our consumerist society.
Ad prices are deflated this year because of our current economic morass. I suspect a social boycott could also have similar financial ramifications. And consider all the money that people could redirect from spending on Super Bowl parties to feeding the hungry, donating to peace and justice organizations, funding HCR lobbying trips to DC, etc. Yeah, I know it ain't gonna happen, but it's still a useful exercise to think about such things.
With the CBS' political policy of allowing anti-abortion ads but banning gay-friendly commercials, there's an added incentive for us to skip the big show. Beer and other products have always been sold with sexist themes, but this year struck us as a bit worse than usual so Ericka suggested we call our action a MANcott. And that's just what we're doing, man!
Anyway, feminists like madamb have a different take. I especially like the idea of effectively turning one's back on the Tebow ad when it comes on. It's all good.
It's actually a Boys Weekend here since my beloved is off visiting her BFF, who is recovering from cancer surgery (another personal reason why we fight for HCR). I admit that when the game's on I will probably check in on Twitter to see what's going on, but no ads for me.
I hope everybody has a good Sunday whatever you're doing. Recharge and be ready to carry on the struggle!
ntodd
PS--About that family. We were full of that hopey-changey feeling after I returned from my penultimate tour at the soon-to-be-defunct DC Pink House and Pinking the Inaugural, and it turns out the math indicates we spent time we would've watched the Super Bowl much more, uh...productively. As I write this, I'm listening to our little boycott coo and shriek and laugh as he exercises in his pack-n-play. There are many ways to create peace...
(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)