Today my friend and writer Jim Forest, also a member of the Milwaukee 14, send me a link to an English web site called Bonfire of the Brands which calls for an end to outrageous non-essential consumerism. The site features a YouTube video of a bonfire destroying brand name items. The only message sent with the link was in the subject line of the email and said: “I think you’ll agree that there is an M-14 side to the video called ‘Bonfire of the Brands’.”
Now if you look at the Milwaukee Video of the burning of 1A draft files in 1968 and the video of burning the brand-name products you can see a similarity between the two, in the fire, crowd and even the handling of the camera.
The symbolic destruction of Big Bad Name Brands in 2009, like the burning of Selective Service files in 1968, represents a growing awareness of how attached we are to consumer society that needs more and more stuff to attain the happiness that we cannot purchase.
Fair Trade items, or as some are called on this web site just trade, represent a very small segment of products. But even fair trade items can be part of the rampant consumerism of our society if they are “extra items” and non-essential stuff.
Probably this is why the Products of the India of Mahatma Gandhi are so appealing to me. They are products, for the most part, like Khardi clothing and Neem soap, that are used for essentials like clothing and cleaning.
The same can be said of food. A wealthy person eating an over-abundance of organic foods while people die from not having the essential food for life does not make for justice.
Once a member of St. Vincent De Paul Society in Madison, Wisconsin told me that a basic Christian value was to give to others in need from our abundance, what we did not need. If most people gave out of their abundance not their excess, there would be enough for all; excessive consumerism then would die.
So yes we need more bonfires of brands.
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