Fight consumerism with #OccupyXmas

ERIC RUDER'S attack on #OccupyXmas goes from assumption to assumption, each more baffling then the last ("Why the movement shouldn't support #OccupyXmas").

I realized as I read it that the culture of which I'm a part is fundamentally different than his. I'm a part of the Occupy movement. My home is New York City. I'm on a trip across the country visiting Occupy communities, preaching at General Assemblies, helping with direct actions. I write this from Detroit, waiting for the train east to Kalamazoo.

Much of Christmas toy making is non-union and sweatshop-created. The products encourage destructive "big box" product delivery, with supply lines thousands of miles long. Of course, the shipping is fossil-fuel-centric. All this takes place inside the structure of neoliberal corporatism.

I have resisted Christmas with the Stop Shopping Choir for 10 years, in New York and in London. This opposition carries the accusatory weight that any opposition to consumerism must (and Ruder in a couple places seems to come to the defense of consumerism). There is no direct tie to "puritanism."

The kind of imagination that we identify with the Occupy movement is what brings humor and grace to the political actions. I'll be in Oakland for the port closing on December 12, and I will mic-check in the Wal-Mart nearby--the one flows into the other.
Reverend Billy Talen, New York City