The consumer activist group, Adbusters, the people who brought you OWS (well, they sparked it off) has brought this video to their reader's attention about a culture jam which is spreading across Europe to fight back against the austerity measures. For an inspiring head rush, watch this uplifting video of people making a powerful statement about the economic hardship and the austerity measures forced upon so many by the European Union, the IMF and the banksters-that-be.
Update: More information on the I Don't Pay movement in Europe can be found here, here, on this facebook page (Spanish language), and on this facebook page (Greek language).
Watch the video:
Adbusters:
Instead of begging their governments for non-existent mercy, activists in major centres across Europe are taking their public services into their own hands. They are engaging in creative resistance, one that initiates instead of making demands. Transit, healthcare, utilities, you name it, nothing is out of reach. Watch and be inspired by this growing culture jam. See people living what Franco Berardi Bifo calls our new cultural task:
“To live the inevitable with a relaxed soul. To call forth a big wave of withdrawal, of massive dissociation, of desertion from the scene of the economy, of non-participation in the fake show of politics. The crucial focus of social transformation is creative singularity. The existence of singularities is not to be conceived as a personal way to salvation, they may become a contagious force.”
Adbusters describes itself:
We are a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society.
More on culture jamming tactics:
Culture jamming, coined in 1984, denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising.
Culture jamming is a form of disruption that plays on the emotions of viewers and bystanders. Jammers want to disrupt the unconscious thought process that takes place when most consumers view a popular advertising and bring about a détournement. Activists that utilize this tactic are counting on their meme to pull on the emotional strings of people and evoke some type of reaction. The reactions that most cultural jammers are hoping to evoke are behavioral change and political action. There are four emotions that activists often want viewers to feel. These emotions – shock, shame, fear, and anger, are believed to be the catalysts for social change.
Here's a guy who goes through the turnstile free, ignoring the guy in the toll booth.