1. Participate and promote the idea of a low cost Old Fashioned Christmas to run from Thanksgiving until New Years Day. Get creative, make poster designs with Santa and the Reindeer, design T-shirts, buttons and bumper-stickers, make “boycott this store” signs and stickers for the malls of America and send them to me to post for everyone to use on the website at boycottacrossamerica@gmail.com or just post them on our social network at www.wearenotbuyingit.ning.com


2. Tell everybody-send out e-mails to every one on your e-mail list, print out the documents we have available on the website and really spend some time each day letting people know what is going on. We can counteract the forces of the power elite, but our numbers must be in the millions to have any chance at it AND we all have to do the same thing at exactly the same time.

3. Draw as much from the system as you can—I know some people who have made the conscious decision to be poor. They have left their jobs as Attorneys and Doctors to live a simpler life and learn to survive on less than $20,000 per year. It can be done-though it is as scary as hell to do it-but every one of them has told me that they feel much happier than they ever did when they were bringing down 6 figures.

4. Pay cash-cut those credit cards up and try to use cash for every purchase that you can, try to barter as well with people you are familiar with. You would be surprised to find out that you can barter with pretty much anyone for goods and services and in so doing you not only take some cash out of the system, you also have a chance at making a new friend.

5. Buy used. Do not buy anything new if you can avoid it. New cars are the most notoriously bad financial decision most people make but it isn’t just cars. Thrift stores, yard sales and other outlets abound where you can find good clothes, toys and other goods without supporting a mega-retailer. The rule of thumb is to deal with an individual for any purchases, rather than a corporation. Of course food is another story, you don’t want to buy THAT used.

6. Plant a garden-start honing your survival skills now by planting a permaculture garden, There are ample resources available on the web for serious gardeners and in reality any food that you produce yourself is a truly revolutionary act.

7. Free your mind. Television has long been known to cause changes in the brainwaves of viewers. It isn’t just the incessant messages and consolidated corporate control of the airwaves, it is the technology itself that indices a passive state of mind. Free your mind and at the same time help to make those billions of advertising dollars worthless. Remember you can always rent the programs you find interesting and that way your entertainment money goes to a mom and pop video store, not NewsCorp.

8. Fire your bank. If you are banking with one of the “Tapeworm 20” listed on the website, bail out fast. Start an account at a local bank that doesn’t make loans outside of your local area or go with a credit union that is chartered to only help its members.

9. Quit your job. OK, this isn’t so easy especially if you have 17 years in with a major company and you are looking forward to retirement. If it is at all possible then free yourself in any way you can from that corporate job. Working for a large corporation is an insidious bit of dehuimanization. You can put in 30 years, get a nice award, die and be in the ground and the entire time you spent making the shareholders of that corporation richer becomes the meaning of your life. Don’t get caught in that trap, there are other ways of living. I know a man who traveled to Baja in an old van every year, bought some sweatshirts down there and then sold them on the side of the road all over the country. He wasn’t rich, but damn if he wasn’t happy.

10. Make some space. If you have extra room in your house then prepare to share it with others in your local area. Should the other shoe drop we will need to find ways of banding together for mutual aid and support. Some people are already putting into action the classic co-operative living scheme with a few twists-you may be able to do it as well. There are more and more off the grid/self-sustaining communities being formed every day. Think about your core values and how you would like to spend your older years and how you would have liked to have been raised, then work with others to help create that community together.

11. Keep it up. Just keep it up, learn to be conscious about your buying habits, minimize the amount of money you put into the corporate/government system and draw as much out of it as you can. One example of how this can all work in an integrated way involves a group of people who moved in together with the aim being acquiring a piece of property.

After living with one another on a large rental property for a year, with the understanding that their earnings from their regular jobs and careers would be put into a common pot on an hour by hour basis, they had not only lived a high quality of life and made new, sometimes non-traditional and remarkably positive, relationships but had saved enough for their property. Once they had acquired their land they then put together a proposal to establish a corporation geared towards caring for troubled youth.

Taking in kids they were able to draw resources away from the military/industrial side of the governments budget and at the same time ensure that none of them would ever have to report any significant earnings.

The real upside is that they were able to build this community together and thought long and hard about minimizing conflict and providing an environment that would take care of everyone’s needs while at the same time allowing them to individually express their unique identity. With the drive towards privatizing all social services this may be an opportunity for progressive people to move in on providing the essential services for this society, and thereby building our social and political base for future action.