photo credit - Roz Foster

Just as the Iliad and the Odyssey may provide all one needs to know about Ancient Greek mores and the Trojan War, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and Black Friday may provide all one needs to know about the values inherent in 21^st century American consumerism and the Walmart Wars.

Visiting my parents’ southern Californian home in Porter Ranch for Macy’s Day, I pull into a nearby shopping center after my two-hour drive north from mellow North County San Diego.  There’s always tension here.  It’s not just the holiday.  Sharply featured women wearing red-lipped grimaces threaten me with their waxed, black, battle-ready humvees.  They compete for the rare open spot in the vast parking lot that sprawls before Ralph’s, Best Buy, and Walmart.  I park sheepishly half a football field away from my target, Starbucks.  There, I grab a double latte and quickly make it back to my car before anyone checks me with a shopping cart.

I drive up the hill, sipping my coffee, passing the large California-style homes with their white stucco walls and red-tiled roofs.  Parking in front of my parents’ house, I deftly avoid a black SUV whizzing by, only a red-lipped grimace visible beyond the sheen of the windshield.  Finally, I step safely through the front door where my parents, my sister and her children wait warmly for me, relieved that I didn’t get hit by the holiday “crazies” on the way.  In the living room, we sit as a family below a 42” television set, which my parents complain is too small.  We watch the parade.

The name “Macy’s Day” parade, as most call it, is clearly a misnomer, as it celebrates much more than Macy’s alone.  The annual parade began in 1924 as what it is now, a marketing stunt to draw publicity to the department store.  That year, it drew a quarter of a million New York consumers. Today a staggering 3.5 million gather to watch it live on the streets of Manhattan.  A stupefying 50 million watch from home.

The parade makes its way through New York City from Central Park to Macy’s Herald Square, where pop singers lip sync a few seconds of a hit, sparkling cheerleaders shout “Macy’s!” and militant marching bands salute the entrance to the store with blaring brass horns.  Aside from the TV commercials, the real attractions are the giant, helium filled balloons representing some of our most powerful corporations.  Adults cheer with fervor, children point wide-eyed, our heads tip toward the sky as these beloved characters loom over us, our powerful pantheon of Consumer Gods.

There’s the Nestlé Quik Bunny!  And Ronald McDonald!  How BIG!  Oh, the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee is coming up behind him!  Look!  It’s the M&Ms!  How cute!  The Pillsbury Doughboy!  Adorable!  And here comes the Energizer Bunny.  Don’t you love him?

Later that evening, after my family and I had stuffed ourselves silly and after we’d watched Miracle on 34^th Street (such a heart-warming feature-length advertisement for Macy’s), we caught the eleven-o-clock news.  That’s when we learned about the woman who—in order to get her hands on a brand new, discounted Xbox at the Porter Ranch Walmart down the hill from us—pepper-sprayed her way through the shoppers ahead of her.

“Shocking,” we said.

And with Macy’s Day at a close and Black Friday dawning early this year, we went to bed, listening to the high hum of a police helicopter hovering over the house, over the neighborhood, watching over us there in Porter Ranch during the days of the Walmart Wars.

Julia Botello, 85 - Daily Mail

Inspired by the Arab Spring and the now global Occupy movement, I went to Occupy North County out here in southern California on Saturday, October 15, 2011.  As I was coming up to the intersection of Encinitas Boulevard and 101 where people were gathering, a pickup pulled up just in front of me on the street and parked.  A man in his late seventies or early eighties got out of the driver’s side.  It was his wife that I watched more closely as she stepped out of the passenger side and onto the sidewalk a few feet in before me.  Like her husband, she might have been in her early eighties, her white hair shining in the sun.  She wore make-up and was comfortably dressed in the clean, newish clothes indicative of the middle class.  Her back was rounded with age and her pale, liver-spotted hands held tightly to a large, bright pink sign on which was written “CORPORATIONS SOLD US OUT!” in thick black ink.  She hobbled toward the protest on the sidewalk, her husband tottering around the front of the pickup to meet her.  The elderly couple concentrated on the ground  in front of them to be sure of their footing, but their heads lifted in unison when a cop car rolled slowly down the street toward the gathering.  The old woman let out an exasperated breath and said, “There go the fuzz already.”

www.martineaubry.fr

by Roz Foster

In 2012, Martine Aubry may become the first présidente (female president) of France.  In 2000, Aubry pushed through the 35-hour workweek along with universal health care for France.  She’s been mayor of Lille since 2001 and the leader of the French Socialist party (the first woman in the role) since 2008.  She is currently a candidate in her party’s primary (which will be held October 9, 2011) for the upcoming 2012 French presidential election.  On July 26 of this year, she revealed a key facet of her proposed presidency.  Publishing an article in Le Monde,“Un nouveau printemps pour la culture,” or, “A new cultural spring,“ she detailed that under her leadership, the state would support young artists and those called to culturally-oriented vocations by nourishing their education and careers with a 30% to 50% increase to France’s cultural budget.  The proposal might be perceived as impractical in these times of world economic crisis and, as such, Aubry’s push for it seems, on the surface, strategically cryptic, even reckless.

So, why encourage young people to pursue a creative vocation at the state’s expense in the midst of the worst economic crisis to hit the world since 1929?   In Aubry’s late July proposal, she writes, “Creation and culture are not a luxury in times of crisis.  Instead, they offer the keys for our exit from it.”  What Aubry sees—that other world leaders seem blind to during periods of turmoil and economic contraction—is that artists are the foundation of cultural innovation and renewal….

CLICK HERE to read the rest of this article at Ruelle Electrique . . .