“Last week on Nov 27th [1998], our university campus saw the staging of a campaign for ‘Buy Nothing Day’, a campaign sponsored by Adbusters, a publication of the Media Foundation. For many on the left, the Media Foundation, it’s quarterly publication Adbusters, and it’s campaigns around ‘International Buy Nothing Day’ and ‘TV Turnoff Week’ are basically where it’s at in terms of resistance to the corporate takeover of our society. Indeed, the last several years have seen great improvements in terms of the slickness, circulation and political currency of Adbusters magazine and the promotion of its ‘new’ ideology of ‘anti-consumerism’.... Despite adapting revolutionary rhetoric and repackaging glossy pictures of Indonesian student protests, the liberal politics of Adbusters have come shining through as exemplified by their near total contempt of the power of ordinary people create revolutionary change. There are three main parts to the analysis that has led Adbusters to this political dead end: their privileging of resistance in the individual act of consumption over the collective organization of production, their view of revolution as consisting of a purely subjective and highly individualized ‘mindshift’, and their insistence that the ‘revolution’ will be made on behalf of the masses by a small group of ‘culture jammers’.”

Read the rest, from Tom Keefer.

Grupo Fenix is a non-profit organization that supports renewable energy and sustainable development in Nicaragua, especially in low-income communities. The group works with students at the National Engineering University in Managua to develop low-cost, high-efficiency solar ovens for cooking or drying wood as well as solar cells for generating electricity for lighting and recharging expired batteries in a country with extreme poverty and very little infrastructure. The group also employs landmine survivors, teaching them how to install and maintain the solar units. The solar units are recycled from silicon wafers from the U.S. that are not quite pure enough to make computer chips out of.

In 1991 Trevor Baylis saw a television programme on AIDS in Africa. A health worker noted that advice on how to prevent the disease spreading further could be broadcast by radio if only radios and in particular batteries were not so expensive, often costing more than a weeks food for a family. So Trevor invented a clockwork radio powered by hand crank. The radios are produced in South Africa at a factory which is partially owned by seven disabled organisations and which actively seeks to employ the disabled. The rest is history.

A modern array of stylish, rugged, crank-powered radios and flashlights are available for purchase from Freeplay.

Arquitectos sin Fronteras is a non-profit that organizes professional architects and technicians who develop and promote the study, planning, management, design, and construction of public works projects in regions affected by poverty, discrimination, natural disasters and armed conflict. Volunteers work on everything from schools and public housing to hospitals and latrines in places from Congo to India to Peru.

“Dr. Juan Baughn, who oversees the [school] system for Edison [Schools Inc.], noted in a recent interview that some of his high school students were four to six years below grade level in reading....Those who were given books that appeared to be designed for grade school children were too embarrassed to use them effectively. Edison is now scrambling to find what Dr. Baughn describes as ‘age appropriate’ books that are written on a lower grade level but designed to be indistinguishable from books written for students who read well.”

From The New York Times.

If you’ve ever stood in line at 1am on West 27th street in Manhattan, chances are you’ve noticed an old elevated rail. The High Line was built in the 1930s to elevate dangerous and congesting railroad traffic above city streets. It runs for 1.45 miles, from 34th Street along the edge of the Hudson River through West Chelsea into the Meat Packing District. The Friends of the High Line are dedicated to the preservation of the structure and its conversion into a public park and trail.

The World Monuments Fund is a New York-based non-profit dedicated to preserving and protecting endangered works of historic art and architecture around the world. The World Monuments Watch issues the List of 100 Most Endangered Sites every other year. Some of these sites are also on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Ballot design changes everything. How much was lost because of a bad interface? Since the 2000 election, the American Institute of Graphic Artists has lobbied Chicago on the redesign of a local ballot, and the U.S. Government to include communication design criteria in any election reform bill. See also Disenfranchised by Design, an essay written in 1998.

The World Studio Foundation runs a scholarship program for minority and economically disadvantaged students studying art and design in U.S. colleges and universities, a mentoring program for high-school students, and produces an annual magazine and quarterly newsletter to “stimulate, coalesce and channel social activism in the design and fine arts industries; to encourage discussion of the fields’ ethical assumptions; to promote professional practices sensitive to ecological and humane issues.”

In April 1998, activist Marc Kasky and attorney Alan Caplan filed a lawsuit claiming that Nike had engaged in unfair business practices by falsely advertising its Asian labor conditions. Nike claimed that its public relations campaign in which it said it did not run sweatshops could not be challenged under false-advertising laws because it was protected as non-commercial speech by the First Amendment. In a ruling issued on May 2, 2002, the California Supreme Court did not agree, and now a lawsuit against the company can move forward. Considering the evidence that the statements they made were false, this looks like a major blow to greenwashing campaigns across the board. Source: American Samizdat and AnitaRoddick.com. See also law.com, CorpWatch.org, and Nike’s press release which notes that their position was “strongly supported by the ACLU.”

Update, 1/11/03: The case is headed for the Supreme Court.