Adbusters

I’ve never known anything about Adbusters other than a few vague references to them as the group that organized the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Here are some links.

According to their online magazine (which is completely ad-free), “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.”

Works for me.  The magazine is based in Vancouver, B.C. and has an international circulation of 120,000.  Other campaigns launched by Adbusters, besides Occupy Wall Street, include TV Turnoff Week and Buy Nothing Day.  Maybe they should launch a “Take Your Money out of Bank of America and put it in a Credit Union” Day.

According to Wikipedia, Adbusters was founded in 1988.  The two founders had created their own TV commercial against excessive logging and clearcutting.  TV stations refused to air the ad because it was too “controversial,” i.e. it might offend their pimps in the logging industry.  This media censorship inspired them to start Adbusters.  As the Wikipedia article says:

“Adbusters was born out of their realization that citizens do not have the same access to the information flows as corporations.”

Occupy Wall Street — and the guerilla approach of Adbusters — has been an effective weapon against the trillion-dollar Wall Street empire.  Obviously it’s an uphill David-and-Goliath battle and there’s still a lot of work to be done.  But as you’ll remember, David won.  Adbusters’ campaigns have a certain ingenuity, a Young Turks quality, that’s completely lacking among the Wall Street barons.

It’s like rock-scissors-paper.  Sometimes this combination of fury and ingenuity is able to trump a billionaire’s wealth and influence.  Sometimes a 110-pound martial arts expert will disable a 300-pound attacker.