Buy Nothing Day 1999:
Report from New Zealand

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November 26 1999

Hi there,
rain never eventuated although it was predicted. We had a lovely day, laid back was the general feeling. We have an election tomorrow and I think people were glad to have something unrelated (well that's what they thought :-) ).

I had hoped to take things a bit further this year, but several things, not the least of which is dealingwith a new baby, meant that we kept it down to basics on the day.

We've done much 'advertising' of BND over the past week, because we knew it would be hard to get coverage. Had one interview last week on sweatshops. Had a homegrown BND ad playing on a community TV channel all week, lots of posters and postcards / leaflets distributed.

On the day we'd loosely planned some theatre, but that didn't exactly happen, partly because we would have been competing with a couple of other noisy things nearby. So we capitalised on their crowds.
We put up two large banners, which were visible from a long way, set up a tent and no shop zone, and leafletted like crazy. The Basque community gardens helped, making up bouquets of flowers and greens from their gardens, plus the other freebies. This I felt was quite successful. It took people very much by surprise and lead to good conversations.
Our leaflets included a nice postcard, a rather more theoretical 1/2 page leaflet, and a Frequently Asked Questions and the gift exemption voucher, along with some material from Friends of The Earth, who joined in, informally. The gift exemption voucher went down well as usual. It felt like people were generally more open this year to the ideas, and - probably connected - we're hoping to see a real increase in Greens MPs in this election tomorrow.

A crowd in wellington also were planning a lot of activities today. I havent had a report yet. Hopefully soon...

...stu

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