Announcing Steal Something From Work Day!

November 27, 2009 at 6:45 pm · Filed under Calling All Anarchists, posted by peter p


Calling all angry wage slaves and anarchist subversives! You’re invited to participate in promoting an international day of action, STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY, scheduled for April 15, 2010. Following in the footsteps of Steal Something Day, itself a response to Buy Nothing Day, STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY focuses attention on the motivations behind employee theft and the horizons ahead of it.

STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY is a day of action, but it’s much more than that. The point is not so much to urge people to steal from their workplaces—employees of all ideological stripes already steal from their bosses without need of encouragement—as to raise awareness and promote dialogue about the means and causes of workplace theft. Imagine stickers and posters everywhere rendering the individualized action of workplace theft a topic of collective discussion. Imagine joking references to satirical websites spawning conversations about how coworkers can steal more and better together, and why they are entitled to. Imagine STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY.

This is an opportunity for anarchists to use the networks developed for mass mobilizations and summit protests to ignite class war on the terrain of daily life, where it matters most. Through humor and honesty, we can bring the contradictions present in practically everyone’s lives to the fore, forcing the issues our rulers and managers would rather brush under the rug. One website is already up, and more are on the way, along with videos, stickers, pins, posters, and more. For now, check these out:

Frequently Asked Questions
Posters and Other Promotional Materials
Press Office

Interviews and other inquiries are welcome to stealfromworkday@gmail.com. If you or your organization would like to participate in this campaign, please send in your endorsement, specifying whether you wish for your contact information to appear on the list of participants. Alternately, just make your own material and get it out there!

hmfreedomfirst said,

November 30, 2009 @ 3:15 pm

i used to, every single day, when i had a job! 5-20 big ones from the register almost every day. if not, some cool candles and home goods….

right under their fucking noses.

HA!

GCheetah88 said,

November 30, 2009 @ 11:50 pm

Too bad I work for two small businesses. I can’t ethically steal from the pockets of my bosses; they’re so lenient! A job where you can pretty much punch in and out as you desire, and another one where I just drive around or sit and read, eat some Chinese food, and wait to get my cash from the wealthy yuppies in Lewisville…I can’t exactly complain…now, maybe if I still worked for GameStop, or Panera, or Quizno’s, or *bleh* Spencer’s…oh, I’d be in Employee Theft Paradise!

keelsc said,

December 1, 2009 @ 12:20 pm

It appears that i will either have to get a job from which to steal, or assist my friend in stealing from his job at Wal-Mart.

hmfreedomfirst said,

December 1, 2009 @ 5:13 pm

@gcheetah88 i think i’m about to have that same problem at a veg friendly organic/local market i’m applying at tomorrow… maybe my boss will be a total bitch or something. either way, i hear they give the employees the food that they would otherwise throw away from the hotfoods/deli section

Coyote06 said,

December 1, 2009 @ 5:35 pm

I can’t get any of the links on the website to work on any of the computers I’ve tried… they just act like aren’ t links at all. What am I doing wrong?

I used someone’s iphone to access the website and the links worked fine, but I want to print off the stickers and can’t until I can find a way to get the links to work on a computer.

Am I missing some kind of java update or something….?

hmfreedomfirst said,

December 1, 2009 @ 7:10 pm

are you on a mac? i am, and am having the same problem, i think i need a new java update as well. try that.

pfm said,

December 2, 2009 @ 8:43 am

Yes, it appears that the links don’t work in Firefox on a Mac, even the most current version. Haven’t checked FF in Windows yet, so I don’t know. I didn’t make that site, so I can’t fix it, but until it get’s fixed, I’d recommend using a webkit-based browser such as Safari or Google Chrome, both of which are free.

FYI, it’s not a javascript issue, it’s a html issue, and i’m not sure which browser is rendering it ‘correctly’, but i do know that webkit page rendering is making the links work.

hmfreedomfirst said,

December 2, 2009 @ 11:02 am

thanks pfm :)

Coyote06 said,

December 2, 2009 @ 1:52 pm

Thanks a lot pfm. It definitely doesn’t work in firefox on windows either at the moment, I’ve tried it on several windows computers. By the way, whoever made the site, it’s amazing and this is a wonderful idea!

Coyote06 said,

December 4, 2009 @ 3:06 pm

So I made about twenty stickers, and ran into a friend on the bus… when I took them out and explained Steal Something from Work Day, the person next to me started asking about it… she got excited, wanted stickers, started explaining it in spanish to the people around her… then another guy wanted stickers too, got to explain it to him as well… suddenly there are stickers being passed around, people talking, girl next to me complimented my ‘rent is theft’ patch and translated it to the guy next to her…

Similar reactions when I brought them to my sociology class… including from my professor who laughed and admitted to being a longtime participant. I think this holiday is a fine idea.

ret marut said,

December 15, 2009 @ 9:50 pm

There’s a video out now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7juwrj2496Q

skipjack said,

January 18, 2010 @ 10:00 pm

Awesome idea!

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