Small things.

It seems that anywhere I go these days I find an overabundance of extremely conservative right wing propaganda. Books are being written by Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Carl Rove, etc. I have yet to walk into a book store where the political books are even as far as political parties. Why? I went into a Barnes and Noble a couple nights ago with my partner and was BOMBARDED by Sean Hannity's face. Not only did he have an ENTIRE display, but his books were ALL over the store. It was pretty discouraging. So, instead of just walking right back out of the store, my partner and I took charge and turned every single one of his books around and then replaced the display with 1984 by George Orwell. I wish people would start to form their OWN opinions rather that what is said on Fox News. Is it really THAT HARD?! The worst part is that the news KNOWS that people are so lazy that they'll just listen to anything they have to say. Instead of doing the right thing and explaining both sides of the story, they knowingly brainwash and it actually WORKS.


img borrowed from superstangeland

It's just scary how right on 1984 actually is.



My favorite part of our little book replacement scheme was overhearing a worker saying "I just flipped those books back around!" after our little move had been discovered. After placing the 1984 books on top of Sean Hannity, a Barnes and Noble worker just stood and laughed at our new display and said "That's pretty funny!" and then dropped her head into another laugh. It made me feel pretty good that someone actually got what we were trying to say. As silly and small as it was, we still got a reaction. I even noticed a man pick up one of the books we put on top and start flipping through. It works!

A couple of weeks ago we were in a Borders and an entire wall was dedicated to conservative writers. Why not have a wall of books that we could ALL learn from? Let alone anything about the history of the country. So my partner replaced every single book with books like The Communist Manifesto, The Federalist Papers, Anarchy, and The Constitution. It's only right that people of all sorts should be getting a variety of information, rather that being force fed incorrect and hateful propaganda. People have completely forgotten what our country was based on. They don't understand that "conservative" now means a completely DIFFERENT thing than it did when our country was formed. Now it's about hate. It's about separation and religion and regurgitated information heard on the news. It's about fear and a lack of education. It's scary truth be told.
Thanks to a picture I saw on Left Take of a Sean Hannity book being placed in the "douche" aisle, we've begun doing this as well. It only feels right.