Protesting Black Friday

The title kind of says it all, would you protest Black Friday?
Let me illustrate with a story….
I was standing in line with hundreds of women. No this was not a dream or even a fantasy, it was a reality. It was cold, dark, and raining. We were all huddled together outside of Kohl’s department store waiting for the door to open so we could buy jeans for 4 bucks. We waited for about 15 minutes and then the doors opened. You would have thought that all of us were dying because we were running out of oxygen and the best way to save your life was to get into the store and breathe the fresh air. People were pushing, shoving, yelling, and biting to get to the front. The culmination of the struggle to get inside came when an elderly lady fell down and no one stopped to help her up. I have never seen so many people just start grabbing clothes. They didn’t care what size, style or color they were, they just grabbed because it was marked down to %80 off. At that moment I was ashamed. I was ashamed to be in that building, I was ashamed to even be apart of the madness. For the next 3 hours I watched and observed. I wondered what this would look like to aliens? You know, the other people in the world who do not live in the United States. The ones that work 18 to 20 hours a day for $1.89? You probably have been in this situation before, ashamed to be apart of a system of consumerism and greed. And yet I was quickly snapped out of it when I found 1 gig memory sticks for 5 bucks.

Black Friday is the worst day of the year.

What is Black Friday? It is the day after Thanksgiving where millions of people line up to buy a discounted TV or $2 DVDs. It is a celebrated day around the United States. But the stats about this day are sobering.

“The NRF said it appeared to pay off with 172 million shoppers visiting stores and Web sites Friday compared to about 147 million on Black Friday last year. The amount spent was pegged at $372.57 per shopper, up 7.2 percent from $347.55 last year.”

The sobering stat of all: Consumers spent $10.3 billion dollars on Black Friday.

Call me crazy, but that is a lot of money. Considering that millions are dying a day because of basic needs, this amount of money spent seems very frivolous and downright wrong. I am just as guilty as any one else. No, I haven’t spent 300 dollars on this day (I would if I had the money) but I have waited in line at 5am in the morning on Black Friday. Usually just to watch the madness, but also to pick up cheap stuff.
Now, I do not want to be a protester of abortion clinics, but by your votes below, would you be interested in protesting black Friday?

[polldaddy poll=2184937]

Is this a good idea?
Would Jesus do this?
Am I out of Line?