Time was a big issue at the San Francisco anti-war protests that held up traffic and blocked buildings the days immediately after the United States began bombing Iraq.
Allow me to borrow briefly from a mainstream media article. On Friday, March 21st, the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Anna Wilson, a woman sitting atop a news rack-turned-throne in the middle of the Montgomery and Pine intersection. In defense of her unusual hang-out spot, Wilson reportedly said, “Sorry about the inconvenience, people, but there are people dying. How addicted to our stuff are we that we can’t stop work for one day?”
A paragraph later the story quoted Stan Hornbacher, a man en route to the office: “I’m against the war, but I gotta go to work.”
Whether protesting the war or cheering it on — glued to FOX news’ coverage of “shock and awe” or trying to digest as much Chomsky and Zinn as mentally possible — there never seems to be enough time to get heard or stay informed. And as much as I empathize with the anti-consumerist Wilson tying up traffic, I also understand the lament of the working man Stan.
There just isn’t enough time to be a good ol’ fashioned citizen these days.
John de Graaf, producer of the documentary Affluenza, is campaigning to fix this.
I first heard about de Graaf’s mission, Take Back Your Time Day, at the Environmental Journalism Academy in Seattle last August. He said, “We have a real epidemic of overwork in this country,” and offered statistics just in case we didn’t believe him. For example, last year, the average vacation for the American worker was 13 days, while our economic equals in Western Europe received a six to seven week holiday. Mandatory overtime is nearing record levels. We sacrifice more of our lives to work than medieval peasants did, and more than the workers in any other industrialized nation.
Yep. Right-o. Uhhuh. My arms ache from pulling up my bootstraps, the American dream is morphing into a nightmare (at least, when I find time to sleep), and by the time I get off work it’s too dark to frolic in any amber waves of grain.
The TBYTD website (www.timeday.org) defines this new “Day” as “a nationwide initiative [brought to you by The Simplicity Forum] to challenge the epidemic of overwork, overscheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families, our communities and our environment.”
TBYTD was publicly launched on April 6, the 70th anniversary of the passage of a United States Senate bill that would have made the official workweek 30 hours. This gives organizers over six months to prepare....
Mark those hectic calendars! Date books! Palm pilots! TBYTD will be held on October 24, 2003 (about a month before another “reclaim-yourlife- save-the-planet-day” — the post- Thanksgiving Buy Nothing Day). Like April 6, this autumn day has planned significance: October 24 is nine weeks before the new year, demonstrating that Americans work nine weeks more every year than do Western Europeans.
And if that deeply ingrained Protestant work ethic nags, coaxing you away from participation, take note: This infant movement toward free time is not about ditching work to smoke pot, hating your boss, or smashing capitalism. It is not anti-work. Instead, it celebrates useful, creative work — balanced with enough time for the many neglected aspects of life that are not work — instead of the frenzied production/consumption cycle that transforms many an American life into a competitive and one-track rat race.
In this mad rush for things (and money to buy these ever-increasing things and thus time to make the money), what important facets of a full life are lost? De Graaf poses the question in a glass-ishalf- full way, wondering just why our society needs free time.
Here’s some of what he’s come up with:
- Employment: Shortening work hours can result in sharing existing work more equitably, increasing total employment. De Graaf argues in his press release, “Unemployment and overwork are two sides of the same coin.”
- Health: Overwork — and all the offspring of time pressure — is the greatest new threat to American health, warns the Centers for Disease Control: eating high-caloric, nutrient-deficient fast food, since you’re immobile for two hours in your daily work commute that forces you to miss two hours of sleep every night and develop road rage and maybe later you’ll have time to go nowhere on a treadmill or stationary bike....
- Environment: Boundless economic growth on a finite planet is unsustainable, yet why throw millions into unemployment when we could produce more responsibly while working less and sharing jobs? The ecological benefits of shorter and more flexible working hours are numerous, from consumption issues (more time to recycle, cook healthily, grow food, replace “convenience” throwaway products with reuseables) to having more time explore nature or to utilizing alternative transportation.
- Relationships: According to de Graaf, Americans now spend 40% less time with their children than in the 1960s. Borrowing the buzz phrase of presidential elections past, time is a family value.
- Citizenship: Political participation — voting, learning about issues, writing letters to representatives or editors, attending town meetings, protesting, campaigning — takes time. Is it mere coincidence that Europeans, receiving almost ten years more free time throughout their life than Americans do, generally have a far greater voter turnout than in the U.S.?
This is merely a sampling of TBYTD’s relevance. One of the coolest things that I, as an oft-frustrated activist, appreciate about this movement is its inherent coalition-building potential. Groups that rarely, or never, rally together — spiritual leaders, family value conservatives, feminists, environmentalists, labor leaders, slow food-ers, voluntary simplicity folks, pro-play anarchists, progressive businesspeople — can unite under the common banner of free time, lending their strengths and creating unique alliances. After all, most everyone understands “time famine” all too well.
De Graaf emphasizes that the movement’s purpose is to encourage a vigorous debate, not to advocate any specific, partisan solutions. The goal, he said, at least for the premier year, is to “beg a new national dialogue that says ‘how do we take this tiger by the tail and slow down?’”
Modeled on 1970s first Earth Day, which steered America in a new environmental direction and ushered in a host of unprecedented ecological legislation, TBYTD is intended to be provocative and playful. De Graaf recently offered some organizing advice, suggesting that activists first form a committee, focusing on bringing together different groups and types of people, perhaps a prominent physician, a union leader, a pro-family advocate, an eco-activist.
The second step? Basically, marketing. Holding teach-ins at Cal Poly or the library, tabling at community gatherings such as Farmer’s Market, and hosting a Labor Day promotion picnic are all feasible and fun events to get that word out. Publishing local stories of timepressured folks, coupled with an explanation of TBYTD, is essential.
Plus, of course, there’re the fun and obligatory bumper stickers, including “Medieval Peasants Worked Less Than You Do” and “Visualize Free Time.”
De Graaf is optimistic, yet realistic, about the need for a grassroots constituency, noting that several people who have been devoting their efforts “have been putting full time and overtime into trying to stop the war.” As he said, “None of these things have a snowball’s chance if there isn’t a groundswell of public support behind them.”
Further Resources:
BOOKS
- Affluenza by John de Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas Naylor In this and the accompanying PBS documentaries, Affluenza and Escaping Affluenza, the symptoms and remedies of this “disease of excess” are explored.
- Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Ehrenreich does some old-fashioned reporting about having to subsist on $6-$7/hour in America, going into the unskilled job market as, among other things, a waitress and Wal-Mart employee. - Days of War, Nights of Love by the CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective
A collection of essays and images about the bourgeoisie, domestication, freedom, work, etc. that ask what you desire out of life, how your dreams have been usurped by the American dream, and some suggestions for questioning normalcy and seeking your desires. - Take Back Your Time Day Handbook
Available nationally in bookstores in August; can be ordered in advance on the TBYTD website. Half of the revenue goes toward building the movement.
WEBSITES
- Take Back Your Time Day: http://www.timeday.org/
- AFL-CIO: http://www.aflcio.org/
- Center for a New American Dream: http://www.newdream.org/
- Redefining Progress: http://www.redefiningprogress.org/
Katie Renz lives in Cambria and is a freelance writer, a happy activist, concerned citizen and eager to take her message to young girls in a possible magazine tentatively called Eco-Babe. She can be reached at
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