Kudos to Ben & Jerry’s who were early instigators of this, and it was always part of their business plan (1% for peace) as far as I can see. They stay current and hit well with “Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream” but also missed with “Taste the Lin-Sanity” with (choke) fortune cookie pieces and lychee (sorry Asian community).

Ben & Jerry’s does a lot of good through donations and their foundations. They are established players who give away ice cream a few times a year as well and served cones to early Occupiers in New York (back when everyone liked them). Their hearts and politics are in the right place.

But they are the exceptional ones. I can’t open the paper, go to the grocery store, or order online without being given the option to “buy for a good cause,” or “make a difference” la-tee-da look at me.

And though shopping is what Americans do best, have we really come to this? Where we won’t even do our “walk-a-thon” and raise funds – thus putting a dent in our own sedentary lives at the same time as raising money for a cause.

I’m pretty sure (Red) a product line to raise funds to eliminate AIDS raises a lot of money as well. But do we really want ending AIDS branded by a special Coke by (RED) or converse? And what does it say about ourselves when we buy, drink and wear this stuff? Are we doing something, do we understand anything?

I get it. When given the choice we might “buy to do good” and we all want to support what some are calling a “double” or even a “triple” bottom line:  where doing good for a cause or community AND the environment is considered AS (okay almost as) important as making money.

But when is it PR and when is it real?

And lastly I have to mention something along these same lines. I heard the head of GM (yes that GM – General Motors) on the radio (yes, NPR) say that they wanted to be “part of the solution” in regards to the very NPR-y subjects of global warming and fuel crises.

It was a bit weird. And sure, yeah, this of course needs to happen. Activists have implored from time immemorial that “if you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem.” But it’s shocking to hear GM, the definition of corporate America, parrot it back.

So attention shoppers, be vigilant and smart. Don’t forget to “question authority” as well and ask if maybe corporations could just pay their own factory workers in China decently (Apple (Red) nano) or their farmworkers better (everyone) rather than give % somewhere in our name.

Uh, argh?

What made the conversation different from the usual self-loathing conversations about bodies and body parts is that she was totally self-aware and dealing.

AND it wasn’t her displeasure with her looks – which most of us have to some degree – it was more the fact that she let it get to her.

I think a lot of us have this conflict – letting “it” matter too much.  Not the fact that we think we’re fat and ugly but that we let unhappiness with our bodies or looks matter too much. It’s almost embarrassing.

The responses she evoked were all positive and reassuring. Older women saying “you’re beautiful” (she was) and “it gets better as you get older,” and other kind things we say when someone lets on that they are bothered with their appearance.

We all want to make it go away.

I’d just seen an Italian movie where a lot of different kinds of women, with varying bodies, were portrayed as attractive and sexy as opposed to the perfection we’re served up in America, so I mentioned that. I also mentioned Ashley Judd’s recent postings about the backlash she’s gotten for looking “puffy” and how some of her worst, meany, critics were women and how crappy that was.

But honestly what can you tell a smart girl who isn’t happy with the fact that “it” matters so much.

Lecture about the patriarchy? Try to drum up some anger around how women are overly judged on our looks, etc., etc.

Smart gals know all that.

Luckily, brains and talent, two things she had in spades, are longer-term, important, sexy, and sort of win in the end.

But, yeah, the other thing, “it” I wish it didn’t matter so much either.

How much effort goes into multimillion-dollar campaigns that fall flat?

How often do activists spend most of their time talking with each other rather than engaging a larger audience?

There are multiple ways to     get     things     done.

And who is being harmed? Would critics rather that young adults turn their full attention back to internet fun like “sh*t people say” or world’s cutest dog and kitty photo and share those?

Kudos to Invisible Children and their approach to make a warlord famous and thus real to a huge audience. I watched it with my daughter who asked me to order the action kit the way she would ask to see a Harry Potter movie.

Innovation, high production values, engagement: people respond to it.

Every marketer, communications person alive wants to “break through the clutter” and emerge like Kony 2012 has. This campaign is a star and can coexist without diminishing other important, long-term, policy-shifting work that is going on.

My mom was outlived by the glue sticks she bought at Costco. There was a lesson in there. She had clothes with the tags still on them. She had precious items she kept and kept and we ended up giving them to goodwill and throwing way too much away.

Luckily the tide seems to be turning — just in time as we are broker than usual anyway. There are too many tvs, computers, sweaters, jeans, boots, cds, objects in every room. And creative people are making it so we can share things like cars and bikes.

I’d like to share celery with about 4 people since there’s no way I can make it through a whole celery (don’t even know what they’re called) but need a few stalks for soup.

I’d also like to share a trip to Costco with about 4 people so that I can get cheap crackers.

In my newly freed-from-stuff state I took the interactive Slavery Footprint assessment (very complicated algorithm but explained in depth on their website) that measures how much “slave labor” goes into your life.

I tallied a disappointing 34 slaves to their average of 25 and hoped that this group they are measuring are largely in college without a kid, car, or mortgage.

But I remain disappointed in my count and want the ability to lobby more for a largely non meat-eating, sparse product-using, life. Turns out electronic equipment and clothes (really I don’t have that many) are big slave labor users.

What I like about Slavery Footprint is their non-finger pointing — information is power and leads to change and change in corporations — attitude. They are on to something, have a bloody-edge website, and you should check them out.

Especially if you think your footprint is small.

Trends are odd factors in naming. For a while “like google” entered every conversation. And while some groups are perfectly suited to it, not many sound right with a Swahili name.

Your group’s name needs to “feel” right, and sticky in the right way.

One client came to us, a research group with the name “Technical Assistance for Prevention Outcomes and Measurements,” they went by the lovely acronym of “TA-POM.” We came up with the name, “Prevention by Design” which suited them to a T and greatly improved morale.

We created the campaign “Voices Not Victims” to say in shorthand that violence prevention can be more effective with communication and advocacy rather than with reinforcement of the idea of a victim. One is positive and hopeful the other continues fear and immobility.

We like to turn things on their head to get a point across like with “Respect is what’s Sexy” a campaign that took the tired concept of “asking for it” and spun it around.

Unlike a logo or other defining image, a name more often “nails it” rather than embellishes all you are trying to say. We take you through a process to get at the nugget of who your group is. Sometimes it’s more organic than listing out options, sometimes it gets blurted out by an unlikely candidate during the time we are working on it.

Then it’s back into the creative cave to work on a logo…

Kudos to Adbusters the Canadian magazine that launched this whole movement. An amazing thing to have a group like this that spoofs corporate advertising in a socially biting, lefty, sometimes ironic and usually intelligent way, be responsible for starting this surprising and important protest. Check them out at http://www.adbusters.org/

They’ve gone from showing lab monkeys in cages and bunny rabbits in make-up to this. Arguably the ads are more pleasing – but besides getting attention what are they doing? Who wears fur? My mom once a year in the early 60s. Visiting Contessas?

And are lab animals, the fur industry, and pet-eating in Korea really a larger problem than big, dirty, greenhouse gas-producing chicken farm/factories in America’s heartland?

I think that most of us with any exposure to it can agree that the meat industry is disgusting. But a large population eats meat and is going to keep eating meat.

We would dearly like to eat meat that is safer, less factory-based, and oh I don’t know, something less gross than what exists and closer to the ritual killing of that water buffalo in Apocalypse Now.

A kind of harm-reduction model of animal farming and butchering – a groovy Michael Pollan/Alice Waters meat production. Maybe sometimes with a Rabbi. Small producers, organic, local…

Getting us all to become vegans is going to take a while. We know PETA’s mission, it wouldn’t kill them to work with us a little and launch an interim plan that includes a more ethical treatment of animals in a sometimes meat-eating world.

I’m not talking about some bad photos that get posted on someone else’s Facebook, although I have been the recipient of those as well.

Two years ago a former client of mine was arrested for possible misuse of funds at the UC Davis Violence Prevention Program. I found out New Year’s Eve after getting a message on my work phone from the Sacramento Bee saying they were writing a story that involved me…

New Year’s day, curious, I did a search and saw that there was a full-blown online news story on my former client and at least three mentions of myself, unfounded allegations, and a bit of gay innuendo “we don’t know what the relationship was between them” kind of thing. It was a nightmare.

Not a good way to start the year. I called UC Davis, the police department, and on the advice of a friend who works with the press, did not call, the very conservative, Sacramento Bee.

Suffice it to say, that story has caused a lot of panicky moments and head shaking. Not to mention a grand f- up of any search results on my name.

There was of course no findings of wrongdoing but also never an ability to address my accusers/investigators – since UC Davis police never returned my calls even after I reached the Chief of Police who told me an investigator would call me back.

But here’s the thing, some conservative bloggers, intent on documenting government “waste” have reprinted the article, embellished it, and it is out there together with the original, flagrant article.

I don’t think there is any sense in engaging with conservative bloggers. It leads to bad things.

I do think that it makes sense to try and clear your name when you can and to “not believe everything you read” in the news and on the Internet.

If you did you would be like my daughter who when researching Kenya in the 3rd grade gleefully announced that: “Barack Obama was born in Kenya!”

This week I had the very small consolation of finding out that the UC Chief of Police, Annette Spicuzza, who told me “they would have someone call me back, and maybe clear this thing up in one phone call” has now been put on administrative leave for her role in pepper spraying peaceful demonstrators on campus. This time, of course, a much more harmful action, but part of a legacy of poor decision-making on her part.

As a participant, I lived through 80s Feminism on a progressive campus, so I’ve been inoculated for way-empowered, and fuming mad, but I think the booster is no longer effective.

I find myself liking the calm, lying corporate PR guy on NPR as he spars with an activist organizational head because the ED of (blank) organization has this extreme anger he can barely contain.

I wish there was some kind of anti-rage pill that could be taken before these debates since I am sure the nonprofit ED is the actual kind, smart individual, just trapped in a crazy world where they/we have to keep on reframing the debate.

But, it’s gotta be done. A former boss used to say that “responsible extremism” is how we move the agenda. And certainly there’s a lot of righteous anger, but the smart person, who keeps their cool up against the enemy, is our favorite hero.

The best of them, like The ED of the Oakland Institute, Anuradha Mittal, has seen first-hand how ugly the world can get for people who are kept in the dark while corporations tinker with their futures. She’s working hard to give a voice to hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people who are being adversely impacted by corporate land grabs in Africa…

And still keeps her cool.

(I am not talking about protestors, fyi, and the Occupy people in particular, I support them, I was spitting mad after seeing recent video…)

Places, outside of Bolivia, I have seen quinoa: shampoo ingredient in giveaway bottle, upstate NY hotel; non-wheat pizza dough, both coasts; numerous Whole Foods crackers.

What a shanda.

Other related news:

Our love of premium tequila has made agave (aka “blue gold”) a scarce commodity in Mexico.

India’s stores of yoga are rumored to be depleted.

So what to do?

Let’s advocate that only a portion of these items be made available for export while the remaining goods stay in the producing country at an affordable cost. (Leaving hamburgers from McDonalds not a fair exchange.)

Perhaps there could be a deal and a brand like “fair trade” coffee for items we don’t deplete. A mark that indicates: “we leave some behind.”

We don’t need all that quinoa.

Check out the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/