Canadian Press, Friday, September 15, 2000

Vancouver actor Ted Dave better known as an activist

by John McKay

TORONTO - Vancouverite Ted Dave considers himself a number of things that begin with the letter A, including artist, activist and actor.

In the latter category he is attending the Toronto film festival as part of the cast of Low Self Esteem Girl, a Vancouver-made, low-budget film ($8,000) shot on digital video by former comic book artist Blaine Thurier. Dave plays an affable pot dealer.

But back in 1992, Dave was working as a graphic artist for the Georgia Straight and became frustrated with the rising unaffordability of day-to-day purchases. So he initiated "Buy Nothing Day," a campaign to send a signal to the economy and the corporate sector that consumers do have power. "Absolutely everything around us in the urban environment is set up to be coercive, to get you to buy things spontaneously," he says.

"I was getting exhausted and I thought it would be really nice if we could take a break." The idea was to pick one day a year in which people would boycott all merchandise purchases. He chose the last Friday in November, just before the American Thanksgiving and usually the kick-off to the Christmas shopping season in North America.

Dave basically began with some posters which he created and distributed in the Vancouver area that included a manifesto proposing a 24-hour moratorium on all consumer spending. "To return the purchasing power of the marketplace to the consumer. The idea of voting with your dollar, it seems to be an apolitical solution to what was once a political problem."

The awareness campaign grew, and nine years later under the auspices of Adbusters magazine, is honoured in countries all around the world, including the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. But Dave, now 33, is no hypocrite. If people want to boycott Low Self Esteem Girl on Buy Nothing Day, that's all right with him. Canadian Press.