Shop Small

Though you should always keep a healthy suspicion whenever something is being backed by a major corporation, especially a major credit card company. But Small Business Saturday is a great idea!

Today is the second annual Small Business Saturday--a day dedicated to supporting local small businesses in your community. On what is now becoming more commonly known as Black Weekend (because of Black Friday), the biggest shopping weekend of the year in the most consumeristic country in the world, the big businesses--including those which thrive on the injustices of the free market (i.e. child labor, sweat shops, and the like)--burst at the seams with bargain hungry shoppers, whose only immediate value is to find the cheapest deal--a value to which these businesses have happily responded through methods of outsourcing and unfair labor. But small, local, and honest businesses--the ones who we should be supporting--can hardly afford to offer a competitive deal.

Well, as of last year, the Saturday following Black Friday, is Small Business Saturday. For shopping in a small business, American Express is offering a $25 credit to its members. But the real incentive for shopping small is that when you shop at a local small business, 68% of your money goes back into your community and 0% goes to lining the pockets of the big corporations or toward the perpetuation of global economic injustice. Shop small today!

It's not just about shopping, it's not just about a commercial for small businesses, it's about reprogramming the machines of our economy to respond not to the value of finding the cheapest deal but to the values of justice, fairness, and ultimately of love. It's one more step to reshaping our economic culture into a culture which reflects the love of God in the world.