Update: The pregnant woman was injured; she did not miscarry as stated in early reports of the incident.

I’ve never understood what would move someone to get up early and be at a store at 5:00 am on the day after Thanksgiving. The crowds, the hassle, and the grotesqueness of over-consuming is enough to make me stay away from any store on Black Friday. Apparently, I am not alone, as today is also Buy Nothing Day.

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Today is Buy Nothing Day:

Suddenly, we ran out of money and, to avoid collapse, we quickly pumped liquidity back into the system. But behind our financial crisis a much more ominous crisis looms: we are running out of nature… fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, soil. What are we going to do when supplies of these vital resources run low? There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less. It will take a massive mindshift. You can start the ball rolling by buying nothing on November 28th. Then celebrate Christmas differently this year, and make a New Year’s resolution to change your lifestyle in 2009. It’s now or never!

Tragically, two souls have been lost already on this Black Friday. When the doors opened at a Long Island Wal-Mart at 5:00 am, a worker was trampled to death and a woman miscarried. The worker was an overnight stock clerk who was trying to hold back the unruly crowd of shoppers. Even as the man was trampled and gasping for air, shoppers continued to rush over and around him. A pregnant woman was also knocked down. When the paramedics arrived, they told her there was nothing they could do for the baby that was already gone. Sadly, shoppers just kept entering the store without paying attention to the dead man on the ground and the pregnant woman who lost her baby.

This story breaks my heart. Consumerism is not only killing our environment and culture, it is literally killing people too. There are so many things wrong with this story. If I would have been the owner of the store, I would have closed the store’s doors for the day in honor of the loss of life; however, I doubt the megastore did anything out of respect.

Image: Cyber Net News