The British are coming--this time not to impose their tea but to wean us from it.   Join NPR commentator and poet ANDREI CODRESCU, other celebrities, and countless more in resisting corporate rule by phoning in sick April 6, and be part of the first ever USA Phone In Sick Day.

World Phone In Sick Day has enjoyed immense popularity in Britain. For last year's event, over two thousand British Airways employees phoned in sick to protest airline policies, and countless others joined them in a more general protest.  The "consumer terrorists" known as Decadent Action have been credited with inspiring these actions.  The avowed purpose of Decadent Action is "the destruction of capitalism via hyper-inflation caused by excessive spending and employee disobedience," according to their press release.

RTMark's stated goals are more modest. "We want to remind Americans of their history," an RTMark spokesperson said.  "The American Revolution was in part a revolt against corporations, which are bodies formed to allow rich people to shirk responsiblity for abuses--they allow exploitation without representation. Some of the Founding Fathers thought corporations immoral, and few were chartered during the first fifty years of the Republic. Superfresh might have been banned."  (Superfresh, by the way, used to be the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, or A&P.)

RTMark's activities will include sponsorship of performances in the USA and England, networking support, and public relations.  ANDREI CODRESCU has agreed to join in the festivities in exchange for an undisclosed RTMark commission, contributed by an anonymous donor.  Andrei will be calling in sick on the air.

RTMark was established in 1991 to further intelligent subversion, in some cases by channelling funds from donors to workers for sabotage of corporate products.  Recent and upcoming acts of RTMark-aided subversion are documented on RTMark's web site, www.rtmark.com.

Decadent Action's press release can be found at http://www.rtmark.com/daphoneinsick.html.

 
 
USA PHONE IN SICK DAY SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

• phone in sick (see illustration; as Andrei says, "What's the point of going in if you're NOT sick?");
• if you must go to work, secretly do something pesky (see RTMark's project lists for ideas);
• dress up your pet with a tie (this works!);
• buy tons of ridiculous products (but also buy a Codrescu book);
• print newspaper articles or fliers declaring the low unemployment rate a great tragedy;
• subscribe your boss or your company to a dozen munitions and white-supremacy magazines;
• workers of the World-Wide Web unite in spamming notes that workplace viruses have destroyed your machines;
• speak in a bad English accent all day;
• resist according to your wont and pleasure.